Ep #31: Limb Two Niyamas: Tapas, Habits, Self Discipline, Preya and Shreya

Are you playing small? Slayer talks about harnessing the power of the tapas to create lasting transformation. What the heck are tapas? Not appetizers...but it creates an appetite for health! Slayer takes us on the path of understanding more about our body, mind and soul and the paths of Preya and Shreya. How can we make those choices that are better for us in the long run? What will it take? How do we create this fire? Tune in for some tips on this part of your journey of building your future self version as we continue to learn about Patanjali's 8 Limbs of Yoga as laid out in the Yoga Sutras.

Heartsing Podcast Episodes on Habits
Habit Hacks
Habit Stacks

Mentioned in this episode:
To Reference more on Patanjali and the Yoga Sutras:
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (Sacred Teachings)

For the Chariot story and the King of Death and Nacheketa, Preya and Shreya
The Upanishads, 2nd Edition

Shaman Durek's book (Slayer recommends this in audio version as Shaman Durek reads it himself and is very entertaining)
Spirit Hacking: Six Shamanic Keys to Reclaim Your Personal Power, Transform Yourself, and Light Up the World

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Transcript

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I want to start this week off a little differently and read you a passage from the Essence of the Upanishads, “A Key to Indian Spirituality” by Eknath Easwaran. This is also where the Chariot story with Preya and Shreya is that I talk about throughout this podcast and will share with you here as we start to understand how practicing Tapas, or discipline, the 3rd Niyama and the 2nd limb of Yoga Sutras we are exploring and how it affects all matters of our lives—and those big questions we talked about last week—the purpose of life. 

And, how on EARTH does this help me attain something seemingly as elusive as that healthy body I’ve always dreamed of? 

For this, we go to the passage from Easwaran: 

We are talking here about overcoming death. That is the stake for which we are playing. Petty stakes like pleasure and profit cannot be mentioned in the same breathe and the game is not open for long….

You are at the craps table and it’s time to place your bets...the wheel spins, hopes rise and fall and then the counter is over. The King of Death reaches in to rake the counters in. Life is too small to play for nickels and dimes. We are meant to break the bank.

Think about this—are we playing SMALL? 

When we choose to do things that are not good for us, but appear fun and sexy, does this not shorten our counter. 

The purpose of most spirituality philosophy…well, everything I have encountered is to help guide us to this one place-this realization that we are much more than these bodies and this life. 

That in exploring and finding what that is, we realize our true self, and in essence cheat death. 

Because we realize there is no death. 

There is only this place of infinite possibilities. 

And, this my friends, is the FREEDOM. 

And we catch glimpses of this on our path as Yoginis—any spiritual path you take as you dive inside of yourself and stop seeking outside for the solutions, and rather start to look inward. 

It’s in this we start to break the bank. 

The small pleasures we see for what they are—distractions. 

But how do we get there? 

This seems just impossible, right? 

I mean, if it was EASY we would all be enlightened. 

Here’s the thing though—if you are one who is brave enough to dare to ask WHAT IF and you start to venture away from the safety of those choices for pleasure and start to live a life of more discipline, you will find glimpses of this bliss that is beyond anything these simple easy pleasure like the pizza, wine and Netflix can bring us. 

Could this be the perception shift you have been waiting for? 

It just might be…this has been a big one on my journey of losing over 100 pounds by seeking better choices and becoming more of the observer of my self. 

This is where the Tapas of the Niyama Limb of yoga come in. 

And, by yoga I’m speaking of the joining of body, mind, soul, not the physical practice that we associate it with most frequently. 

Tapas (self discipline) Discipline, Austerity, or “right effort”

You can apply the principle of tapas to literally any goal or practice. 

Generating Tapas is creating the self discipline, passion and courage to transform—courage to make those choices that seem not as sexy in the moment, but you know will serve you better in the long term.  

Tapas is derived from the root Sanskrit verb “tap” which means “to burn”. 

When we cultivate tapas, we are creating that fiery energy that gets our heart pumping—creates a desire for us to want to grow personally—it gives us this desire to want to change our lives.  

The burning will also be experienced as we detoxify. We might see this as you practice mediation for example, and have feelings of warmth in your body. 

These are known as our emotions releasing as we practice. 

