Tapas

What puts the heat into practice?

Three different sessions, three very different clients, one singular response.

This yoga malarky just continues to get more interesting the more I devote my time to it. Now I’m not referring to practising for longer each day, as was remarked on by one of those clients, who simply asked “so how long do you practice a day now?”. The “three to four hours” she uttered back repeating my answer was accompanied by a curious look, a mix of admiration and WTF. I am actually referring to the blessing of still being around to practice. Rapidly approaching four decades, the early lessons from those forty years ago become ever more present in my practice. One of them being the ‘heat’ of practice.

Heat can mean putting the heating on, especially when the north wind seems to blow through my walls, depositing chill directly into the middle of my rooms. It can also mean using breath, or specifically strenuous or over-breathing techniques to engage our nervous system and generate heat. Or it can mean the deep release of tensions, which when accompanied by the engagement of our deepest fabric, generates heat deep inside of us. Yes, you can feel the inside of your bowl heating up! It is a delightfully curious experience, birthed from a deep delight in actively creating a hermetic container whilst releasing all the tensions from your soft internal parts into that same container.

Sounds all very complicated when I read it out loud. But the reality, as found by these three very different clients in three separate sessions, is that each of them gained the same internal experience. Their external shapes varied so greatly, as you’d expect contrasting someone in their 80s with two others, one of whom is a full-time Pilates instructor. Yet each one spoke of the same internal reality. They may have used slightly different language, yet each described their pelvis feeling like a bowl, wherein they experienced energy, whilst their body began to heat up rapidly.

This, for me, is a sign that what I am offering is finally where I’d like it to be. Offering shapes serves many, yet to me it is hollow, empty of the space in which ‘yoga does you’. Offering exercises which generate Tapas through effort also doesn’t appeal, as just like me putting the heating on, only to see my guests snuggling under blankets because it hasn’t matched the deposited chill of the North Wind (true story). All I am left with is the bill. I am talking about the cost of things. Stressful breathing for me has a cost on my nervous system I am now unwilling to pay. Yet, heat from letting go and containing what I let go of, this feels closer to green, renewable energy.

Granted, this whole process does have costs. They include being able to focus and concentrate. Other large costs include having to let go of preconceived ideas of how the body works, how to train, and most costly of all is actually having to practice. These seem to be the biggest road blocks, as it seems to be way easier to stress, procrastinate, or simply just burn the energy going for a jog. The cost here is simply lying on your back, having performed two preliminary postures, you then combine the sensations of the two aforementioned preliminary postures and pay attention. Success means you’ve actively created the correct structure. Letting go is the next step, which leads to the heat.

Yet perhaps the heat these three separate individuals felt is simply due to the fact that they were all working very deep aspects of their fabric. After all, being actively active whilst simultaneously being actively inactive does do rather wonderfully curious things to the body. The effect is that each of the three very different clients each stated in their own way that “this is way harder than it looks”. When deep inside it, holding the posture for a minute can leave folk beginning to tremble and sweat. Curious considering I am talking about three well-trained practitioners being asked to lie on their backs with their legs up in the air. And is it the concentration which goes first, or the body?

Perhaps you could find out for me. A video or a simple how-to will follow shortly, and I’d suggest you put the heating on, just in case this essay was a fictional excuse to get you to practice.