Using Tapas(Discipline) to Create New Habits

It’s a new year! A lot of you are coming down from the high of the holiday season and have gotten back into your normal schedule. OR maybe you have set new intentions for this month or this year and are really excited for what 2023 may bring for you! Making a change, refocusing, creating new habits that stick take work and self-discipline. One of the yogic principles is called Tapas which means fire, transformation, or self-discipline.

How many times have you started something but didn’t follow through? How many times have you set a goal and then achieved it only to revert to your old habits? We all know people (or you are one of them) who are determined to lose weight starting January 1^st. They get a gym membership, buy cute workout clothes, gym bag, new sneakers, Pilates ball, ankle weights…you name it, they have purchased EVERYTHING they need to lose weight. But what happens when they are too tired to go to the gym and the shiny new workout accessories don’t get them excited to meet the goal of losing weight? Exactly, they skip a few days, then a week, and then they stay home. I see it at work, and I am sure you see it if you go to a gym or studio. January is BUSY but by end of January it starts to thin out again. You won’t always be motivated, but you can be disciplined.

Let’s Explore Tapas

Tapas translated from Sanskrit means heat, fire, flame, catharsis, transformation, self-discipline, or cleanse. Mark Stephens in Yoga Sequences describes it as the “inner fire to burn away toxicity and emotional gripping.” Motivation might spark the fire at your core, but self-discipline is the slow burn that continues to move you forward consistently, even when things get busy, or life throws you a curve ball. Tapas puts your focus on the long term, no shortcuts, or quick fixes. Self-discipline takes daily focus to monitor your choices. Your daily choices, big and small, create your life.

How Habits Are Formed

Neural pathways are the basis for your habits of thinking, feeling, and acting. The more we repeat something the deeper the groove becomes in your brain. Donald Hebb discovered this in 1949: “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”

You easily go back to your old patterns because your brain is wired to take the path of least resistance for survival. You also must consider the stimulus/response where you get a reward at the end of your behavior loop. You get stressed (trigger), walk to the pantry, and start eating a bag of chips (behavior) mindlessly. Next thing you know, half the bag is gone! But you deserved those delicious salty chips (reward).

The good news is you can rewire your brain and create new neural pathways to create new habits which will discuss after diving deeper into Tapas.

Tapas In Your Life

Your daily choices and actions lead to a higher version of yourself. You can transform intention into reality through these daily choices, use of your will, and self-discipline. Having a Sadhana, or consistent daily practice, can help clear away your old habits. You practice tapas in daily life when you are mindful of what you consume: the type and quantity of food you eat, who you hang around, what you watch, listen, or read. This daily practice can lead to a healthier and more active body and mind. This is where the magic happens-the burning away of the old and transforming into the new. James Clear in Atomic Habits says, ““Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” He tells a story in the book about a woman who wants to become healthier and when she has to make daily choices, she asks herself, “What would a healthy person do?” If you want to become healthier and you have a choice between parking your car in the first spot or the last spot in the parking lot, what would a healthy person do? These daily choices start to compound, and the results will begin to show up for you. Remember, it’s a slow burn.

The Importance of a Daily Practice

Staying motivated is easier when you are first starting out. It’s fresh and exciting! But what happens when the excitement is gone, or those 10 pounds don’t fall off in the time you thought they would? This is where a daily practice, or Sadhana, comes in. Your habitual tendencies and past patterns, positive or negative, influence your outcomes. When life is steady, you can make daily choices to set up positive patterns so when there is a crisis or a change in life, you can move through it with ease and grace. Practice helps you get through the tougher times to stay on track. When life throws you a curveball, can you stay disciplined and follow through to get the results you want? Change is constant in life and many times those changes lead to discomfort and unease. You can learn a lot during challenging times in life. In the book Yamas & Niyamas, Tapas helps to burn the old away until you have nothing left of what was before. Then, you have no choice but to strengthen your character and make a choice to break apart or break down.

