The Burning Chickpea: What does yoga philosophy have to do with parenting (and chickpeas)?

Many people’s first and often abiding experience of yoga is through the practice of the ‘Asana’ or postures. Yoga is largely known in the West as a physical practice that strengthens and stretches your muscles and can help relax your body and mind in the process. 

However, according to the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, an ancient text said to be up to 2, 500 years old, there are eight limbs that a serious practitioner of yoga should explore, and the physical postures are just one of these eight limbs. The other limbs include the practice of meditation, Pranayama (breathwork), withdrawal of the senses (Pratyahara). There’s even Samadhi, a state of oneness and bliss. 

The foundation upon which it all rests is the first two limbs: Yama and Niyama. These are kind of like the ‘dos and don’ts’ of yoga: the moral and ethical framework that yogis and yoginis try to follow to live a mindful life. It’s where our yoga on the mat ends and our yoga off the mat begins. And let’s face it, it’s only a small portion of the day that we spend twisting ourselves into pretzels, deep-breathing and meditating. The hard work really begins when we try to bring these Yama and Niyama, which lie at the heart of yoga, into our daily interactions with our loved ones and everyone we come in contact with. 

The practice of Yama and Niyama is like the ‘yoga of relationship’ – they teach us how to be in relationship with others and ourselves. And they teach us how to build these relationships to be as healthy and functional as possible. 

Study of this aspect of yoga philosophy casts the light on our self-delusions and hypocrisies, making us swallow the bitter realisation that it’s very easy to be spiritual in isolation when we are sitting on our yoga mat or meditation cushion. It’s another thing again when we are forced to navigate a tricky social dilemma or, as a parent, a screaming child having a meltdown in the supermarket aisle. 

In yoga, as in Buddhism and many other spiritual and religious traditions, the aim is to grow and stretch our capacity to live in a way that exhibits mindful compassion towards others as well as ourselves. It can be challenging not to let anger, greed or delusion cloud our interactions. This can increase the suffering of those around us as well as our own unhappiness. For example, we can either get really angry at our tantruming child, which tends to escalate things, or we can remain calm and work on a strategy to pacify our child and meet their emotional needs. 

That’s where these first two limbs of yoga, the Yama and Niyama – the external and internal ‘observances’ – are here to help us, and we can harness this ancient wisdom within our contemporary lives. 

And what more challenging ground to test out how the Yama & Niyama can support us than parenting? 

Parenting stretches us in ways that we would never have anticipated before our children entered our lives. 

As the founder of Bliss Baby Yoga, I recognised that the integration of these key yoga philosophy aspects within our journey as a parent is so important that we created a whole course around this subject. In this course – Practical Yoga Philosophy for Parenthood –yoga teacher Claire Holloway and I explore the five Yama and five Niyama and how they relate to the different stages of parenthood: conception and fertility, pregnancy and birth, and parenthood. It’s a fascinating journey of self-discovery that, of course, never ends, whether you’re a parent just beginning your journey with yoga or a parent like me who has decades of yoga practice and teaching experience. 

In this blog, I’d like to introduce you to the third Niyama of ‘Tapas’. Tapas can be translated literally as ‘burning zeal’, or more loosely as a kind of self-discipline. I consider this Niyama is the glue that sticks together our yoga philosophy or ‘off the mat’ practice. 

When we engage Tapas, it helps us stay on track with our goals, to live with awareness, and also to incorporate all nine other Yama and Niyama practices within our lives as parents. 

What I meant to say is, doesn’t everything fall apart if we lack the self-discipline to carry through our plan, our clear and loving intentions? 

Parenting can be a tough gig. It makes us cry, scream, ache. And it goes on and on. It requires stamina to stay patient and loving over the long days, weeks, and years that it takes to raise children to the best of our ability. 

Children are our little gurus. They teach us so much about ourselves as they simply try to get their own needs met. 

Without Tapas we might not be up for the task. We might hand our children to someone else to finish the job. But we don’t. We dig deep, and we uncover our inner Tapas. 

Tapas helps us find that second wind when we thought we had nothing left to give. That is Tapas in action. 

If we mindfully employ Tapas, we can enrich our experience of the rocky road of parenting and find a kind of surrender as we yield to the curing process of parenting: how it shapes us into better versions of ourselves. If only we let it.  

I’d like to share an excerpt from a poem by the Sufi Poet Rumi called Chickpea to Cook that I think exemplifies this process of surrendering to the power of Tapas. 

Imagine that the chickpea represents the harried and overwhelmed parent who feels at their wit’s end – sorry for themself, crying ‘Why me?!’  And the ‘cook’ can be understood as the concept of Tapas that we aspire to, teaching the parent to endure and develop the stamina necessary to make them a better parent – for the sake of their children and their whole family’s happiness and evolution. 

Here it is. I hope you enjoy this excerpt from Rumi, and it helps spark ways in which you can stay firm in melting your ego and other obstacles in the pursuit of becoming a better parent. Helping you to keep showing up every day on the yogic journey of parenting.

A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot

where its being boiled. 

Why are you doing this to me?’ 

The cook knocks him down with the ladle. 

‘Don’t you try to jump out.

You think I’m torturing you. 

I’m giving you flavor, 

so you can mix with spices and rice

and be the lovely vitality of the human being. 

…

Eventually the chickpea 

will say to the cook, 

                                    ‘Boil me some more. 

Hit me with the skimming spoon.’

I can’t do this by myself. 

…

The cook says, 

                                    ‘I was once like you, 

Fresh from the ground. Then I boiled in time, 

and boiled in the body, two fierce boilings. 

My animal soul grew powerful. 

I controlled it with practices, 

and boiled some more, and boiled

once beyond that, 

                                    and became your teacher.’