Why Practice Yoga Every Day?

by Sarah Philosophy Svadhyaya Tapas

sarah jamieson yoga

When I say “practice yoga every day,” I mean: do what resonates in your heart as yoga – whatever fosters presence, whether it is running, yoga asana (postures), playing music, breath work, practicing compassion, cooking or painting.

With whatever you consider to be your yoga practice, I am sure there are many answers to the question: Why?

For example, some reasons to practice yoga asana include:

  • Increase flexibility and build strength
  • Reduce stress and increase sense of calm
  • Develop body awareness
  • Reduce and prevent pain
  • Manage weight
  • Breathe better

But this focus on doing yoga every day is less about the benefits of the practice itself. It isn’t about the lovely long hamstrings or fitting into your skinny clothes; it is about building tapas.

Tapas is the Spanish word for “appetizers,” but in Sanskrit it means something very different. Tapas is sometimes translated as “fierce discipline” or as “burning enthusiasm.” Ultimately, it is about cultivating an unquestioned commitment to your practice.

And practicing every day is how you cultivate this unquestioned commitment. Consistency builds commitment.

At this point, you might be thinking, “But I have tried to practice every day and it didn’t get easier – it got harder.”

My guess is that you made the same mistake that most people make: You tried to do too much every day.

Central to the practice of tapas is learning to live with your most compelling priorities in mind, which means, unfortunately, that it is not about doing everything you want to do every day. Tapas requires that you weed through your “To Do” lists and your grandiose visions for what you will accomplish each day/week/year, and deepen your understanding of what most nourishes you and supports you in living the life you want to live.

If your daily yoga practice involves traditional practices such as yoga asana, meditation or pranayama, drop-in yoga classes can be a wonderful place to deepen your knowledge, connect with others, and give over to the guidance of a teacher, but they are not a sustainable way to develop a daily practice.

Whether it is time constraints, health, location, energy or finances, there will always be things that prevent you from attending a class every single day. Developing a home-based practice is essential to practicing every day. Your practice needs to have elements you can practice when you are sick with the flu, and your practice needs to be manageable enough that you can make time for it even on the days when you feel like you don’t have any free time.

Yoga has been a powerful tool for transformation in my life, and unquestionably, one of the most positive shifts has been a result of developing tapas. Learning to shape my practice into one that is manageable and sustainable throughout the roller coaster ride that life can be has taught me to develop unquestioning commitment in other areas of my life, and it has ultimately led me to a sense of freedom that I had historically been looking for in all the wrong places.

I want to help other people to find the freedom I have found in unquestioned commitment.

For the rest of the month of January, I am offering a special double-private session – where we meet twice 30-40 days apart – and set up a sustainable daily yoga practice for you.

All the details are below.

Namaste,
Sarah Jamieson

Two 75 minute private classes for $100.00

  • For the first session, I will come to your home and together we will carve out a practice space and develop a realistic and sustainable daily practice for you
  • After this session, we will set up the date for the second session, which ideally will be 30-40 days after the first
  • I will come back for the second session during which we will reflect on your experience with the practice and further refine it to meet your goals and suit your lifestyle

To arrange your private classes, please email me at yoga@sarahjamieson.ca


Commit to Compassion

by Sarah Ahimsa Compassion Philosophy Tapas

There is no power on earth greater than right action in the present moment. – Vasistha

sarah jamieson yoga

I teach a workshop on developing a daily yoga practice, and one of the key focuses of this workshop is learning to understand why yogic philosophy suggests a daily practice. To gain this understanding, we delve into the concept of tapas, which Patanjali wrote about in the Yoga Sutras around 200 CE.

In the midst of exploring this concept, I like to remind everyone (myself included) that tapas, a practice that can be described as consistency in striving towards your goals, was not included in the Yoga Sutras because it is something that most people find easy to do.

