Today we will be learning about tapas and our asana practice will consist of chair yoga. The third of Patanjali's niyamas is tapas, which often translates traditionally as austerity or discipline. The word tapas is derived from the root Sanskrit verb tap, which means to burn, and evokes a sense of fiery discipline or passion. In this sense tapas can mean cultivating a sense of self-discipline passion and courage in order to burn away impurities physically mentally and emotionally and paving the way to our true greatness tapas doesn't have to mean being solemn and serious though this fieryness is what gets our heart pumping heightens our desire for personal growth and reminds us of how much we may love our yoga practice. Just as with all aspects of the sutras though, tapas has relevance both on and off the mat.
First of all, discipline doesn't strictly mean pushing ourselves harder in a physical sense. Sometimes just actually making the time to get on the mat and meditate or practice for 10 minutes every day is difficult enough. For some, tapas will mean making time to be still and observing the mind.
For others, it'll mean working on a strength and practicing that arm balance we've been putting off. Tapas is an aspect of the inner wisdom that encourages us to practice even when we don't feel like it, even though we know how good it makes us feel. It's that fiery passion that makes us get up and do our practice. for the love of it.
And by committing to this, the impurities are burned away. Making the decision to go to bed a little earlier so you can wake up early to practice is tapas. Not drinking too much or eating unhealthy foods because you want to feel good in your practice is tapas. And the way you feel after an intense yoga class, a blissful shavasana, and deep meditation, That's tapas too. Burning away the negative thought patterns and habits we often fall into.
Cultivating a sense of tapas in your physical practice could mean trying poses we usually avoid or find difficult or leaning mindfully into our edge within a tough asana. Realizing that it does take time to get into a more advanced version of a pose doesn't have to be discouraging at all. Having the discipline to practice consistently and the humility to admit when we're not perfect are both essential to reaping the rewards that discipline has to offer. As Patabi Joyce famously said, practice and all is coming.
The discipline we learn on the mat is a fantastic lesson to take off the mat and into our everyday lives. When we breathe, Through challenging situations in a yoga practice, such as a difficult balancing pose, or when we find the strength to lift up into an arm balance we previously thought was impossible, we can take these lessons with us and learn to be strong when facing challenging life situations. Having the courage not to listen to the voices in our head that tell us we're not strong enough or not good enough to attempt a more demanding pose. or for that new job opportunity is also an element of tapas that burns away those impure thoughts and leads to more self-trust and inner strength. Working with core strength is a surefire way to tap into that sense of fieriness, stoking the agni or inner fire.
The core is where our Manipura chakra lies and this energy center governs our sense of self-confidence. confidence, inner strength, willpower, and self-discipline. The element of fire, which both the Manipura chakra and tapas link to, is also the element of transformation.
And we can see this for ourselves as we take on those challenges we're faced with. Transformation generally happens when we allow change to happen. Stepping outside of our comfort zone and practicing poses we're not confident with or maybe a little afraid of is when we begin to grow and learn about ourselves.
If things are too easy all the time, we don't tend to learn the life lessons we need to make us stronger and more rounded people. Traveling a bumpy road is well worth it when you eventually find a place of peace and freedom. The lessons we learn from facing challenges and fears are the ones that tend to have the biggest positive impact on us.
When we work with the element of tapas, It's important to make sure we're acting from a place of positivity and love and not from fear. When we push ourselves a little further, we should do it not because our ego tells us to, but because we really truly feel we can go just a little bit further. What does tapas mean to you?
The next time you're faced with a challenge in a yoga class, practice facing up to it and igniting your inner fire. You'll soon notice big changes on and off the mat. Let's begin our practice.
So with chair yoga, it's very much like our standing practice. We're just sitting in a chair. The reason why I like to teach this practice is because it's great if you have an injury.
if it's hard for you to get up and down off of the ground and also if you are sitting at a desk all day so a lot of us are either you know sitting at a desk doing schoolwork or doing work at a job and when you're sitting in this chair if you don't have the opportunity to get up and stretch a lot of these things that we're going to be doing today you can go ahead and do while you're sitting at your desk so what you will want for today's practice is a chair, obviously, and I recommend maybe having a strap and then also maybe a blanket. If you don't have, or always if you don't have a blanket, you can use a towel or something similar. So let's take a few moments just kind of centering ourselves. So finding a comfortable seat in your chair. Go ahead and see if you can bring your feet firmly onto the ground.
