When I was flirt­ing with the idea of mak­ing a career of writ­ing in col­lege, I was baf­fled by what I was going to write about. I did not see my own life or ideas as wor­thy of putting down on paper. I went off to Latin Amer­ica, even­tu­ally end­ing up in Peru, in search of adven­ture and found the raw mate­r­ial that helped me learn to be a writer. I worked as a jour­nal­ist and researcher writ­ing about a peo­ple and cul­ture fac­ing change. It makes a big dif­fer­ence for a writer to choose a topic that he really cares about, some­thing that stirs and inspires him.

When it came time to move on and back to the States, I found that my Peru­vian con­tent and inspi­ra­tion did not pro­vide me with many career options. Then I had sev­eral depres­sive melt­downs. I gave up any thought of writ­ing pro­fes­sional again.

Over the past five years, I have grad­u­ally worked my way back into men­tal and physi­cial health, and am writ­ing, but I missed the fire that came from writ­ing about some­thing that impas­sioned me.

Over the past few months, I have re-​​encountered a joy in writ­ing, both on my weblog, in an online yoga course and in my pri­vate jour­nal­ing, as well as more ambi­tious. I am writ­ing truth­fully and sin­cerely. The union of writ­ing and yoga is lib­er­at­ing a new dynamic of under­stand­ing about myself and the outer world. What is dif­fer­ent is the enthu­si­asm with which I approach the writ­ing. It is not just a tool in my hands, but an instru­ment for self-​​discovery. Through the process of yoga I have a new win­dow into my own inte­rior life and into the world outside.

While think­ing about this change in my rela­tion­ship with my cre­ative enter­prises, I keep com­ing back to a yogic term — tapas, “the puri­fy­ing heat,” and what Kelly told us about it in the 10th week:

“Although tapas is often inter­preted as per­sonal dis­ci­pline, I think of it as the will­ing­ness to do the work nec­es­sary for trans­for­ma­tion. It is a kind of focus that helps you access energy for change. While it involves some dis­ci­pline, it is not blind dis­ci­pline. It is not doing hard work for the sole pur­pose of doing some­thing dif­fi­cult. It is the com­mit­ment to stick with some­thing dif­fi­cult, when that chal­leng­ing action has the power to transform.”

I have been using Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way to work through a cre­ative recov­ery. I have also run across Jeff Davis’s Jour­ney from the Cen­ter of the Page: Yoga Philoso­phies and Prac­tices as Muse for Authen­tic Writ­ing (Gotham Books, 2004). At first, I thought it would be one of those formula-​​restricted books (Yoga for Bad Breath, Yoga for Hay Fever, etc.) that have cropped up recently. But Davis has done an excel­lent job of demon­strat­ing how yogic prin­ci­ples can be applied to the cre­ative process.

As I began to under­stand how yoga was help­ing me heal my body and mind, mak­ing me raise my head to see beyond my nar­row world, I began to see the pos­si­bil­ity of har­ness­ing my prac­tice to a cre­ative enter­prise. I ini­tially used yoga as a defen­sive mech­a­nism, as a bul­wark against depres­sion, but I can also turn it into a proac­tive cre­ation. I wanted to tackle all those obsta­cles and quirks that had kept me from ful­fill­ing my poten­tial as a writer. I made Inspire and Cre­ate equal part­ners with the other aspects of the my prac­tice. That’s why I men­tioned trans­for­ma­tion as a new cri­te­ria within my life.

These are pretty ambi­tious goals — and I accept them as an open-​​ended adven­ture, just as I headed off to Peru 30 years ago, only know I am armed with more knowl­edge, under­stand­ing and tools.

A turn­ing point came me a while ago when I grasped a flash of com­pre­hen­sion — like a wak­ing dream. I saw myself in an invit­ing room clear­ing space for my yoga mat. I move a piece of old fur­ni­ture out of the way and found behind it a trap door that leads to a spring­house where all my mem­o­ries are stored, cool and pre­served, in the dark inte­rior of the sanc­tu­ary. I had thought that because of my depres­sion they had been lost for­ever, wiped out like a power fail­ure eat­ing all your work on a com­puter, that I had lost the raw mate­ri­als for my cre­ativ­ity. But in this vision, the mem­o­ries were merely held in safe­keep­ing. I may not be able to regain every last detail, but I can regain access to this well of inspi­ra­tion through com­bin­ing my yoga and writ­ing, using my tapas to heal myself.