We are now closing our segment on “tapas”. Tapas is one of the 5 Niyamas or internal duties of a yoga student. “Tap” is the Sanskrit root for fire. “Tapas” can be understood as burning desire.
It is the burning desire for our meditation practice, our reason for showing up, for listening to the challenge today, and for sitting down on our meditation cushion.
One aspect of tapas which I’ve alluded to, is the purifying aspect of fire. In the Patanjali sutras, it is referred to as a cleansing fire or internal heat, developed through vigorous yoga or meditation practice, that burns away our samskars - or our knots of craving and aversion that live in the space between our mind and body.
I am careful to use the word tapas with the concept of purity, because it can create quite the intense drive to cleanse oneself! That drive itself is not entirely a bad thing, it’s nice to take a shower once in a while after all, but taken too far, it can be harmful to yourself and others.
For this reason, I like to imagine tapas with both cleansing and energizing qualities.
So how do we develop a sustainable, clean-burning fuel of desire for our meditation practice? Let’s investigate the source of our fires.
We’ll do an exercise, which if you have toddlers - you may know this as the why game - which can be equally lovely and frustrating! As an add-on to the game, we’re also going to include what we’re feeling in our bodies.
By playing the “why, where and how” game, we can trace to the source of our desire.
The game is simple, listen to what you want - and ask why you want it.
Notice where and how the desire feels in your body.
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