Precautions for Yoga Professionals in the Flu and Viral Season
The physical practice of yoga tends to attract people seeking who are actively seeking to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Unfortunately, like any place where human beings gather, a studio can easily become a breeding ground for pathogens. The added considerations of heat, perspiration, on-site locker rooms, and shared resources such as mats, blocks, and blankets, further contribute to the challenge of maintaining hygiene while practicing yoga in a public space.
The physical practice of yoga tends to attract people seeking who are actively seeking to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Unfortunately, like any place where human beings gather, a studio can easily become a breeding ground for pathogens. The added considerations of heat, perspiration, on-site locker rooms, and shared resources such as mats, blocks, and blankets, further contribute to the challenge of maintaining hygiene while practicing yoga in a public space.
While most studios are fastidious about cleanliness, there are additional personal precautions yoga teachers and students can take to reduce the risk of infection or transmission. Below are five tips for protecting yourself and your students in cold season, flu season, or during a state of heightened alarm concerning public health.
1) Wash Your Hands Properly and Often
According to the Centers for Disease Control, hand washing is one of the most effective ways to prevent the transmission of germs, provided it is done properly. Just as important is when you wash your hands. The yoga student and the instructor should always wash hands before and after a class, as well as before and after handling any kind of food or drink, or using the lavatory.
Are you washing your hands correctly? Most of us don’t realize that effective hand-washing requires a full 20-30 seconds of your time. To truly minimize the transmission of infection, follow these steps from the CDC:
Wet your hands with clean, running water (warm or cold), turn off the tap, and apply soap.
Lather your hands by rubbing them together with the soap. Lather the backs of your hands, between your fingers, and under your nails.
Scrub your hands for at least 20 seconds. (Tip: hum “Happy Birthday” two times, all the way through.)
Rinse your hands well under running water.
Dry your hands using a clean towel, or air-dry them. It’s extremely important to dry your hands completely, as bacteria colonize more readily on moist surfaces.
Use a Paper Towel to turn off the sink, as well as to open the door of a lavatory in a public space, then immediately dispose of it in a waste bin.
It’s also important to use hand sanitizer, especially in a yoga studio. We’ll cover that below. However, hand-washing hygiene raises and additional, often overlooked point:
2) Avoid Wearing Jewelry To The Yoga Studio, And Keep Fingernails Short
As PYI’s Pain Management and Clinical Yoga Therapy instructor Beret Kirkeby, C-IAYT LmT, points out it’s best to keep jewelry extremely minimal at a yoga class, and to keep nails trimmed short and clean. Jewelry that is not regularly cleaned can have bacteria levels up to ten times higher than those on the skin, even immediately after washing hands. Jewelry that is not worn on the hands, such as necklaces and earrings, is sanitized even more rarely. Moreover, long nails, both natural and artificial, are breeding grounds for bacteria, and most people do not sufficiently clean their nails when washing their hands. While they may look attractive, by wearing your nails long, you create more surface area on your hands where pathogens can lurk.
3) Use Hand Sanitizer In Addition to Proper Hand-Washing
While washing the hands with soap and water is always indicated at obvious times, such as before and after a class, handling food, or using the lavatory, proper use of hand sanitizer can also qualify as effective hand-washing (or a follow-up to hand-washing), provided that the hands are not visibly soiled, or that you haven’t come into contact with another person’s bodily fluids.
According to Ms. Kirkeby, an alcohol-based rub is the preferred method for hand sanitation. To sanitize hands properly, ensure that you dispense the recommended amount of product (written on the container) into the palm of one hand. Rub hands together, making sure to cover the surface area of both hands completely, including the undersides of the fingernails, until hands are dry. Hand sanitizer can also be used a second step after washing with soap and water.
While some yogis may be resistant to hand-sanitizer because of beliefs that it is “not organic,” contributes to antibiotic resistance, or is ineffective, it is important to note the CDC’s guidelines during flu and virus season. While proper soap and water hand-washing is more effective than hand sanitizer on certain germs, such as norovirus and C. diff, alcohol-based hand sanitizers are the preferred method used by healthcare providers to prevent the spread of disease, provided they are at least 60% alcohol.
During a public health alarm such as an infectious disease outbreak or a flu epidemic, yoga professionals and their clients can wear disposable medical gloves when doing any work with students that requires physical touch, discard the gloves immediately upon completion of the session, then wash hands. Hands-on adjustments should be avoided in classes of more than one student during periods of concern about contagion or in high-risk settings, as it’s not practical for the instructor to change gloves for every student.