The same can be said on the yoga mat as we practice postures and start to warm up our bodies, and perhaps push them to spaces where we feel a bit of a burn as we work through the stress knots we have accumulated in our bodies. 

I don’t know about you guys, but especially my hips after sitting at my computer all day! 

We will talk more about Asana yoga in an upcoming episode—the physical practice. 

Today we will focus more on tapas as a guide for living our lives and seeing if we can live BIG!

When we create tapas, no longer does going to do meditation, or journal or hike a mountain seem like work or a chore, we start to make the choice because of how good it makes us feel and we start playing this game of life for higher stakes.

Tapas are the passion we activate when we practice self discipline. 

I know—this sounds nuts, right? 

This is exactly what building healthy habits does for us though. 

I remember when I first started my journey and I would head out to walk telling myself, Just 5 minutes Add, just 5 minutes. And then I found the path under the freeway to the mountain, and 5 turned into 60 eventually and it became part of who I was and I craved it.

I could see myself saying NO to things the night before—happy hour invites, late dinners or a show because I wanted to be up on the mountain early. 

That was NOT at first appealing to me. I promise you. It might “seem” appealing, but I was a get up, get ready and hit work ASAP girl, not a take a couple of hours for yourself first gal!

So, to become that was something eye opening for me. 

And, you can do this too—with any habit. 

The tapas energy creates this desire within us and we naturally want to go to bed earlier, drink less, eat less so we can feel better and get to those things that now make us feel good and radiate. 

This is why it is extremely helpful to understand the habit process too, which I have talked about quite extensively on this podcast. 

I’ll link a couple of the past habit episodes in the show notes if you want to dive in deeper after this episode.

Building new habits is a practice of self discipline. 

And through this building of new habits that better serve us we transform from within. 

Our habits, the actions we take are a direct reflection of our health. 

When we can do this process of transformation from the place of the observer, the witness as we screw up, we can amplify our success. 

Tapas energy also has the power to burn away the thoughts that hold us down—those limiting beliefs of lack of self worth. 

Igniting this fire you can tap in through the root chakra—the Manipura Chakra—this is the center that governs self confidence, inner strength, will and self discipline and is the “element of transformation”. 

As we learn to fail and “step away from perfect” these small lessons add up and can have a huge impact on our lives. 

“right effort” Willingness to DO THE WORK and make better choices. You can apply this to anything in your life. 

You can develop tapas as you practice and focus on your health goal. 

Commit, figure out what you can do, fail, learn and get back up. 

Think about commitment for a minute. Commitment to yourself. So often we show up for everyone but ourselves, and what will serve us best. 

How can you start to flip the script on that? 

I’ll talk about some ways at the end of this episode you can put into practice.

One of the goals of tapas is to stop anything you do mindlessly because you’ve become habituated—even the healthy things. 

You free yourself from the unconscious effort—when you are acting in awareness, you are freeing yourself from suffering.

As Patanjali shares in the Yoga Sutras 2:17 “The cause of suffering is the unbounded Self is overshadowed by the world.”

In other words, anytime we are suffering, it’s as simple as we have forgotten who we truly are, and for many of us we are in the process of remembering who that is. 

Through this process you can start to separate the self, even as you realize the wholeness of everything, and then you will experience the freedom that is in that awareness. 

To better help illustrate this I have to tell you what I call the Chariot Story again! As I mentioned earlier, this is from the The Essence of the UPANISHADS 

I’m going to tell you part of the story about Nachiketa seeking the King of Death to learn the meaning of life. 

The story starts our and Nachiketa gets in a fight with his Dad and his dad basically tells him he wishes he was dead. 

Rather than get upset, this makes him think the big Q’s 

Who am I? Why am I here? What happens after death? 

Most of us can think of moment in our lives when we have these question arise and we might even ponder them for a bit, but then they pass and we carry on. 

Not Nathan, he’s a badass teenager, invincible with full conviction of himself and not yet dissuaded by the ways of the world, he is now on a mission—a heroes journey. 

SIDENOTE: Here the author talks a lot about having read many such journeys of heroes that I thought was interesting because of my affinity for building future self superheroes as part of our process to dream big. Because the quest starts on the outside but will invariably end up as a journey looking within. 

So, Nachiketa, our hero starts his journey where it is boundless, in the mind because he settles into deep meditation for 3 days! 

