What is strong and what is weak? Have you ever been crushed by a dirty look or melted by a smile? How is it that a blade of grass can crack through the sidewalk to grow up to the sun? How is it that falling snow can break a tree branch? How can we find the balance of both inner and outer strength? And how can our yoga practice be both physical and meditative?

Just as sitting meditation helps to calm and stabilize our busy minds, asana practice often begins with standing poses, which strengthen and stabilize our legs and arms. They are considered organs of action in yoga and when they are fully functional-strong and aligned-they provide the fluid, yet stable base necessary to support the heart, lungs, visceral organs and vertebral column.

Standing poses are physically challenging and it doesn’t take long before your legs begin to quiver, your body gets warm, and your arms feel very heavy.  This natural process is what we humans have to go through to develop muscular strength. The problem that arises is that when we work hard on a physical level, we tend to get hard in our minds and hearts too. We tend to think that exercise is supposed to be intense and so we work too hard. Then the activity becomes too hard and so do we.

We know that some yoga poses are not easy; they take physical effort and concentration. So we have to watch our tendencies to grip, tighten and tense during the intense moments of practicing our pose. Often in class when we start standing poses we may react by feeling tired or bored or wanting to move on to something else! Eventually the standing poses will stimulate our digestive system, strengthen our heart and lungs, and purify our intestines, liver and kidneys. Internal toning. We learn to stay loose and open while we are exerting and finding our breath to relax into the pose, instead of pushing away.

The joy is to witness how we use our physical and mental effort evenly, during the standing poses. This type of focused exertion is called “tapas,” which translates to “fire or heat” and refers to the sustained discipline and commitment needed to walk the path of the yogi. Tapas helps ignite the hearth of yoga and connect to the brilliance of this beautiful practice. Just paying attention and being honest with yourself helps us stay balanced and in the middle ground we need to stay in, so that we don’t burn out and give up on our practice before we feel the lifelong benefits. The real challenge is to discover the exact amount of tapas-focus, effort and awareness-that allows us to abide in these positions without mentally or physically dropping out of the intensity of the experience altogether (burnout), or without putting our heart, mind and body in a chokehold and just hanging on until it’s over.

How can we cultivate the tapas of a warrior, not too hot and not too cold, that gives us the discipline to stay seated in the saddle of our pelvis and ride steady through the waves of craving, irritation and exhilaration?

I let the challenge of the warrior poses remind me of the path of the sacred warrior, an ancient code of conduct that, according to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, “is available to any human who seeks a genuine and fearless existence.” The inspiration of the sacred warrior invites me to cut through my negative thinking and have the courage to stay connected to my full range of feeling by using the warrior’s weapons of precision, gentleness, opening and natural intelligence.

In Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior: “The ideal of warriorship is that the warrior should be sad and tender, and because of that, the warrior can be brave as well. Without the heartfelt sadness, bravery is brittle, like a china cup. If you drop it, it will break or chip. But the bravery of the warrior is like a lacquer cup, which has a wooden base covered with layers of lacquer. If the cup drops, it will bounce rather than break. It is soft and hard at the same time.”

Om Shanti,

Yoga Jane