This excerpt from our Yoga Therapy Certificate course covers the standard precautions yoga professionals should take to print the spread of disease and infection. Yoga Therapists working in clinical conditions may have additional precautions to take to keep clients, coworkers and themselves safe and healthy. Thanks to Beret Kirkeby, C-IAYT, LmT for her content and narration.
4) Consider not Teaching or Attending Class When You Are Sick
Even a minor illness, such as head cold, is a legitimate reason to cancel a class during a period of heightened risk of contagion. We’re not always aware of the immune health of those around us, and even seemingly healthy people can unwittingly spread infection. For someone who is immune-suppressed, a minor infection such as a cold can lower the body’s resistance to more serious disease. It is far better to cancel a class or reschedule an appointment than to risk contracting or transmitting pathogens during a public health alarm. If you do find yourself teaching or attending class when sick, make sure to follow the guidelines above, and if you need to cough, cough properly: use the vampire cough method, maintain a three-foot barrier between yourselves and others, and wash hands properly immediately after coughing.
5) Avoid Sharing
The yoga community is a generous one, and the average yogi is happy to share: a snack, some essential oil, even a sip from a water bottle! But this laudable virtue should be curtailed during a public health alarm. While sipping from the same water bottle is obviously unhygienic, sharing a bag of Pirate’s Booty or passing around a roller of essential oil might seem benign under normal circumstances. But unless everyone present has undertaken proper hand-sanitizing methods immediately prior, several (or even two) people dipping their hands into a common bag and then touching their mouths is a superb way to spread germs. Anything applied directly to the skin, such as an essential oil roller or a towel, should ideally not be shared, as many bacteria can live on the skin - including serious pathogens such as MRSA. As a rule, for everyone’s health, if you love to share, keep individually wrapped candies or bars on hand. But in general, if it touches your skin or your mouth, keep it to yourself. This is doubly true in the locker room.
No one enjoys enduring the stress of cold or flu season, or the heightened anxiety of a public health alarm. But with proper preparation and rigorous adherence to some basic hygiene guidelines, we can make considerable strides in the effort to keep ourselves and our students and clients healthy.
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Molly Goforth is a yoga and meditation teacher and a student at Prema Yoga Institute. She specializes in accessibility and trauma-informed yoga teaching and practice.
PYI Yoga Therapy at Mt. Sinai St. Luke's Hospital
Think back: when was the last time you visited the doctor’s office and your primary care physician put on some groovy music and led you and the other patients in a spontaneous dance party? Never? Maybe it’s it hard to even imagine your doctor dancing?
Think back: when was the last time you visited the doctor’s office and your primary care physician put on some groovy music and led you and the other patients in a spontaneous dance party? Never? Maybe it’s it hard to even imagine your doctor dancing?
Not so for participants in Prema Yoga Institute’s Yoga Therapy Program at Morningside Clinic, which is run under the auspices of the Institute for Advanced Medicine (IAM) at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s Hospital. Dr. Vani Gandhi, Infectious Diseases Specialist and Integrative Medicine Specialist and Director of Integrative Medicine at IAM / Mount Sinai St. Luke's and Mount Sinai West Hospitals–while she doesn’t actually dance in the waiting room—frequently attends the yoga therapy classes offered to the clinic’s patient population and starts things off with a energetic, free-flowing chi dance (traditionally employed in such disciplines as Tai Chi, Qi Gong and yoga to stimulate and awaken energy in the body).
Dr. Gandhi’s willingness to participate wholeheartedly in the application of the clinic’s integrative medicine programming is emblematic of IAM’s unique approach to holistic healthcare. In addition to yoga therapy, the Institute also offers massage, acupuncture, meditation and other stress reduction therapies to its patient population as complementary care to traditional medicine, all at no cost to the patient. Besides primary care services and integrative medicine, IAM also offers HIV primary care, dental treatment, mental health treatment, care coordination to assist patients in obtaining access to care and services, as well as a host of additional programs ranging from transgender medicine and surgery, and support services for patients transitioning out of incarceration. It is truly a unique public healthcare resource in New York City, and stunningly impressive in its scope.