Can you imagine?! 

We struggle with 30 minutes. 

Anyhow, the kid is in meditation and he sets off in the infinite space of his mind to seek the King of Death. 

The King of Death is not home, but his servants are there-- (Depression, Pain, War, and Disease…) and they begin to tell him that they may never see the King of Death—king of death is too busy, you know with pandemics, war, famine, all the other things he has going on. 

Nachiketa sits down and announces he will wait. 

He is determined to get to the bottom of these questions. 

So he sits and waits for 3 days and 3 nights-in mediation- no food, drink, sleep! 

Eventually at the end of the 3rd day, the King of Death comes back and has decided that Nachiketa is a worthy pupil for having waited so long, patiently. 

When the lessons begin King of Death tells Nachiketa there are 5 levels of consciousness reached in meditation, but not only meditation, they must be translated into life and living. 

1st layer is physical (our bodies), then 3 layers- senses, emotions and intellect. 

And the nearest to self is the Ego, or the sense of I and very few people can penetrate this layer. 

He tells Nachiketa he will have to make this discovery himself, but he will be there as the guide and tell him how, but he has to take the journey on his own. 

Well, Nathan is a bold badass teen remember, so he is totally game—he wants to KNOW about the secret of life. 

King of Death tells him that first he must understand that we have the ability to make choices. 

No other creature has this and we should not avoid the responsibility. 

Each moment has a choice of two paths. 

The Sanskrit names don’t have a perfect translation so we will use them and define them—preya and shreya

Preya _ pleases us, pleases the ego,--these are the sexy decisions. These are the things the marketers use to get the attention of our senses through our minds—this will taste good, drink this thing and you will look like this women, have this amazing white wine and relax without a care in the world on your yahct. 

Shreya – the other choice is what benefits us—improves health and benefits mind. This is the choice that serves us much better in the long run as we take care of our mind, body and soul, but just isn’t as sexy. 

Preya pleases us NOW. Shreya often unpleasant, but appreciated in the end. 

Like starting to get back in the gym or do pushups, at first its hard and you don’t see the rewards, but after a little while you are at it and it gets easier, you start to see your strength build, you bat wings go down, and you don’t mind those push ups so you add a few more in. This is Shreya.

Relating this to food choices is easy-- –Preya is all dressed up like a ooey gooey pizza slice with all your favorite toppings, and Shreya is a big salad. Not unattractive, but forgettable. That pizza from your favorite joint? Or the burger, or cake, whatever your thing is…you get the idea right? 

Nachiketa does too, but he’s even sharper than us so he persists and says  to King Death “there must be more to the story than just making decision because we don’t always get where we want to go.” 

King of death is pleased his student is so wise already and goes on to explain how Preya and Shreya are like forks in a road- one path leads to darkness and the other to wisdom

If you could see at the end of the path, you would see the darkness that is at the end of Preya—and at the end of the Shreya path is a world full of abundance—light, love, a magical garden!

But you can’t see the end, you can only see the start of the path—and Preya has a big sexy billboard advertising a fun party with your girlfriends sipping wine in vegas, and the other path has a billboard of a spiritual cleansing retreat that shows you alone in meditation in a mountain cave crying.  

There is a chariot traveling this road. 

The chariot symbolized your body, the physical self and it’s drawn by 5 feisty horses ,which travel through time more than distance. 

Birth to death. 

The horses are your 5 senses (sight, hearing, taste, feel, smell)

The Intellect (responsible for judgement) is the driver –his job to not let the senses (the horses) take us over the cliff!

The reins are the mind, emotion and desires (they are supposed to communicate from the driver to the horses)

The SELF is the rider of the chariot. 

Our unbounded self, your soul, or spirit is that rider, here for the experience.

When our senses, the horses, are controlled, we are in harmony, we operated from our Self. 

This version of us, Let’s call her the “Highest Self”, you know, the one that takes the proverbial “high road”. 

When we chase Preya and allow our senses to go wild, we are out of balance. 

Picture yourself in the chariot, in your body that just had a long day of work making decision after decision. 

Your Self inside, that made the plan earlier this week, asks the driver of your chariot to take you to sprouts for some groceries. 

You notice after a few minutes that the driver, your Intellect holing the reigns to your horses, is not going to Sprouts! 