So for our Tadasana or mountain pose, we're sitting in our chair, we want to think of, I'll kind of turn sideways so you can see, our knees about the height of our hips. So if you're in a chair where your knees are up higher, you may want to take a blanket and place it on your seat so that your hips are up a little bit higher. If it's the opposite, so maybe your feet are down a little bit further than your hips, then you may take your blanket or even some blocks if it's a big difference and bring it underneath your feet. So height of your knees and hips about the same. And then bringing your hands to rest.
on your legs. Bring your ankles underneath your knees and see if you can stack your rib cage over your hips, over the top of your pelvis. Draw the shoulders back and think of reaching up through the crown of the head, softening your eyes.
So either finding a drishti, a place that you can focus your eyes on, or if it feels comfortable, go ahead and close your eyes all the way. And begin to turn your awareness inward. What is happening in your body?
Are there sensations in your bones, in your joints, muscles, or organs? Is there energy in your body? Do you feel tired or awake, hungry or full, hot or cold?
Are there emotions coming up in your body? Also notice if you can sense where your body is in space. What position are your legs and arms in? This is not a time to judge your posture or your body in general. Rather, it's a time just to notice an internal world of sensations and experiences.
Take a moment to check your posture and see if you can lengthen your spine. To do this, you can exhale and feel energy moving down into the earth. And on your next inhalation, feel energy rising up from the earth through your body, lengthening your spine all the way up through the neck to the top of your head. Continuing this for several more breaths. And when you're ready, you can go ahead and slowly open up your eyes.
So we're actually going to be starting our practice with some eye movements. So this is a part of the body that we don't really give a lot of attention to. But we can feel a lot of strain in our eyes, especially if we're looking at a screen all day, or maybe we have kind of a read, we do a lot of reading.
So it's always good if... doing that you look up every now and then looking and seeing how far you can focus out. So we're going to bring some movement and we're going to start to link our breath even with our movement. So as you inhale go ahead and take your eyes and without moving your head bring your gaze up towards the ceiling as high as your gaze can go and then as you exhale looking down as far as you can go. A few more times.
Inhale up. And exhaling down. Three more times. As you move, instead of jarting up and jarting down, taking your time.
Kind of maybe moving your focus along the way and then coming back to center when you're going to do the same thing but left to right. So looking at directly ahead as far as you can go ahead and move your gaze without moving your head all the way over towards the right and then slowly focusing moving your gaze all the way over towards the left back and forth a few times with your breath. See if you can move your vision smoothly.
You might notice it kind of goes that that that and then back to center maybe open and close the eyes. We're going to do some neck rolls. So if it feels okay you might move your head in a continuous circle. If you have any neck injuries and eye I urge you to maybe just come forward, maybe come back to center, then to the side, back to center, and back. And then if one of these don't feel as comfortable, maybe eliminating one, maybe if it feels bad to bring it back, you know, not having to, maybe it's just a slight bend.
So take an inhale here. As you exhale, drop the chin in towards the chest. And we're only moving the head, so keep the spine nice and long, shoulders back.
And then bringing your left ear over towards your left shoulder. and then moving it towards the back and continuing around moving nice and slow keeping the shoulders down away from the ears notice as you move around if there's a particular area that doesn't feel comfortable you might even kind of go back and forth if you feel a place that has a little bit of tension you can hold there or continue to work your way around and then the next time that your chin comes down towards your chest we're going to switch directions And then eventually this next time our chin comes down towards the chest, we'll go ahead and lift our head back to center, make some movements with our shoulders. So you can take your hands maybe to your shoulders or if you want to make big arm circles, you can do that too. But bringing, if you have your hands on your shoulders, you might think of your elbows coming together, making a line up towards the ceiling, big circles around, draw the shoulder blades together. A few more times and then switching directions and back to center.
So with our chair yoga practice, a lot of people think that chair yoga is only for geriatric people, so people that are elderly that can't get up and down off of the floor. But like I said before, it can be for people that just maybe have to sit in a chair a lot longer throughout the day. So you are able to do a chair yoga practice where you even bring yourself to build up that internal heat where you start to even sweat. So we're actually going to do some salutations in our chair.
So go ahead and come to your seated to dasana. So your feet underneath your knees and your knees, the height of the hips, hands resting on your thighs. As we inhale, we'll take our arms. Just one moment. I'm going to move my little crate out to the side.
So inhale. Take your arms, reaching them up towards the sky, or Vahastasana. And then on your exhale, cactus the arms into a little bit of a backbend here.
So instead of thinking of your navel reaching forward, think of the chest reaching forward as you draw the navel back. So it's bringing that backbend a little bit higher up into the spine. And then inhale, reach the arms back up towards the sky.