I recently met with Dr. Gandhi, Susan Mandrew-Jones, the Administrative Manager for The Institute For Advanced Medicine, and Daniele Gates, PYI Yoga Therapist Candidate, E-RYT 500 and yoga therapist in practicum at Morningside Clinic, to find out more about the groundbreaking therapeutic work of IAM in general and the Prema Yoga Institute’s Program specifically. What follows are excerpts from that conversation.
PYI: How long has the yoga therapy program been in existence?
Dr. Gandhi: There is a very long history of yoga here at the Institute; at least fifteen or sixteen years. Originally the program provided for a paid position; when the funding for that fell through, I decided to look for volunteer organizations…shortly after that, I was introduced to Dana Slamp, Program Director of PYI, through a doctor who was working at Mount Sinai West, and Dana has continually sent us volunteer teachers.
PYI: Teachers doing their practicum requirement for Prema Yoga Institute’s Yoga Therapy Certification program?
Dr. G.: Yes, Dana sent us Marc Nelles, C-IAYT, who did yoga for the staff, and Angela Rendon, C-IAYT…and after that Susan (Mandrew-Jones) came into the picture and has been instrumental in bringing in consistent volunteers and enlarging the program. We’ve had a variety of different offerings through our volunteers in the areas of yoga, meditation and mindfulness.
Susan Mandrew-Jones: Dr. Gandhi - in addition to being a primary care provider - also oversees our integrative medicine program. So within that practice we have acupuncture, yoga therapy, massage, frequent workshops: nutrition workshops, actual cooking demonstrations with registered dietitians, so it’s a really wide-ranging program. We did an herbs and supplements program recently, and our mindfulness and stress reduction program is ongoing.
PYI: And all these offering are under the auspices of the Integrative Medicine Program?
Dr. G.: Yes, most of the offerings are here because this is where I’m based, but all the patients who use the IAM clinics at Mount Sinai Health System as their primary care are able to come here and avail themselves of our programming.
Daniele Gates: I’m curious: How are the programs funded?
Dr. G.: The two acupuncturists, who work almost full-time—one works four days a week and one works three and a half days a week—they are paid, and the massage therapist who works three days a week is paid. They are funded by the hospital. Way back we had some grant funding for these positions, but not currently. The nutrition program is grant-funded through a Ryan White Food and Nutrition Services grant. A private donor funds the mindfulness-based stress reduction programming, and that’s been ongoing for four years now.
PYI: Are you aware of another facility in the city that offers this level of integrative care for its primary care recipients?
Dr. G.: No. There are other integrative medicine centers/practices with a variety of offerings, but people have to pay out-of-pocket. This kind of place doesn’t exist otherwise, as far as I know.
DG: And patients don’t pay, their insurance, if they have it, isn’t charged?
Dr. G: No.
PYI: Is it possible to talk a bit in general about recurring or chronic health issues you tend to see in the patient population who avail themselves of the yoga therapy program?
Dr. G: Our patient population is very diverse; they have a variety of medical conditions, but the ones I see participating are the ones with immune system problems, hypertension, depression, chronic pain: various pain conditions: back pain, nerve pain, headaches, IBS, conditions like that. Either they ask about it or I refer them, because I have seen (yoga therapy) work well for these specific conditions. But anyone who is interested is welcome—there are very rare contra-indications for participating in yoga therapy.
PYI: Do you hear any patterns regarding what’s helpful in their yoga therapy work - for example - from patients with HIV or patients recovering from injuries?
SMJ: I can tell there’s increased anxiety when it’s not available! I think the practice offers the patients what the practice offers all of us. The feedback… they way they articulate it to us…a sense of calm, and being able to address their life overall. Someone told me last Thursday, “I feel more organized, I feel like I can set out to do things.” We talked about being mindful and taking that off the mat. He stopped in my office again and said, “It’s working.” And I didn’t ask any more questions, because he looked happy. The access—because yoga is now seen as this athletic practice—this setting has given them access in that they would never show up at, for example, YogaWorks. So just being grateful that we’ve made it available and accessible in their bodies, and not addressing their conditions, per se, but supporting their wellness overall, has been what they say about Dr. Gandhi and what they say about the program. “She cares about us.” So it’s created a great sense of community.
PYI: I think that’s a great way of talking about yoga therapy, as not addressing specific conditions necessarily but as supporting wellness in general.
Dr. G.: In terms of specific things that people have said over the years, they say they are able to manage their stress better, they have less pain, they feel they can sleep better, people have said they feel stronger, improved confidence is something which I’ve also heard many times with repeated attendance.
