Tapas is a practice that causes positive change.
The Yoga Sutras explain it this way,
Habitual behavior causes stagnation.
When we consciously change a habit,
Discomfort arises and creates heat in the body.
This is the priceless heat of real change.
If we are aware that the discomfort is good for us,
It becomes a desirable effect and may encourage our continued practice.
Tapas includes consciously challenging long-standing patterns of behavior and gradually burning them up,
Resulting in spiritual and physiological growth.
Opening us up to new ideas and behaviors also creates a heat as the circuits in our brain are rewired.
Habitual behavior causes stagnation.
If we just stop and think about that one sentence,
What instantly pops into your head?
Where are you holding yourself back from bringing into your life that which you desire by simply not allowing yourself to change?
For me,
When I think about this,
What instantly pops into my mind is allowing myself to heal after my brain injury.
I wanted to heal so badly that I failed to realize that by me not accepting what my new normal was and returning back to my old ways,
I was actually preventing the very thing I so desperately needed and wanted.
I'll give you three main examples of what I mean by this.
One of the biggest things that happened after my brain injury is you lose your sense of energy.
For everybody else out there who has what we would consider a normal brain,
You wake up with a full battery.
People with a brain injury,
We wake up with a half a battery.
And that's how we start our day.
So we need more rest.
We need some downtime throughout the day.
But because I wasn't allowing myself to do that,
I would constantly push myself day in and day out,
Trying to do that which I did before because that I knew I could do before.
What I was actually doing though was causing more damage to my brain because I wasn't allowing at the time it needed to heal and to rest.
Another example is when I would go out and I would say yes to my friends and I would say yes to my family and I would say yes to all the volunteer opportunities.
I was constantly saying yes because I realized before my brain injury I was a very sociable person.
I was active in my community.
I was constantly doing things.
That was the habit I had created of who I was.
But what I failed to realize now is that now I couldn't do those things like that anymore.
I had to get very mindful about what I could say yes to and what I couldn't.
It was a struggle and it was something I fought over and over and over again because for me not to do those things I would have had to have admitted to myself that yes I had a brain injury and something had changed.
So I was clinging to those habitual behaviors even though I knew I needed to change and allow that fire of change to take place.
Another example of this is when I was hiking one time and I saw this trail that was really steep and it was pretty rocky and there was a lot of loose rocks and I remember thinking to myself a little voice inside my head said don't do it.
Don't hike that.
If you fall you're gonna hit your head and you know if you hit your head you could die.
And that was a habit and a pattern I've learned to engage in now was to hold myself back out of fear.
But that's not the way I wanted to live.
So I paused for a moment and I sat there looking at the trail and thought I don't have to be the fastest person up there.
I can go slow and I can go steady but I can keep moving forward.
And so I opted to go ahead and hike the trail and see what I could do and push myself beyond that comfort zone.
And I think that's what the yoga sutras is talking about here.
When it's talking about the heat and the fire of change is allowing us to open ourselves up to different ways of being and understanding that just because we did something the same way in the past doesn't need to be done that way now.
Use that fire instead of fear and the discomfort and engage in it.
Use it to propel you forward.
Use it to force you to take a step.
Use it to open up a new door,
A new pathway,
A new way of being.
Because in that is where we grow.
In that is where we find the excitement of life.
We're not here to do the same thing over and over again and be as we always have been.
If there's one thing I've learned through my brain injury it is take value and comfort in being uncomfortable.
Because the one constant we have in this life is change.
Everything changes and if we can learn to embrace that it will open up brand new worlds of possibilities for us that we never even imagined.
So what I'm asking you to do is whatever popped into your head right away when I asked that question see how you can take and do something differently with that and see where that may take you in the future.
Because the greatest asset that I learned throughout this entire journey was to embrace the change of who I now was and let go of who I used to be and those habitual patterns that were holding me back.
Embrace the change.
You'll thank yourself for it.