As you exhale, folding forward so you can reach those arms. I like to keep my arms extended in this seated practice. It gives me a little bit more of a challenge. You can also bring them through heart center or even out towards the side if that feels better. So the hands come down towards the floor and allow your head to drop down towards your legs.
Lengthening the spine, kind of letting gravity, just like our standing Uttanasana or forward fold, letting gravity just kind of pull the upper body down. And then on your next inhale, we're going to lift up, lifting our right leg for a lunge. You can think of this kind of like a sun salutation bee, if you want to think of that. So lifting the leg up.
and we want to keep the spine nice and long and then on your exhale we'll go ahead and lower the leg down and then round the spine so the hands might slide over the knees as you bring your chin in towards your chest inhale coming into a seated cobra so hands coming back down press the hands into your thighs as you think of bringing your heart forward and the gaze lifting up towards the ceiling remember with our backbends we want to think of moving the full length of the spine so a little bit of movement in a lot of areas and then on your next exhale rounding forward again forward fold on your next inhale we'll bring that left leg up into our lunge so spine straight lifting the leg up And then exhale, forward fold back down. Go ahead and fold all the way down towards the floor. Relax the neck.
On your next inhale, Urdhva Hastasana. So reach the arms out or up all the way to the sky. And then as you exhale, Samasthiti. So hands coming together and down towards the heart.
So we're going to do that a few times here. So inhale, take the arms, reaching them up, out and up towards the sky. Exhale, cactus the arms, draw them back, open the heart, draw the shoulder blades together.
Inhale, reach up one more time. Exhale, forward fold. And this time we'll take the...
Left leg, start with that first. So you can grab on behind the leg or to work those hip flexors a little bit more and do it without hands. Lift the leg up as high as you can while you keep the spine straight. So reaching out through the crown of the head and then exhale, bring the foot down, slide the hands around the spine into a seated cat position.
Inhale, seated cobra, pull the hands back, press them into the legs. Spread the collarbones, draw the shoulder blades as you lift the heart and the gaze towards the sky. Exhale, forward fold. Fold over the legs, hands down.
Relax the neck. Right side, inhale. Either grab behind the leg or use those hip flexors. Pull them up.
And then exhale, forward fold. Inhale, reaching the hands out and up. Again, if you want a little bit more of a challenge, reach them forward so you have to use your core a little bit more here. And exhale, bringing the hands down to the heart.
Samastitihi. So we'll do that one more time on each side. Inhale, taking the arms, reach them up. Exhale, cactus.
Draw the shoulder blades together. Lift the heart, lift the gaze. Inhale, reaching up.
Exhale, forward fold. Inhale, we'll take our right leg, lifting it up. Again, hands or no hands.
Exhale, round the spine. Hands slide over the knees, round the spine, chin in towards the chest. Inhale, seated cobra. Draw the shoulder blades together. Lift the gaze.
Spread the collarbones. Exhale, forward fold. Hands all the way down towards the ground.
Inhale, we'll lift that left leg up. And exhale, forward fold. Inhale, reach the arms out and up.
Exhale, hands down to the heart. Last time, last time. Inhale, take the arms, reaching them out and up. Exhale, cactus the arms, draw the heart forward, lifting the gaze.
Inhale and reach, extend. Exhale, forward fold. Inhale, lift that left leg, lift it up. Draw the spine, or keep the spine long.
Exhale, cat pose, round hands slide over the knees. Inhale, seated cobra, knees are still over the ankle, so don't let them open up as you come into your back bend. And then exhale, forward fold. Inhale, lifting up the right leg, and exhale, fold.
Inhale, reverse one dive, reaching up, and exhale, drawing the hands down to the heart. Go ahead and pause here for three breaths. I'm going to close the eyes and let your eyes again come to a drishti resting point.
Release your hands down. So for our next posture we're going to come into Navasana or boat pose. To touch real quick on the our chairs you want a sturdy chair a chair that has um a you're not wobbling around so you feel very stable.
I like to use kind of like these metal folding chairs but any chair can can do. Just make sure that you kind of feel comfortable. You might even prop it up against a wall perhaps. And I still will use my yoga mat and place the chair on the mat so it doesn't slide as I'm moving.
So some of our chair yoga. we may be seated in the chair some of our postures will be standing and placing our hands or maybe even our legs up onto the chair so having the chair on the mat just kind of helps it keep from sliding especially if you have carpet carpeted floors so for our boat pose or navasana that engages our core i like to come for this one i will turn to our side so ideally hopefully you have a chair that doesn't have arms. That allows, you can even use a stool sometimes.