You lean out the window and yell up to the driver, “Hey this isn’t the way to Sprouts”. 

The driver, slurring slightly because he’s been tying a few on while you were working all day, he tells you not to worry he’s got this, and pulls up to your favorite happy hour place where the margaritas are only $5 today and the chips don’t stop flowing.

Only after you enjoy a couple of margs so you tell your driver, “hey I told you we were not going to eat like crap today.”

Your driver, your intellect, is laughing at you because he’s heard it before and he knows that the horses have been running the carriage, not you, the person inside. 

Our intellect is all numbed out and has bad habits built up from all the quick rewards, the road of PREYA we have been taking. 

Half the time we are too tired, to depleted to take the road of Shreya. 

The King of Death tells us it is not a moral issue he does not care. 

He says it’s up to us to choose-doesn’t matter to him one way or another, it’s our choice to take the road and where it leads. 

The road of Preya though, should you choose that, does not lead to long term health and happiness—remember that is where all of that ignoring our souls and satisfying all of our urges leads to darkness—sickness of our bodies and minds.

Think about the reigns, your mind, emotions and desires that are to be guided by the intellect to control your senses. Understanding the separation helps us to observe and make changes, for example…

You say you are depressed, it’s not YOU who are depressed. 

The mind/the reins are depressed. 

You are IN the chariot. You are not these THINGS, you are not the reins, the driver or the horses. 

Can you SEE that? 

That you are the one inside for the ride only? 

This is the lesson from the King of Death to Natechekta. 

To understand and live life not from your senses but from guiding your intellect to the choices of Shreya, the ones that will lead us to happiness and health. 

And THIS is why you must make time to put yourself first. 

Not only so you can fuel yourself before others but so you can get control of your chariot! 

You can train your horses!  

So you can make decisions and built habits that will take you down the path of Shreya, to health, wellness and happiness, and not quick feel-good dopamine hits. 

Who is in control of your Chariot? Is your intellect, your driver being used with discernment? 

Making decisions toward a healthier more vibrant you, or is your intellect a bit tipsy too?

I was letting my senses drive my chariot and my intellect was in overdrive for years!

She meant well, but she was too easily swayed once she got tired, or didn’t have time to think or have a plan!

If we don’t start  listening, something may jump in to “wake us up” like my 300 pound ball of misery and my quest was for me. And my SELF inside the chariot banging on the walls telling my driver to wake up before we hit the dead end of darkness. 

And this is where the Tapas come in. 

The discipline we cultivate to make the choices of Shreya. To live your life with more turns to the path of self discovery, growth, made from love and not fear. 

Do what are some things we can do, now to cultivate more Tapas in our life? 

What can help us make more of these choices on the path of Shreya so we can find that contentment we are desiring? 

Tapas are everything the MEfirst Guide process I talk about is about. It’s about us stepping away from perfect and learning to make better choices. 

To start to build trust with ourselves. 

Many of us have spent our lives showing up for other people and pushing our needs and desires to the back burner. 

Ironically, seeking the SELF is actually where selflessness lives. Its on this path that we uncover our joy and love for ALL beings equally and our desire to serve each person we encounter amplifies the more we live in this space. 

This is NOT easy. 

Our horses are well trained. Hell, some of us have Derby Winners in the race for Preya. 

The good news? You know how I like to leave you with some good news…. 

We can train these horses and live in alignment with our Self—our unbounded self that is that “something more” you are seeking. 

We all wake up at some point and say, “There has to be something more than this!”

What does it take to find it? 

A commitment to being on this heroes journey—which like Nacheketa, might start outside of you and eventually, as all hero stories do, end up on the inside, where true transformation exists. 

We’ve talked about in the last few weeks about Saucha, purity cleaning space—in our bodies, minds and souls, and then about Santosha—peaceful contentment, accepting things just as they are and finding peace and happiness in each moment. 

And with the Tapas—this is where we take the action and start to detox and see the possibilities of this discipline

The discipline can actually be self love. Just like it can be love for your kids when you teach them right from wrong. 

The trick is to do this without judgement. It does not matter how many times you have been down the path of Preya. It doesn’t matter what you have done. 

The King of Death doesn’t care, remember? 

It’s not a moral issue. 

