When I was in yoga school each student was given a yama or niyama, which are self-restraints and observations along the 8 limbed path of yoga, too write about in our final paper. My niyama was Tapas which is the practice of austerity, but there is also an element of heat to this niyama often described as a burning desire to purify the body and mind. {The word "tapas" comes from the Sanskrit verb "tap" which means "to burn." The traditional interpretation of tapas is "fiery discipline," the fiercely focused, constant, intense commitment necessary to burn off the impediments that keep us from being in the true state of yoga (union with the universe)}. As I read aloud to my class my paper on tapas I likened it to when I was a child and my father burned the grass in the yard during the fall, I remember the looks of intrigue on some of my fellow students faces. I guess not everyone’s father willingly set his yard on fire. I haven’t actually thought about that moment in quite some time but recently it has come ‘searing’ back into my memory. Though I haven’t really ever forgotten about tapas, fire seems to play a strong role in my life; either using the sacred smoke of sage to clear energy or having a small fire and throwing in affirmations and prayers into the flames to be engulfed and transformed and taken to the heavens with the smoke. So it would seem that tapas still plays a role in my life. But there was an imbalance in my relationship to fire and I didn’t even realize this until two rather unrelated moments in my life suddenly rammed themselves together in my mind.
First: I was having a bad night. It was one of those nights were you feel like the last thread you’ve been holding onto was about to snap or worse has already snapped and you have forgotten how to get back up. And in an act I’m not terribly good at I called a friend and asked for help. As we sat there on my kitchen floor my friend pressed her fingers into my chest and said “you have a fire in there, and that fire is you, it makes you you and don’t you dare change that!” it was not subtle. And it was exactly what I needed to hear so I cried a little harder and thanked her for her friendship. But the meaning didn’t sink it yet, that took another few days.
The second thing and this one is way more subtle: I spent some time this weekend in the car going here and there and taking the country roads. Along the road side I could see the charred remains of prairies and even heard a story on NPR about a woman’s love of burning prairie remnants, how we use and more importantly control this element of destruction to cleanse the land of encroaching wildlife. Freeing up the land and nutrients so the indigenous plant species can reclaim and thrive. This is exactly what I wrote about 5 years ago in yoga school. That’s when it all came together.
The thing is, I’ve been disrespecting my own fire for quite some time now. It’s no secret that last year I went through a deep depression even though I had amazingly wonderful things happening in my life; I bought a home and I opened my studio, but I was living on the fumes of my fire. I wasn’t recharging, not eating well, not sleeping because I was working so hard to build this life I’m living. And the fire smoldered out and I was cold ashes before I even knew what was happening. I was in no way a controlled burn. So when I started coming out of my depression it was as if I could feel a spark kindling inside me, my fire was coming back and I was elated. Sometime in January I hit the balance, I had just enough of my fire, my passion back in time for a yoga retreat and what a weekend it was! I came home and was practically floating, when I closed my eyes I could see the light form my inner fire connecting me with everything around me. That! That connection that is the essence of yoga, of any faith or religion, I finally got it and more than just got it I felt it! I was riding the crest of a beautiful wave. But after a year of living and struggling what I didn’t have was discipline, I had no more tools to harness my fire. So my fire consumed me and I was burned and in my brilliant burn out I also burned some people I care deeply for. So in not very much I time I had experienced the slow meandering death of fire when it has nothing to replenish itself and the super nova like explosion of fire unbridled that leaves you very much like a black hole.
So fire… Having gone through living in harmony with fire, the slow extinguishing and death of it, a rebirth and yet another death of this essential element I have learned this: fire needs to be respected for both its destructive and purifying qualities. Now I can see how to reach back to the tools yoga has taught me to first cultivate and then to harness my own inner fire. I can relearn how to use the destructive power to rid my life and practice of useless and even harmful aspects and I can embrace the purifying heat by recognizing the open space fire leaves and fill it with positive change. It’s not instantaneous, it will take time and effort but fire is a running theme in my life I just need to get it back on my mat and out of my yard.
