Building the Fire of Tapas

As spring approaches, it’s finally time to come out of our hibernation state. It’s time to start moving again, building up heat to thaw the winter chill. As we look forward to thawing into the spring, I wanted to talk about tapas, or zeal in practice, self discipline, and more literally, “to heat up”. 

Tapas is all these things and more. It’s detoxifying in the sense that self discipline helps us focus on our physical health. Tapas helps us to drop our old toxic habits, just through the nature of disciplined practice. This niyama (personal discipline/observance), helps us to see results- we may gain more flexibility, feel stronger, more vital and healthy when we focus on tapas. But we are purifying more than our bodies with this practice- we are shedding the old layers of ourselves as we practice with discipline. We are burning away all that no longer serves us. As we burn it all away, we come to realize that we have to essentially start over– from the ash and dust that is who we used to be, or rather, who we thought we were before.

The fire of tapas removes all the illusions we have about ourselves, all the stories we tell ourselves about who we think we are. Tapas helps us to remove the labels we give ourselves— it burns away the ego if we are disciplined. Tapas helps reveal our True Selves and The Truth to us; that we are all connected, we all possess and are the Divine Light of Consciousness and Awareness. It may seem esoteric and difficult to understand, but with discipline in your practice, through the fire of tapas, we can come to this Truth. 

The Truth is uniting, and liberating. We are all connected and we are all Divine. No matter what you may believe when it comes to religion, this shared Truth exists. We are all Divine creatures, animated by that Spirit, Soul, Divine Light, or whatever terminology you use– that which we can only attempt to name, and which is only understood through lived experience. 

As we move toward spring, I invite you all to take up the practice of tapas.

When it comes to your physical practice, pick a schedule and stick with it. Use your self discipline to stick to this routine consistently.

When it comes to your life off the mat, you can apply tapas as well. This doesn’t mean you need to change everything about yourself all at once- build the fire gradually.

Start by setting small, achievable goals that are realistic for you, and use the fire of self discipline to achieve these small goals, one at a time.

Next, maintain your achievements without backtracking, and if you do, move forward with determination to master your goal again, rather than being discouraged by “falling short”.

Build the fire of tapas slowly- think of it as a literal flame. You don’t want to throw a bunch of gasoline on the fire, (even if it seems like a good way to get it started). Your fire might burn bright and hot for a few minutes, but pretty soon you need more gasoline to maintain it, and you eventually will run out. Think of building your fire slowly, carefully tending to it, building it up and maintaining it with the replenishable resources around you.

May the fire of tapas burn steady in your life, into the spring, helping you to remember your True Self.