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Everyday Yoga for Everyone

by Rebecca Novick

This is the third part of a series about an integral aspect of the system of yoga based on the works of the Indian sage Patanjali who lived 2,500 years ago. These are the five yamas and the five niymas. As a reminder, here they are.

The five yamas:

Ahimsa (non-harming) Asteya (not taking what does not belong to you) Brahmacharya (sexual restraint) Satya (truthfulness) Aparigraha (non-clinging).

The five niyamas:

Saucha (cleanliness) Santosha (contentment) Tapas (self-discipline) Svadhyaya (self-inquiry) Isvara-pranidhana (ego-surrender) Both the yamas and niyamas are related to our behaviour, which from a yogic perspective includes verbal as well as mental behaviour along with physical actions. The yamas are related to how we behave towards others, whereas the nyimas are concerned with personal behaviour or attitudes. It is an interesting exercise to examine them in complementary pairs. Last month we looked at the yama asteya (not taking what does not belong to you) and the niyama santosha (contentment). This month we’ll be looking at the yama brahmacharya together with the niyama tapas. Brahmacharya is often translated by modern commentators as ‘sexual restraint’. For a married person this means fidelity, and for a single person it implies total celibacy. This is less about moral imperatives than it is about self-control. It is worth remembering that all the yamas and niyamas were intended to be practiced ideally within a spiritual community or ‘ashram’ and not in the context of ordinary family life. I met several brahmacharis in India, young male initiates dressed in white tunics working in ashrams who had rejected the worldly life and who lived like monks. This is the traditional and popularly understood setting and significance of brahmacharya in Hindu culture, but there is another interpretation that is more universal. The literal translation of brahmacharya is ‘one who is aligned with the divine’. It is more of an internal attitude of self-control than about external behaviour. This is where Brahmacharya intersects with the niyama, tapas, which means ‘self-discipline’. Tapas is then the internal setting for brahmacharya. In this way, Brahmacharya is less about ‘sexual’ restraint than it is about restraint in general through breaking old habits that keep us from evolving. The way we break these habits is through ‘tapas’. Tapas has a bit of a bad rap because it is associated with hardship. Tapas is sometimes translated as ‘austerities’ but I prefer to think of them as ‘practices’. Tapas are not just the practices themselves but the effort we employ to carry them out. Any time we attempt to up our game in any discipline we need tapas. We have to put in some effort. We all practice mundane levels of tapas at some time or another, whether we’re trying to keep to a certain diet, or develop an exercise routine, or even to stop smoking. On the Yogic Path, tapas involves yoga, meditation, and various cleansing techniques but it can just as easily refer to any practice that requires self-discipline if it leads us further on the path to a connection with our truer Self. Tapas as a spiritual exercise often involves periods of solitude and this is acknowledged as a hardship. We all know, especially those of us who live alone, how these last couple of years of forced isolation have challenged our abilities to maintain our mental and physical equilibrium. Lastly, tapas literally means ‘heat’, ‘warmth’, or ‘fire’, which relates to its purification function of burning off old karmic residues in preparation for new ways of being. Respect yourself, explore yourself. Rebecca

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