Beyond the pain principle

The majority of my years of being a distance runner and being a student have ingrained the correlation with discipline and action. To "practice" is not just to "be" but to "be doing" something - a form of work - mental or physical. I have been conditioned, my identity wrapped in the day to day practices - to associate hard work and constancy: typified by an intensity that is enduring, if not a struggle in order not just a be a runner and student but as requisite for being "good" or "successful".

Central to the principled, disciplined life was the presence of pain in actions of my conscious choice. Why? Because of what I will call the "pain principle," or the positive attribution of pain with success. Example: the person who wins the race is the one who runs past the point of hurting the farthest through the psychological self overriding the voice saying "STOP" within the physical body. I have garnered the accolades of "traditional" sense of success in sports less because of an innate ability but because of a toughness that persevered and pushed myself in all of the days leading up to the race just as I would apply towards having test  in one of my courses.

So, the idea of "tapas" in yogic thought is challenging for me as I find this concept of "practice" and of purification, pain and "burning" that I have seen in various definitions of the observance of "tapas"  to be antithetical to my practice of yoga. My teacher refers to himself as a "reformed pusher," and from him I have cultivated a curiosity at exploring rather than exceeding one's "edge"; an emphasis on the "middle way"; peace, equanimity, contentment; and non-violence - including towards the self.

So, within yoga, what does practice mean? I cannot comprehend what is meant by purification that involves practice or pain or burning that does not step outside of the path of yoga and onto the conceptualization of discipline in collegiate running and graduate school. Both of the latter being on the more extreme side of the continuum but part of the path that society positively reinforces at large.

Is this way of being not the cause of suffering?
This idea seems antithetical to my practice on the mat and closer to  the harder you work the better student + runner = person you are mentality for which yoga has been integral to helping me see beyond.

I have called upon Shiva to help me destroy and create a life beyond. Beyond choosing to be chaotic, urgent, pushing way of being that was ultimately unhealthy albeit the short-term, external feeling of success in favor of a more full and sustainable self.

 If yoga means a form of union including with the self and means to be in a place of peace and non-harming, what does it mean to practice "tapas". Must we first set ourselves on fire and experience the pain of being ablaze?