Discipline (March 2018 Newsletter)

If you read last month's newsletter, you will remember that yoga is not about the physical practice of going to a class and working out physically. There are all-encompassing changes in the yoga practitioner who is open to allowing the subtle work to play out through all body/mind and emotional systems. But REGULARITY is key. If you only show up now and again, it remains just fitness training.

Show up whether you want to or not, whether you are in the mood to work out or not, whether you are happy or sad, whether your friend's coming or not. Execute that intention to be there. Be there! Expect nothing once you are there. Be like putty - soft and malleable. It is the one time where you don't have to think, or make a decision, or succeed or display anything to anyone.

What does one need to get to this point of childlike simplicity? Discipline! It is simply doing, being without expectation of reward or gain or success. Doing the practice regularly and without question, over and over and over yet again. Once you break the cycle of regularity you take several steps back in the mental confidence and strength you had developed through the self imposed discipline. Called Tapas (meaning heat, self-discipline, spiritual austerity or effort) in yoga, discipline is necessary in life, which is full of choices, contradictions and apparently arbitrary outcomes.

Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, Chapter 2, Aphorism 43, says: 'Kaya indriya siddhih ashuddhi kshayat tapasah' which means, 'Self-discipline destroys imperfection and purifies the body and the senses.'

Keep your gaze fixed on the prize of peace and tranquility through discipline. It doesn't happen in a day, in a month or a year. It is a lifetime's practice, making both life and death both easy and expected.

Namaste,

sipra