So a lot of my work I do at my kitchen counter and I have stools and I'll turn kind of sideways and bring my leg back, which we're going to do in just a moment. But being able to move kind of around in your chair can be really useful. So with our boat pose, because we have the back of our chair, it doesn't allow much of a challenge.
So turning sideways from here, we'll start to lean back. You can bring your hands underneath your legs and maybe you just start right here. Maybe even keep the toes on the ground.
If you feel comfortable, maybe you lift the toes up. See if you can keep the collarbones spreading, drawing the shoulders back and together. And you might just do one leg, one leg at a time. If you don't feel comfortable or sturdy in your chair. If you feel comfortable with both legs you might use them.
And just like Navasana without your chair, you can choose to take it maybe a little bit to the next bus stop. Maybe the hands release the legs and the fingertips reach forward and then maybe even start to lift your feet up away from the ground. So as always you can choose which bus stop you want to get off of but keeping the collar bones spreading the shoulder blades, pulling back towards one another.
And if you can, this neutral spine, so we're not rounding here, we're lifting the chest forward up towards the sky, and your gaze might be up towards the ceiling also. See if you can hold here three more breaths. And then your next exhale, lower the hands down.
and back to center and then go ahead and rotate towards the front of your mat and then open up the legs for a seated goddess pose so remember we want our knees in line with our toes and then bringing the hips forward opening the legs as much as it feels comfortable Bringing the hands either to the outsides of the knees. I like to bring my hands, my fingertips, to the inside of the thighs. Inhale, press the hands into the thighs, lengthen up through the crown of the head.
And then as you exhale, we're going to take the left shoulder and dip it down as you pull the right shoulder back. So you can use your hands if they're on the inside of the thighs to gently kind of push that knee open, maybe a little bit more. and then inhale come back to center we'll do the same thing to the other side so as you exhale pressing that right hand into the thigh pulling that left shoulder back and a few more times to each side so inhaling to center exhale dip the left shoulder down inhaling to center exhale right shoulder comes down One more time to each side. I don't know if the microphone is picking up. This allows my, usually my back to kind of to snap, crackle, pop.
Hopefully it's a good sensation for you. As always with all of our postures and movements, doing what feels good for your body that day. Go ahead and come back to center and then we'll bring our knees, walking our feet back underneath.
So the ankles underneath the knees, taking the hands and gripping the side of your chair. So we're going to first kind of pull up on our seat as if you were trying to pull your chair up off of the ground. So we're activating here the muscles in the arms and the shoulders, which in a seated chair practice, we don't get a lot of the arm strength except for when we're lifting up and such. And then continuing to breathe, keep your spine long, focusing on the muscles working. and then press your hands into the seat so bringing the heel of your hand if not the palm of your hand into the seat and then pushing away almost and maybe even lifting the sit bones up off of your mat or excuse me off of your chair and then we'll go back and forth so pulling the chair up and then pressing it away lift and go ahead and maybe connect this with your breath notice what is easier for you so is it an inhale as you pull and then an exhale as you press away or maybe it's the opposite for you but see if you can connect it with your breath and then lower down go ahead and make your way back to the side just like we did for navasana or boat pose and we'll take our leg whatever's closest to the side and we're going to pull it back so coming to the edge of the chair so your sit bone you have one sit bone kind of off of it one on the chair so we our pelvis is somewhat neutral and you're going to have to use this bottom leg to kind of stabilize here so our front knee in line with our front toes you might have this back knee right underneath the hip think of your pelvis coming into neutral and you can continue to walk this foot back if that feels comfortable hands might be on the hip just to kind of notice where your hips are to begin with then maybe they come into heart center if you feel comfortable you might have one hand on the back of your chair as you take your other arm up or perhaps bowls of your arms come up so this is like a seated high crescent lunge and with our crescent lunge It gives a different sensation when we're in the chair versus when we're not in the chair.
So even though we have the chair for kind of stabilization to help with our balance and such, we might actually feel it's a little bit deeper because we're a lot lower to the ground than when we're standing up. So just because we're using a chair doesn't necessarily mean that the practice may be deeper. We're going to feel the... It's going to be just a different experience.
So we actually might be able to feel a deeper stretch in some of the muscles in our body because we are lower down and because we're not so worried about keeping our balance. And then on your exhale, lower your hands down if you have them raised, and we'll do the same thing to the other side. Actually, before we go to the other side, Go ahead and come back a little bit onto your chair.
We're going to take this back leg and cross it over. Go ahead and take your opposite arm, either grab to the outside, maybe the back of the hand, and then slowly rotate to the side. So it's almost kind of like a seated twist here. You can bring your gaze over the back shoulder.
