Santosha (Contentment)

In The Yoga Sutras, Pantanjali discusses the Yamas and the Niyamas, which are part of the "eight- limb path of yoga". The second limb in this eight- limb path involves the Niyamas. One of these Niyamas is Santosha. Santosha, simply put, is contentment. He urges us to become content in our lives. Santosha is about taking all of the striving out of our lives and being content with what is. In a yoga practice, this may mean coming into a forward fold, like Pashimottanasana, without striving to hold onto the tips of our toes or our ankles. Practicing santosha in this pose would be to gently crawl your hands forwards towards your toes, and instead of reaching, grabbing, and striving to touch your toes, try just letting your hands land wherever they land and BREATHE. Sometimes, when we take all of the striving out of our yoga poses, we learn to concentrate on our breath more, instead of focusing on "getting there", whatever "there" means to you.

In life, we can practice santosha by being happy with what has been given to us in our lives. Maybe we want a better job, better relationship, better body, better grades, etc, etc...the list goes on and on. Practicing santosha in your lives is about "working with what ya got"!!!!!!!! Once we begin to see what we have in our lives, we will realize that is is a hell of a lot more than most people have in their lives. If you really want to get deep into the practice of santosha, try writing a list of everything you are grateful for in your lives. I can promise you that you will surprise yourselves with how long the list is! We have SO much more than we even realize!

I really think that cultivating santosha both on and off our yoga mats will lead us further in the direction of inner peace, and who can argue with that???