It’s a CHOICE. One you can make without a bunch of drama about how you are the worst person ever and can start to reprogram your mind and body to live in more unity and guide you on a path to the sunny magic garden!

Ask yourself a few things—

If you knew that the stakes of your game were higher-you didn’t have much time to live, or found out you were ill, would you live differently than you are now? 

Why? 

Get honest with yourself. Put your scientist hat one. 

Again, this is not to judge yourself, but to take a look so you can see where you want to go. How do you want to change? The vision is your first step in transformation. 

Write about how you would live differently. 

How and why? 

Are you not getting to your goal because you are not showing up? 

We just did monthly goal planning in the group and part of the process is to figure out what your challenges are, and making a commitment to overcoming them. 

Writing this down for yourself. 

Not just thinking, “I’m going to eat better.”

Stating what you are going to do, what tools are going to help you. 

Remember, the driver gets tired. When you are making changes and training the horses, you need to get specific. 

James Clear said in his atomic habits book that most of us think we are lacking motivation, but we really lack direction. 

Give yourself direction.

Get it on your calendar, get specific, plan and commit. 

When you see yourself not show up for YOU. 

Ask why and how can I get better? 

Are you showing up for everyone else? 

Where is the trust with yourself, and how do you build it? 

When your horses have been running wild, allowed to chase whatever they want, it will take some reigning in, but just like a new puppy, it can be done. 

Use the habit cycle. 

Pick ONE habit you want to add. 

I find it’s always easier to add what you WANT it to look like rather than to take away. For example, I added going to be earlier to be on the mountain, which effectively eliminated happy hour so I could do that—there was much more work in it that that, but remember what you focus on is what you will get.

Put it in your mind, surround yourself with people that want the same things as you. We are hardwired to exists in tribes, find yours. Find your people that have the habits you want and start to cultivate them yourself.

Don’t compare yourself, rather open yourself to learning and growing. 

Become the scientist of your life. 

And remember, if you are chosing to focus on what you can’t have and tie all this energy into it—you will bring yourself more of it. Focus on what you WILL have out the other side. How you will feel afgter hiking the mountain that day, or doing your plan, or eating the salad. 

See it, have a vision, a plan  and put your energy and focus in THAT—the positive action.

This is why so many people think discipline or restricting things are BAD because they have all of this energy tied into what they CAN’T have rather than what they CAN. 

“Oh poor me, I can’t have the wine and the pizza” VS

“Oh yeah, I’m going to be up at 5 AM for the sunrise on the mountain, it’s going to feel SO good, and my day is going to be radiant”

See the difference? 

You CHOOSE where to focus and how to train your brain. 

You might think you don’t, but you do. 

Flip the script!

It’s YOUR choice. 

You can create this burning desire in yourself to do these things. These TAPAS to show up—even when it’s hard. ESPECIALLY when it’s hard.

Do you know how many people give up in month 2 of a new habit? 

That is the messy middle! You have to push through the mess of training to get to the Tapas.

Pick one thing you need to commit to for change. 

Start with baby steps to cultivate Tapas for it. 

Like with my walk in the morning. 

It was painful to get out the door sometimes so I used all the habit tricks in the book until I BECAME,. 

I set my shoes by the door, had my podcast picked out, my clothes ready, set a mini-habit so it was so ridiculous that it would be crazy to not show up. I even advertised I was going to be LIVE on the mountain at 7 AM. Yes, if you were following me then, this is how I created that tapas for it. 

I used my accountability to others as I was building the trust with myself.

How will you commit to show up? 

How about a plan. Do you have one? Do you honor your plan? This is still a work in progress for me. It feels SO good when I do. What I find is I don’t plan enough down time for myself. 
 I will schedule myself into a corner and then fight with my wild horses to get out. This has been my lesson and I’m working on it. These are things you will find out when you get in the game, when you stop playing for pennies and go BIG.

Step into fear and start playing the long game of real transformation. One little baby step at a time…and definitely away from perfect.

Are you raising the stakes of your game? 

Are you ready to bring down the house? 

I hope so, but let’s do it together on that road to Shreya…I’m quite looking forward to my spiritual retreat with you. Heh. 

Go play BIG. Jump in. 

What have you got to lose? 

Until next week my witches and bitches!
 Slayer Out