“If you are noble, you will find the world noble.” Indian proverb
Humans are natural storytellers. Our brains are wired to find meaning and creating stories is how we synthesize our experiences into a comprehensive whole. Our senses are continuously stimulated by the world around us. The sensations we focus on become the raw material for our thoughts, which we then string together to create meaning. This is how we build the stories that help us organize and comprehend our world, direct our behavior, and impact how we think about ourselves. Over the long term, these stories become our destiny, having the potential to either inspire us to moments of great joy or drag us into a downward spiral of negativity and fear.
The second niyama, santosha, or contentment, invites us to look at the stories we tell ourselves. The Sanskrit meaning of the word santosha can be broken down into two parts: san, meaning completely or entirely, and tosha, which means acceptance, satisfaction, and contentment. Of all the niyamas, santosha can be hard for our achievement oriented western sensibilities to fully embrace. The concept of acceptance and contentment is easy for many to comprehend but practicing santosha can be quite challenging. We get trapped in its paradoxical nature: the more we seek acceptance and contentment, the more it eludes us.
Santosha invites us to develop a calm center and an open awareness to all that is happening in the moment. It is the recognition that all things in life are neutral, and it is the stories we tell that gives things their emotional charge. The first step in a practice of santosha is to listen to your storylines. How do you frame your experiences? Contentment is elusive when a personal narrative follows a negative storyline such as “I’m not good enough”, “That person hates me”, “This makes me angry”, and so on. It’s hard to see the good in a situation when your attention is directed toward all that is potentially harmful. Santosha offers a way to shift our attention to look beyond the negative, to become neutral and focus on all that is happening in the present moment.
Many of the ancient yogic texts remind us that “where our attention goes, our energy will follow”. Life is a series of events that just happen, unfolding moment by moment. What we focus on is what we will grow in our lives. Look for problems and you’ll find more problems. Search for what is going well and you’ll uncover it. Santosha reminds us that life is like a poem that has endless interpretations. Every moment comes to us with an infinite number of details and what we choose to pay attention to will either expand or contract our storyline. Practicing santosha helps us to adopt the investigative mindset of a skilled journalist in which we look for all sides of a story, gathering as much information from as many sources as possible before we develop our narrative. It is only by viewing the moment with a wide lens that we can start to fully embrace the essence of santosha.
Contentment is not a process of taking an uncomfortable experience and reframing it to make it more appealing. Doing so denies reality as well as our reaction to it. And we should be careful not to confuse contentment with happiness or positive thinking. Keep in mind that the definition of santosha is complete acceptance, which requires that we embrace all aspects of our experiences, both good and bad, opening ourselves to whatever arises in the present moment.
Discontentment is the illusion that there should be something else happening in the moment. It narrows our focus and has the potential to initiate a downward spiral of negative thinking. Contentment grows when we approach life as complete, the way it comes to us each moment, regardless of whether it meets our expectations. This seems simple, but it is hard to find contentment when we are faced with strong negative emotions. We’ve all felt the sting of disappointment when life doesn’t work out as we planned. We react by formulating a story that amplifies our sadness, anger, or sense of injustice, sending us searching for a solution that alleviates our discomfort. Santosha invites us to view these experiences with an “appreciative” eye, one in which we develop curiosity and a sense of open inquiry. Taking an appreciative approach, we welcome our disappointment, sit with it, examine how it feels while looking for the lessons it can teach us. Like a skilled author, we use our curiosity to harvest all the details so that we may formulate a richer, more complex, and intriguing storyline that inspires us to grow.
How skilled are you in viewing your life with an “appreciative” eye? A yoga practice can be a natural laboratory in which we practice curiosity and a sense of open inquiry. We all tend to tell stories as we move in and out of poses. Perhaps you’ve noticed how those narratives impact your practice. A woman who regularly attended my classes at the gym would mutter “My balance is so bad!” whenever we practiced Tree. On one occasion, I brought the class through a flow, ending in Tree without any warning. She, of course, held the pose flawlessly, until her narrative caught up, causing her to tumble quickly out of the pose. Keeping in mind that our attention directs our energy, what we seek in yoga is what we will find on our mat. An appreciative eye brings us to the mat with a sense of openness and possibility, and what we notice—pleasant as well as uncomfortable sensations--can deepen and enrich our practice.
It's not easy to sit with unpleasant sensations. Practicing santosha is hard work, requiring the strength and fortitude that comes from a calm center to help us accept what life has to offer. Backbending poses are stimulating and energizing, helping to realign the spine and build awareness of the core. They help us develop the strength needed to meet the world head on with a sense of openness and stability, essential qualities when practicing santosha.
What’s your story? I invite you to come to your practice with an appreciative eye, open to examining and possibly rewriting your narrative. Approach your practice with curiosity and complete acceptance, allowing the spirit of santosha to guide you to stay with whatever shows up on your mat. What is possible in your practice if you change your narrative? What is possible in your life if you rewrite your story?
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