6 A JOURNEY INTO YIN YOGA
To engage in tapas, you must be highly disciplined. Tapas can take many
forms. On a physical level, you could participate in a juice fast for five days.
If you’ve done this, you know that it isn’t easy: You must move through the
withdrawal symptoms such as intense cravings for sugar, caffeine, and food.
Through this act you are taking steps to affect your wellness.
Another form of tapas is to take a vow of silence for a certain amount of
time. Being completely silent is an intense experience, but this is an effective
way to purify your speech and clearly illuminate the things you might say that
are negative. Another great example of tapas is meditation. Perhaps you sit
with your eyes closed and silently repeat a mantra. If you’re like most people,
you are bombarded with distracting thoughts that pull you away from the
mantra. But each time you return to the repetition, you are helping to purify
your mind, even if it feels daunting to try to burn away the unnecessary
thoughts. Through discipline and by staying aligned with your tapas, you
have the potential to invoke powerful stages of transformation.Svadhyaya, or Self-Study
The moment we stop growing is the moment we stop living. It is within our
nature to keep learning and expanding, and we must have the humility to
know that we don’t know it all. We must stay ferocious within our quest to
learn more.
Self-study, or svadhyaya, is how we achieve this. As children, we constantly
study, but we often slow down or stop altogether when we become adults with
jobs and new responsibilities. Before we know it, we can become mindless
drones trudging through our jobs and our lives. But life is more than just
surviving—it’s about thriving!
Self-study ignites an inner passion that makes life extraordinary. So, whether
it’s enrolling in a yoga teacher training program, watching an inspiring doc-
umentary, reading a spiritual text, or studying this book, find time every day
for self-study.Ishvara Pranidhana, or Celebration of the Divine
Celebration of the divine, also known as ishvara pranidhana, is also a cele-
bration of spirit. It is revering a force that is much bigger than our own limited
self. Cultures throughout history have accomplished this through song, dance,
poetry, art, worship, festivals, and spending time in nature.
Devoting ourselves to a higher power gives us perspective. We learn not
to worry about unimportant details. We transcend out of isolation and ascend
into a connectedness with the pulse of the universe at large. We realize that
although things appear separate on a superficial level, on a deeper level
everything is one. As we’ll see later in our journey, this is the secret of con-
nection that the Taoists had discovered. Not only do we start to see the divine
within us, but we also see it in all people and all life forms. We realize that
everything we think, say, and do affects not only our inner world but also