This practice of consistently striving towards our goals, learning to live with our most compelling priorities in mind, and investing our energy wisely is one of the most challenging things we can learn to do. A practice of consistency is demanding on a good day, but when life gets overwhelming, the practice gets even harder. And when we forget that consistency is something we’re learning, and we turn it into something we expect of ourselves, we make it infinitely more challenging.

When we berate ourselves for our failure to practice consistently, we lose track of a fundamental aspect of the practice of yoga. A consistent practice requires ahimsa (non-violence or non-harming); it requires a compassionate understanding of the challenges of being a human.

In the book Self-Compassion, Kristin Neff offers three elements of self-compassion: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. With the element of common humanity, she explains that “self-compassion involves recognizing that suffering and personal inadequacy is part of the shared human experience – something that we all go through.” As you make new commitments in your life or re-commit to goals that have fallen away, first and foremost hold a commitment to being compassionate with yourself through the learning process.

Remember that maintaining consistency in striving towards your goals is a core component of the yoga practice (which has been around for thousands of years) because it is something that everyone finds challenging. Remember that the challenges you face are part of a shared human experience – everyone suffers and feel inadequate, and remember that one of the most powerful ways to overcome those feelings is to share them with someone who feels exactly the same way – in other words, almost anyone.

By holding compassion as our first commitment, we create the space to better understand the challenges that arise for us in a practice of consistency. We move into a place where we can compassionately guide our lives in a way that honours our strengths and weaknesses. And with self-compassion, we learn to be more empathetic and understanding of the people around us and deepen the extend to which we can support them in committing to compassion.



Photo Credit: Chris Yakimov

 

Tapas, or “Just Do It” Yoga

by Sarah Living Yoga Niyamas Philosophy Tapas

Just Do It.

Source: Nike Logo

Pop culture references aside, “Just Do It” is a powerful mantra for inspiring action.

Over the past few weeks, I have unsuccessfully been trying to get back on the blog writing bandwagon, so I’m invoking the ”Just Do It” mantra to motivate myself into posting something on my blog – even if it is the worst post I have ever written!

A few months ago, my grandma went into the hospital. My writing (along with almost everything else in my life) was put aside because I wanted to spend as much time by her side as possible. I lost my grandma at the end of March and celebrated her life with family and friends in mid-April, and though I have had more time since then, I still haven’t been able to write.

I have a long list of ideas for blog posts, but my written words haven’t been flowing.

And, I had a similar experience with flow on my yoga mat today.

Most days, I could spend hours doing yoga on my own. I love exploring sequencing, playing with different postures and taking in what ever lessons my practice has to offer. But, today I was stumped – a practice wasn’t flowing from me.

My solution: I grabbed the latest copy of Yoga Journal and followed the home practice.

I still didn’t find my usual intuitive flow, but I stayed on my mat.

And, in this commitment to staying on my mat lies my understanding of the yogic practice of tapas.

In the Yoga Sutras, the Indian sage Patanjali outlines an eight-limbed path of yoga, and in the second limb (the niyamas), he offers five observances to bring more joy and ease into our lives. Tapas, the third niyama, is commonly translated as “fierce discipline,” but Judith Lasater offers a definition that really resonates with me. She describes tapas as “consistency in striving toward your goals: getting on the yoga mat every day, sitting on the meditation cushion every day—or forgiving your mate or your child for the 10,000th time.”

My basic personal tapas practice is a daily 15 minute meditation. I sit for 15 minutes every day – no matter how much I may not want to or feel like I don’t have the time to.  In her book Mindful Yoga, Mindful Life, Charlotte Bell offers the suggestion that yoga and meditation practitioners commit to doing five minutes each day.

I share this suggestion to emphasize that the practice of tapas demands consistency, but it does not require an abundance of time.

With the often paralyzing presence of choice in our day-to-day lives, tapas is a committed directing of our energy towards actions that support our well-being – even when we are not in the “mood” to do things that support our well-being.

It’s a commitment to just doing it – every day.

Whatever your “it” may be.