PYI: Have you encountered pre-conceived ideas or trepidation about “yoga” or “meditation” from patients, and if so, how do you address it?
SMJ: One thing I would credit our patients with is really knowing how take care of themselves and really being partners in their own care with their primary care provider. So they come with a certain level of information, and based on what they know and what they want to achieve, they come with that curiosity. They’re very informed: the student who is new and enthusiastic will more likely keep you on your toes than someone who is an experienced yogi. I would credit our students with having expectations about what they expect to achieve through yoga therapy based on their research and their agency in their own healthcare.
DG: I would say that they’re really great with accepting modifications and not feeling like they’re not “doing it right”. I think that in the beginning students were more hesitant to say “I need to do this differently” and would really try to do it the way that I was teaching it, and I think that, over time, because of the community and because they’ve gotten to know me, they’ve become much more willing to say, “My knee isn’t doing this today, give me another option.” And I think that’s really great—they’ve really developed a sense of voice and advocating for themselves and what their bodies need.
PYI: Can you speak to how being trauma-informed affects the way you teach the yoga therapy program?
SMJ: I think everything we do in our clinic is trauma-informed. I think everyone on the staff approaches the patients from that perspective because we know them.
DG: I think the nature of the class, it being in a healthcare setting, necessitates that it’s trauma-informed, so you’re viewing your teaching through that lens from the beginning, more so than you might be in working with clients. As a Yin teacher, I stick to a very specific number of postures in this class because we can’t use bolsters or blankets, we have to use blocks. So because I want them to feel confident, if I stick to the same postures, they feel like they’re making progress and they don’t feel like they’re thrown into something brand new every class, so in that way it’s trauma-informed. I also think the language I use—I work really specifically with chakra work every time—I think about teaching the class not as a medical practice but more like teaching to people who have medical symptoms and need an outlet. It’s not always about teaching yoga “medically,” it’s about dealing with all the ancillary stuff that happens when you have a medical condition of some kind. That’s kind of the trauma-informed lens that I use: “How can I not be my illness?” I try to create a room where you’re not your illness.
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I also had the opportunity to speak to two students after observing Daniele’s Yin class at the Morningside Clinic, Douglas and Marquis, who were gracious enough to answer questions about the patient experience of yoga therapy.
PYI: Did you have any preconceived ideas or concerns about practicing asana or meditation before you began the class? How, if at all, did these ideas or concerns change?
Marquis: The beautiful thing about taking different practices of yoga is that each teacher brings in something that is individualistic or subjective, and so that allows the experience of the practice to be different. So for me, I get something from Daniele that I don’t get from other teachers, even though I practice yoga regularly.
PYI: You have a regular practice outside of your yoga therapy practice here at the clinic?
M: I do. I do, it’s necessary because I’m overcoming both emotional and physical trauma, and so with that I really have to work very hard to release pent-up energy that is just not circulating in my body, so my body just holds on to tension and stress.
PYI: Is this the only Yin class you take?
M: Yes. Iyengar, which I also take, is definitely a “yang” class! (laughter)
Douglas: I mean, you come to this class trying to figure out, “What is going to make me come back?” and for me, it was the challenge. I came here and it was like, if I got here, if I just got here, I wasn’t going to leave, I was going to stay and I was going to practice. You work on things that are helpful, and as you keep working on them…I never did a Yin class, so this was my first time, and also, if I go into yoga classes and they’re too hard—
M: Right.
D: —this had challenges, but it wasn’t so physically challenging that it felt like you didn’t want to come back, you’re going to harm yourself, or it wasn’t accessible to you after, you know: you’re lucky if you got me here.
M: Certainly it’s a nurturing environment.
D: Oh, and the dance part! Today we had a little intro and that helps gets the body flowing and allows you to open up and accept. Staying still for a certain periods of time, which is Yin, is very helpful but it’s not as easy as people think.
PYI: Not at all! Many people consider it one of the most challenging forms of yoga.
D: There is ease in it, but there’s also challenge. It’s not necessarily strenuous, but for balance for me—I have neuropathy—so for balance positions for me, anything where I have to move around and balance, well, I’m already wobbly. And I’m getting better because of these classes, but that’s an issue for me: too much movement. It helps to slow it down.
