Why Practice Yoga Every Day?

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


Love as a Life Practice

Living Yoga Love Tapas

Sarah Jamieson Yoga

Falling in love, finding your true love, meeting your soul mate. In many ways, our culture’s idea of romantic love aligns with a fated, pleasure soaked experience of enviable bliss. Romantic movies consistently reaffirm this image with stories of “meant to be” couples finally overcoming the obstacles that were keeping them apart.

And, then, just as their relationship starts, the movie ends.

I always thought I knew that love wasn’t like it was in the movies. I knew that relationships took work. But I have come to realize that I didn’t know what I thought I knew. I was holding beliefs about romantic love that were more reflective of the movies than I thought.

I thought love was certain. I thought it was hard work, but the kind of hard that doesn’t feel too hard. I thought that when you met the person you would commit to spending your life with that there would be no doubts. I thought deep love was about doing crazy and impulsive things and feeling big, powerful, earthshaking feelings.

The yogic practice of tapas can be defined as learning to live with our most compelling priorities in mind. As I have learned to hold my yoga practice as a constant priority, my understanding of love has slowly shifted alongside. I have come to see love as a practice that requires the same disciplined approach.

In meditation practice, we develop our ability to bring our awareness back to a point of focus. We can also use this skill in the practice of love by consistently committing to bring our attention back to how to best love and respect our partner or friend. The focus of the relationship shifts from, “How I am I feeling about this person?” to “How am I treating this person?” The experience of love shifts from an internal feeling to an external offering. Love becomes a choice, an action, and a way of life. Love becomes less what you feel or don’t feel and more about what you do.

I now think that love is less about certainty and more about commitment, that it can feel unbearably hard, and that this difficultly can fuel doubt. I see more love in the daily commitment to support another person in the messiness of life than in grandiose gestures, and I believe the greatest acts of love are not fueled by the feeling of love but rather a commitment to act with love even in the absence of feeling it.

Love is a choice we face each and every day. To act from a place of love in the face of emotions like fear, anger or jealousy requires a deep commitment to holding love as a priority – but like anything else, choosing love gets easier with practice.



Photo Credit: David R MacKenzie

What difference does a day make?

Living Yoga Meditation Yoga

When I was taking her class last October, Julie Peters mentioned that she was in the midst of a personal 40-Day Meditation Challenge. Her commitment was to practice meditating for 11 minutes every day for 40 days. I had been negotiating a daily meditation practice for a few years, but I hadn’t ever thought to approach it in such a structured and succinct way – and I was sold!

With the craziness of the holiday season looming, I decided to take on a 61-Day Meditation Challenge. Each day in November and December, I committed to 15 minutes of meditation practice. The challenge wasn’t always easy, but I made it through without missing a day. And, the noticeable impact of this committed practice inspired me to go bigger.

Starting January 1, 2011, as a New Years commitment, I took on a 365-Day Meditation Challenge. I set out to practice meditation for 15 minutes every day for the entire year. And, I stuck to this commitment, no matter how much I didn’t want to or didn’t feel like I had time to, until April 30.

I had followed through with my commit to practice meditation for 180 days in a row – and then, I missed a day. April 30 was an intense, emotional and draining day, and I completely forgot to sit for 15 minutes. I realized the next morning that I had missed a day for the first time since November 1.

Missing a day felt a lot less tragic than I imagined it would. I moved through it with compassion, and I stayed grounded in knowing that the significance of a 365-Day Challenge is not the perfect completion of it, but the day-to-day lessons of the journey. And, missing a day has turned into one of the most powerful lessons of the experience thus far.

Since missing a day, I have noticed a shift in my relationship with the practice. When I feel resistance towards fitting the 15 minute sit into my day, there is a new voice that joins in to support the resistance. This voice offers that missing a day isn’t really that big of a deal or that I’ve done some other sort of practice during the day that makes up for skipping 15 minutes of sitting. This voice was not present before April 30.

Since missing one day, I have found the commitment noticeably harder to keep, and I have missed two additional days since then.

I have learned that unfaltering commitment is unquestionably easier to maintain than faltering commitment. In other words, once a commitment has been broken it is infinitely harder to stay committed, and a common expression capturing this idea is “Once a cheater, always a cheater.”

While the expression is usually used within the context of a committed romantic relationship, it can be taken to a much more global level: once you cheat on a commitment that you have made (to yourself or someone else), it will become significantly more challenging not to cheat on that commitment again.

Whether it is one day of meditation, one kiss, one cookie or one day not going to the gym, I have learned the answer to the question: What difference does one make?

And the answer is all the difference in the world.

When you break a commitment, it is broken – and it takes a great deal more strength and will power to fully recommit.

So with this post begins my 210-Day Meditation Challenge!

Photo by Chris Yakimov @ www.doucy.net