Tapas: the heat of attention

The Sanskrit word tapas comes from the root tap, “to burn” or “to heat.” In Light on Life, Iyengar describes it as “intense, purifying heat, a fire that, like the alchemist’s, transforms base metal into gold” (p. 157). He continues:

“Tapas is the fire of practice that burns away the impurities of body and mind. Without this heat the hidden knowledge of the āsana remains inaccessible.”
(Iyengar, Light on Life, p. 157)

Inside a single posture, tapas takes a modest form: the repeated return of attention to the present moment of the pose.

In my own practice, the tapas of forward bends was patience. For a long time I put great effort into them, and they hurt. Slowly I learned to release the excess effort and the suffering, and simply to let go, to be present, to surrender. Now forward bends open a vast inner space whenever I practice them. Seated postures, my absolute favorites today, bored me at first: a few minutes of sitting still, changing legs, and sitting again. With time, I came to treasure them for the stillness they gave me. And as I have described in an earlier essay, Śīrṣāsana revealed itself only when I stopped pouring so much effort into it. In each case, the hidden knowledge waited for a quieter fire.

Two ways to do a pose

Light on Life gives this idea a precise anatomy. Iyengar contrasts a posture done “mechanically from the front brain,” where “the action is felt only on the peripheral body, and there is no inner sensation, there is no luminous inner light,” with a posture done “with continual reference to the back of the brain,” where “there is a reaction to each action, and there is sensitivity” (p. 39). The second kind of practice resembles the Gītā’s lamp. The attention stays in the body, and goes further into it.

In class, I teach this distinction through the gaze. When we focus on a point, we can feel ourselves looking from the front of the brain, from the face. When we let the gaze go soft and unfocused, as when we gaze into space, we feel ourselves looking from the back of the head. The eyes stay open, and the seeing moves inward.

Iyengar describes the result in vivid terms: “We are developing such an intense sensitivity that each pore of the skin acts as an inner eye” (p. 29). As we saw in an earlier essay, he pictures this state as a wild deer in the forest, its senses turned inward “with equal acuity” (p. 152). The deer’s senses stay fully awake, and only their direction changes.

An observable difference

A teacher can see the difference in a room. When attention is absent, the practitioner adjusts the pose according to habit, or according to what the eye expects to see. When attention is present, the same shape reveals new information. The body stays in the pose, and becomes better known.