PYI: It’s been said by Dr. Chris Walling that yoga doesn’t heal anything, but that yoga can support the body in healing itself. Does this resonate with your experience of yoga therapy?
M: I would challenge you on that. I would say that yoga therapy actually does heal—
D: Me, too.
M: —because it opens up the blockages and allows the healing to take place. It’s as if you said, “Soap doesn’t clean, but it does allow water to clean, so therefore soap is a cleaning agent.”
PYI: I see: yoga is so linked to your experience of healing…?
M: Yes. Yoga is a healing agent.
D: Well, actually, for me, for example when we did the exercise today with the abdominals (note: here Douglas is referencing a face-down, supine pose with the low belly supported by a block), I immediately felt it, there was a lot going on that was being released immediately. It targeted specific issues I was having abdominally. I think it’s extremely healing. I’m always the one who wants to feel the effect right away; I don’t want to wait a long time.
PYI: And that pose had that effect for you today.
M: It did.
D: You know, it is one of those things where you will feel the effects right away, but, I think as a guy you might feel that, you know, you’re not working out, you’re not lifting weights, so you’re not doing a whole lot, you’re just doing movement. But when I leave, the whole realm of my energy is much more controlled, and my ability to just observe and take in information is much more focused. And so in that, it is a passive reception, and you don’t think that you’re doing a lot, and then two or three days later, you’re body’s like, “Oh!”
M: Also, it’s the simplicity of taking it home with you. You can do it at home, at your own pace, it’s so simple, and four exercises—I mean, I’ve learned more than four, but there’s four that I do at home in twenty minutes and really feel like I’ve worked on my body: very lightly, very gently, not too much fuss.
PYI: Gentlemen, thank you for sharing your thoughts, it’s been very enlightening.
D: You’re welcome.
M: You’re very welcome. You’re welcome back any time!
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The time I spent with the Mt. Sinai team and students illuminated and expanded my understanding of the practical role of yoga therapy in healthcare and its efficacy in the support of primary care. I am indebted to Dr. Gandhi, Susan Mandrew-Jones, Daniele Gates and the patients at the Institute for Advanced Medicine for allowing me to observe and investigate their process. Further information about Prema Yoga Institute’s Yoga Therapy Certification Program—which includes a practicum such as the one Daniele is completing at Morningside Clinic, can be found here.
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Molly Goforth is a yoga and meditation teacher and a student at Prema Yoga Institute. She specializes in accessibility and trauma-informed yoga teaching and practice.
New Year, Niyama: Cultivating Tapas On and Off the Mat
I’ve made New Year’s resolutions every year since I was ten years old. When I was younger, I would make comprehensive list of over a dozen goals, encompassing far more promises to myself than I could ever hope to keep. And while I know the conventional wisdom regarding resolutions (studies show that eighty percent of New Year’s resolutions are abandoned by mid-February), I still sit down with my pad and paper on December 31st, more for the tradition of it than anything else: a way to check in with myself and see how my ambitions have shifted in the past year or two or 10.
I’ve made New Year’s resolutions every year since I was ten years old. When I was younger, I would make comprehensive list of over a dozen goals, encompassing far more promises to myself than I could ever hope to keep. And while I know the conventional wisdom regarding resolutions (studies show that eighty percent of New Year’s resolutions are abandoned by mid-February), I still sit down with my pad and paper on December 31st, more for the tradition of it than anything else: a way to check in with myself and see how my ambitions have shifted in the past year or two or 10. About a decade ago, I started limiting myself to five resolutions, and while some are always situationally specific (finish a project, complete a certification, etc.) a few themes tend to repeat from year to year. Regardless of what I accomplish or how I change, there are three areas in which, in my own annual estimation, I can always improve: food, money, and family. And despite the genuine resolve I feel every year as the countdown to midnight adds a sort of symbolic punctuation to my intentions, by mid-March I tend to be back where I started: eating a bowl of cereal at midnight next to an untouched copy of Investing For Dummies while letting a call from my sister go to voicemail for the third time that week.
For years I thought my inability to stick to my resolutions was a problem of will power, namely that I simply didn’t have any, or not nearly enough. My mother has the self-discipline of an elite athlete or an oblate of a particularly abstemious convent, and although she is unfailingly kind, she has always been somewhat bemused to realize that complete self-control is a struggle for other people. My sister inherited her temperament, including her iron will, which didn’t help assuage my belief that my character was simply inherently weaker. I am far more like my late father, who was creative and innovative and tremendously sensitive, but also self-indulgent, impulsive, and easily bored. So it was a true epiphany for me, in my early study of yoga, to learn about the concept of tapas.