Maybe the hand comes to the back of the chair. You can kind of experiment just like you do with your standing poses and the blocks. See what feels comfortable. One more breath and then release.
So we'll do the same thing to the other side. So go ahead and rotate to the other side. Again scoot to the edge so you have one sit bone on and the other off. We'll take the back leg, start to bring it underneath so the knee might be underneath the hip, keeping that pelvis neutral. Then see if you can extend that leg back.
So you can determine how far it goes back. It might be just a little bit. You might be able to extend it all the way straight and then bringing your hands to wherever it feels comfortable. See if you can bring that front ankle underneath the knee. having the knee and the toe go in the same direction and when we come into these postures we might have a little different modifications because we are a lot lower crescent lunge we can usually you do about the same but as we do in thursday's practice you'll see we might do our alignment might be slightly different because we're a little bit lower and then go ahead and release the hands if you have them raised Taking your back leg, take it over, cross it over the bottom leg, and then we'll bring a twist in.
So either the hand to the outside of the back of the hand, lengthening up through the crown of the head, and then starting to rotate. You can grab the chair if you'd like. and then move the gaze comes over the back shoulder see if you can deepen your breath and then release on your next exhale bring both feet down to the mat go ahead and take them extend the legs long coming to the edge of your chair but where you still feel stable on it and we'll come into a forward fold so just like our seated forward fold you can use a strap here to kind of strap up the feet if you prefer inhale lengthen up through the spine and then as you exhale from the pelvis initiate that kind of fold so tilting the pelvis forward think of your chest reaching towards your feet if you don't want to use the strap just taking your hands and maybe sliding them down the legs towards your feet thinking of the chest reaching keeping that length to the spine and then when you can't go any further then allowing the head to relax be rounding the spine just a bit nice full inhales and complete exhales And then on your next inhale, slowly start to walk your hands back up your legs, coming back up into a seat.
One of my favorite things to do in the chair when I've been sitting for a long time is a seated pigeon. So taking your leg, your left ankle, bringing it to that right knee. It's basically like a cross-legged position.
but we're in a chair so having this foot flexed dropping the knee down and then from here though you this feels enough sensation go ahead and stay right here kind of thinking of extending out through the crown of the head if you want a little bit more sensation then begin to tilt tilt forward with the pelvis bringing the chest a little bit closer to that front leg and then maybe you soften you might even make kind of stacking your fists over one another to allow your your forehead to rest on your leg if you do have a yoga block sometimes even placing that on your leg can feel comfortable holding here for another four or so more breaths And your next inhale, slowly start to lift the torso back up and we'll switch sides. So bringing that leg down, you might take just a moment to feel the difference between two sides. And then taking your right ankle, bringing it to that left knee, foot is flexed, and then let that knee drop down. And this might be, again, this might be enough sensation.
This usually will give us a little bit more sensation than our reclined pigeon when we're on our back doing this same kind of shape. If you want a little bit more, then begin to tilt your pelvis forward, bringing the torso, the chest closer towards your shin, keeping that spine long until you can't go anymore. And you might hold there just for a little, a few breaths. And then softening.
So allow your head to kind of sink down. Maybe prop your head with your hands if you'd like. And just using your breath.
So each exhale, see if you can soften a little bit more. Each inhale, you might lengthen out just a bit. You get the chest reaching forward.
And then exhale, soften. Three more breaths. And then on your next inhale, slowly start to rise up, bring your foot back down to the mat.
And then scooting your way back so your back is resting against the back of your chair. And we'll come into Shavasana. So Shavasana, you can always do, make your way onto the mat.
Usually when I'm teaching this class in my studio, most of the students will go onto their backs and they'll even put their feet up on the chair. kind of what we've done in our restorative class that we practiced together. Another way though, if you don't have maybe a space on your floor, is you can take a blanket or a towel and kind of roll it up, bringing it around, wrapping it around the neck, and it kind of supports your head. So you can kind of hold here and then allow your head to relax. And this is another way to take shavasana.
For instance, if you do have some kind of injury, or maybe you just don't want to get onto the floor, maybe you don't have the space for it, it's taking a towel or a blanket, wrapping it around the neck, and then crossing kind of your arms just to hold the blanket in place where you can then relax the muscles in your neck, relaxing your head, and then taking a nice full inhale from the soles of your feet all the way up to the crown of the head. and exhale seeing where you can soften even your hands notice if you're gripping let go of the grip and as always i'm going to leave you here please rest in your shavasana as long as you have time hopefully for at least about five minutes or so and i will We'll have our in-person chair yoga practice on Thursday. Thank you.