Tapas On the Yoga Mat

Tapas shows up in your yoga practice or fitness routine as well. As you hold chair pose, you feel the fire build in your legs. Or you have a few more reps to go and your muscles are burning, and you aren’t sure if you can finish. This is where the mental part of tapas comes in. You may want to quit and come out of the pose or not finish the last few reps of an exercise. Remember, path of least resistance in your brain?? When you feel the burn, what is coming up for you mentally, emotionally, and physically? Some people hold their breath and clench their jaw. Some people have negative or judgmental self-talk that comes up. These can be old patterns too! I invite you to explore how you respond and have awareness for anything that happens as the heat builds in your fitness routine. The mat is a microcosm for your life. Your inner voice and behavior patterns that show up on the mat usually are patterns that show up in your life.

Intention Setting

In a yoga class, you may hear the teacher say to set an intention. An intention is the practice of bringing awareness to a quality or virtue you would like to cultivate for yourself. To fulfill that intention, you must have action. You use energy to help you achieve what you want. A daily practice or fitness routine trains your muscles in your mind and body to live the life you choose to live. You create new neural pathways through your daily practice and the more you choose to exercise (repetition), the deeper the groove becomes. The deeper the groove the less resistance you have. Also, the more you create a habit of exercising, you will start to feel healthier, more accomplished, stronger in your mind and body, etc. (reward).

How to Create a New Habit

To ditch your old habits, you need to create new ones and rewire your brain.

1. Start with small, easy, and specific actions. (Remember your brain defaults to the path of least resistance.) For example, if you want to become healthier, maybe you decide to park at the end of the parking lot at the grocery store to get more steps into your daily life. Or if you have already started an exercise routine, you focus more on nutrition and eat more unprocessed foods.
2. Actions that involve physical movement are easier to condition into a habit. If your habit is to live a healthier lifestyle, this step is already built in! I want to challenge you one step more. Be mindful while you are doing your physical movements and don’t zone out. Be intentional and disciplined in your mind while you are working out. Negative habits are formed this way too! Think about smokers and the habit of putting their cigarette to their mouth. This is the reason most people gain weight when they quit smoking. They satisfy that hand to mouth habit that they lost with the giving up cigarettes and replace it with food.
3. Habits that have auditory and/or visual cues are easier to create and maintain. This is why you jump to your phones when you get notifications. Set alerts or reminders to get your daily practice in!
4. Connect your habit with positive and genuine emotions. The more emotions you engage, the more neurons activate to form those deep grooves in your neural pathways. This reminds me of the saying start where you are. Release the judgment and negative self-talk. Those are OLD stories. You desire NEW stories. You might not be where you want to be YET but focus on the feeling of what it is like to live like the person you want to be or what you desire. If you want to be healthier or stronger than where you are right now in your body, then imagine what that feels like and remember that feeling on the days when you are reverting to the OLD habits or stories.
5. Practice and repeat! Repetition strengthens our neural pathways.
6. Use visualization. Fun fact, your brain cannot tell the difference between something real or imagined! This is like feeling into the emotion as described above. Imagine yourself being the version of the person you want to be or physically doing the habit that you desire to do. What clothes would you wear? How would you talk? What kind of atmosphere is around you? You get the idea. If you want to eat healthier, maybe you imagine yourself making a wonderful healthy meal. What does it look like and taste like? Sports psychologists use this with athletes as well to help them get out of a slump. It’s not just woo-woo, it’s science!
7. Meditate. Stress can prevent positive changes in your brain. It can also create negative, more rigid habits in your neural pathways too. When you are living with chronic stress, you do not have access to newly formed pathways because they have not been tried and proven yet. You default to your deep grooved pathways (survival function). Meditation puts you into your parasympathetic nervous system, or rest and digest/relaxation response and out of the stress response/fight or flight, sympathetic nervous system.

I use health and fitness examples, but the ideas can be applied to other things too. Your brain is powerful. Your tapas, your fire in your core is powerful. Don’t give that power away to external circumstances or old, negative patterns and behaviors that no longer serve you. Are you creating the life you want with your daily choices? Are you becoming the person you want to be?

“The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. It’s one thing to say I’m the type of person who wants this. It’s something very different to say I’m the type of person who IS this.”

James Clear, Atomic Habits.

I would love to hear your thoughts below.

Much love & health,

Carrie

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