Sometimes translated as “burning discipline,” tapas is one of the five niyamas—the second of the eight limbs of yogic philosophy as described by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras. Observation of the five yamas (the first limb, translated as restrictions or restraints) and the five niymamas (personal observances) are considered moral imperatives in yoga: they are the roadmap for righteous living. It’s not uncommon for a new yogi to be daunted upon learning about the yamas and niyamas— including expectations of purity, truthfulness, an even temper, and self-mastery, they can seem like a lot to live up to. It might seem counterintuitive that I was so thrilled to learn about tapas, given my track-record with will power. But yoga philosophy teaches that mastery of the eight limbs of yoga is not only possible, it’s the point of existence. For me, learning about tapas opened the door to self-discipline as a possibility: rather than a God-given talent that just wasn’t in my make-up, the Yoga Sutras teach that tapas is a virtue elemental to human nature—all human nature— it just needs to be cultivated. And here’s the really beautiful part: the practice of yoga itself inherently strengthens tapas.
So if you, like me, are feeling pretty good about ahimsa (non-violence) or saucha (cleanliness), but could use a bit of work keeping your nose to the grindstone, here are four tips for cultivating tapas on and off the mat.
1. Pin Down the Why
If you’ve ever had a conversation with a three-year-old, you already know how to go about this step. Once a child grasps the concept of “why?”, she will ask ask it over and over and over again until she reaches something fundamental (or gets distracted by goldfish crackers). Take this approach when setting a goal for yourself. Keep asking yourself why the goal is important until you find the emotional core. For example, say my goal is to increase my lower back flexibility. Why? Because I want to be able to do a “full” urdhva dhanurasana. Why? Because everyone else in my Saturday class can do one. Why does that matter? Because many of them aren’t even yoga teachers, and I am. And why does that matter? Because it makes me feel like a fraud! Ah, now we’ve hit bedrock—I don’t want to achieve a full urdhva danurasana per se, I want to feel more confident in my role as a yoga teacher. I’ll be far more likely to achieve my goal if I grasp the fundamental why. Now is the time to ask myself, “Will accomplishing this pose truly make me more confident as a teacher?” If the answer is yes, it’s far more likely that working towards my goal will fuel tapas. If the answer is no, it’s likely that frustration will deplete tapas before I’ve succeeded. At this point, I should ask myself, “When do I feel truly confident as a teacher?” If the answer is, “When I look around the room and see relaxed faces in savasana at the end of a class,” then perhaps I should adjust my goal to finding my particular niche as a teacher, creating a workshop, or increasing my teaching hours over the next year. When our goals align with our values—what we actually value—tapas will naturally ignite.
2. Keep It Simple
Studies demonstrate that people who make concrete, visual plans to implement their goals succeed at 2-3x the rate of those who don’t, but only if they pursue one goal at a time. And further studies demonstrate that people who achieve what they set out to do succeed not because they have superior discipline, but because they cultivate tapas through effective use of habits. You can set goals in different areas of your life, but if you want to maintain the discipline you need to succeed, you should plan on letting one habit fully take root before your start working on a second. It takes approximately 66 days for a newly seeded habit to fully blossom into automatic behavior, meaning that you if you’ve set just three New Year’s resolutions, under the most ideal circumstances, it will take a minimum of half a year to establish the habits necessary to keep them. You’re most likely to keep your tapas burning if you approach your goals in a way that makes sense progressively.
Say your resolutions are to meditate daily, commit to three hours per week of cardiovascular exercise, and lose fifteen pounds. It make sense to pursue them in the following order: first, establish the exercise habit with the intention of completing your activity daily at a time that will eventually be free for meditation—ideally towards the end of the day. Once the exercise habit is established, begin developing the meditation habit, as seated meditation especially is much easier if the body is already physically spent, plus, if you spend 66 days developing a cardio habit that incorporates strengthening the lower back, seated meditation will that much easier to achieve. Finally, after four months of regular cardiovascular exercise, you may find that your goal of losing fifteen pounds can be substantially readjusted, or has become completely moot. Tapas feeds on itself—successfully establishing one habit creates a behavioral framework to establish the next.
