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are 200 hour Registered Yoga Teachers who have studied yoga traditions since 2002. Having practiced under some of today’s best teachers, they instruct every class at tapas yoga shala. Their instruction stays true to the vision of a yoga studio dedicated to truly deep, yet powerfully modern yoga instruction, accessing the contemplative nature of the yoga tradition through the physical practice. |
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Tapas comes from the ancient, sacred Sanskrit language of India. Literally, tapas is “to burn” or “to shine.” Its application, conceptually in the ancient texts and experientially in modern practice, encompasses a constellation of meaning – literal, figurative, mystical, and esoteric. Yoga brings all of these meanings to bear as the essence of an internal, alchemical, evolutionary process. |
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In one sense – “to burn” – tapas is heat, austerity, discipline, and penance, the familiar discomfort of reigning in the habits, indulgences, and impulses of the bodymind. In its other sense – “to shine” – tapas is the product of that discipline: raw energy, luminosity, awareness, and the release of patterns and forms into their prior, ephemeral elements, as the heaviness and solidity of wood become light and heat through fire. This is the transformative process common to all traditions, and to all development: the rigidity and limitations of conditioning and habitual living become awareness and presence, consciousness quickened and distilled.
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Yoga as a whole is nothing more (and nothing less) than a methodology, a set of techniques, for accessing this process. One such fundamental yogic practice is asana, "seat" or "posture." Over time, in everyday living, the incidental, reactive and repetitive movements in the body and mind (conditioning) produce lasting patterns: of tension, of restriction and inhibition, crystallizing the once-free flow of movement, energy and volition. Asana practice uses these very limitations to transform the body into |
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the ground of awakening. As it is kneaded, pulled, stretched and balanced, the body is, perhaps for the first time, truly inhabited. It becomes strong, light, open and responsive. The impact of this physical health on contemplative practice is profound. Health is much more than the absence of disease: while its negative polarity has an endpoint – death – the positive polarity has no known upper limit. Over time it manifests finer, subtler, and increasingly interior qualities of vitality and presence: first well-being, then wisdom and contentment, and finally, insight and realization. As with all yogic techniques, investment is made into the practice; results, while inevitable, come of their own accord.
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Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga is the asana system of Sri K Pattabhi Jois, “Guruji.” He instructed this method in Mysore, India from 1947 until his retirement in 2007. The tradition is carried on by his family, principally Sharath Rangaswamy. This system modernizes the ancient meditative system of Ashtanga yoga (from which it takes its name), manifesting the timeless practices of mindfulness and the expansion and evolution of consciousness in a powerfully physical, modern way. It is endlessly deep: outwardly flowing, detoxifying, and disciplined; internally subtle, quiet, and emptying. It integrates the bodymind with great speed, and produces a glowing health with regular practice. All classes at tapas yoga shala draw on this system to various degrees, finding inspiration in the heat, strength, focus and endless creativity and play on the potentials of the human form in Ashtanga Vinyasa’s six sequences of postures.
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