How to Positively Change Your Life
This is the eighth of ten posts teaching the first two limbs of yoga— the yamas and the niyamas— in a manner that relates to contemporary living with real-world anxieties. A key component to a life of integrity is framing it with the yamas and the niyamas as you come to know how you relate with others and love yourself. I will teach these guidelines one at a time with the hopes you, the reader, take the time and care to implement these principles into your daily life. Notice your thoughts, words, and actions and if they are in alignment with the teachings I give.
This post is about tapas, practices causing positive change.
Creating discipline heats mental, physical, and emotional impurities that keep us feeling stuck energetically. Just like how fire (with effort) can transform steel into a sharp sword, the heat we create transforms us into a higher self.
When we consciously change a habit that holds us back, discomfort arises and creates heat in the body. We learn to be comfortable with discomfort through daily mindfulness practice and then choose the action we intuitively know is healthful for us. Deborah Adele writes in The Yamas & Niyamas, “The day-to-day choice to burn non-supportive habits of the body and mind, choosing to forsake momentary pleasures for future rewards.”
We initiate practice causing deliberate change by dedicating ourselves to a daily yoga practice in which we determine what’s safe for us and what we can explore further. We ask these questions:
What is the best amount of effort we can put into our practice?
Where do we need to back off and include more restorative poses?
Your practice causing deliberate change comes with much discomfort because it’s hard to break debilitating habits and adopt healthful habits. You might get an immediate rush when you start a new practice and see results after a week—perhaps a boost in energy or loss of a pound or two. But what happens in Week Four of a sixteen-week wellness regimen when you reach a plateau or things get tough and you desperately want to return to your old ways? This is when the heat turns up. You find your focus, feel your breath, and stay the course.
A transformation from practice causing deliberate change occurs when you consciously practice day after day. You come into your practice every time you step onto your mat (or into your kitchen if your goal is more healthful eating). You resolve to put forth your best effort in what’s available for you that day. Simply do your best with what you have and sit with any discomfort as it arises. Deborah Adele writes in The Yamas & Niyamas, “[Practice causing deliberate change] is growing our ability to stay in the unknown and the unpleasantness, rather than run in fear.” In doing so, you gain so much and shed what doesn’t serve you.
What habits do you have that hold you back or prevent you from being well?
Whether you feel constrained by poor nutrition, a lack of movement that results in stagnation of energy, or any other lack of energy that disconnects you from your spiritual life, begin your practice with courage. Then you can stand in the fire of the discipline and work toward the transformation of your physical, mental, and spiritual self.