3. Set Micro-Goals
I once had a creative writing teacher who did not believe in writer’s block. His position was that writers avoid writing for two reasons: 1) they dread sitting down to write and finding that nothing comes out, and 2) they set early goals—“I will get up every morning before work and write from 5:00 to 7:00 a.m.”—that are far too ambitious. His solution to the problem—which changed my writing life—was twofold: 1) Give yourself permission to write badly. The important thing is to write. If you sit at your computer and write “I have no ideas” for ten minutes a day for a week, this is substantially better than not doing so, because you are establishing a habit of writing. The same is true of your yoga practice. If you hate inversions but want to master them, don’t set an early goal of practicing inversions every day. Make a sequence of simple poses you enjoy that strengthen the muscles and develop the balance you’ll need to eventually master one inversion (a process called vinyasa krama), and resolve to complete the sequence daily, or three times a week—whatever feels 100% doable and triggers no stress. Eventually you will notice that you are stronger and your balance has improved, and you will feel much more confident trying out that shoulder stand.
2) This one is incredibly important: set yourself goals that trigger absolutely zero mental resistance—ZERO—and begin there. If your goal is to sit in meditation daily for an hour before bed, but you find yourself continually putting it off and finding excuses, sit down and ask yourself how long you can commit, right now, to meditating each night and feel absolutely no resistance. If you feel resistance at ten minutes, lower it to five. If you feel resistance to five, lower it further. If you get down to 60 seconds of meditation before you feel absolutely zero resistance committing to a nightly practice, then that’s where you begin, with absolutely no self-judgment. It is extremely likely that over time you will find yourself naturally extending you practice to three, ten, twenty and eventually even that 60 minutes you originally intended. But if you’re like me, you will put off beginning until you have a micro-goal that triggers zero mental resistance.
This practice not only works like magic, it also dovetails neatly with a maxim I learned from my master teacher in my yoga therapy program which has impacted my practice more than any other yoga advice I’ve ever received, to wit: “The best yoga practice is the one you do.” Sixty-six days of a consistent five-minute meditation practice is far more beneficial than ten or twenty thirty-minute meditations done sporadically over the same period of time. And the chances are excellent that the length of your practice will grow and grow, because every time you sit down to meditate for another consecutive day, your tapas builds. Self-discipline is all about consistency. When you’ve established the habit, progression and challenge will follow, because you’ll get bored: you’ll want new challenges, deeper experiences, and more difficult skills. But you’ll never set that foundation if you don’t start with zero resistance.
4. Reward Yourself For Milestones (Even The Small Ones!)
When I started my 200-hour training, I learned about meditating with a mala, and I noticed that many experienced yogis in my training wore full malas as well as mala bracelets. I wanted a mala bracelet for myself, but I decided to wait until I completed my training to buy one. I spent some downtime shopping online and researching different stones until I had my ideal mala picked out. Envisioning the day that I would put it on, and what wearing it would mean to me, helped me stay focused on my goal. Similarly, I decided on a small meaningful purchase I wanted to reward myself with when I completed my 500-hour designation, and each time I finished a training that brought me closer to that goal, I rewarded myself with some time spent seeking the perfect item and narrowing down my choice. On a smaller scale, I inform my husband when I’m working towards a pose and periodically ask him to check my progress. After I’ve spent weeks or months building strength or flexibility and finally achieve a pose, we mark it in some way. It’s not as if we went to the Russian Tea Room the first time I was able to hold chaturanga, but we certainly toasted in front of the TV that night, and he was proud of me. Having a friend or family member invested in your progress, and respecting your own hard work enough to celebrate it, are like gusts of oxygen that help your tapas to flare.
Speaking of my husband (an iron-will type like my mother—let’s not examine that too closely), he often jokes that he may be a perfectionist, but I am a “good enough-ist.” But perfectionists often need help cultivating tapas, as well: the pressure of needing to be perceived as perfect can lead to maladaptive behaviors such as procrastination, as well as mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. Whether you identity as a perfectionist, a good enough-ist, or something in between, if you apply the suggestions above, you will be well on your way to cultivating the tapas that will aid you tremendously in reaching your personal goals in your yogic life and beyond.
Looking to study yoga therapy and how to modify your teaching to make the most of tapas? Check out our Trainings Page for upcoming yoga therapy modules.
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Molly Goforth is a yoga and meditation teacher and a student at Prema Yoga Institute. She specializes in accessibility and trauma-informed yoga teaching and practice.