Contentment Revisited

A few months ago, I posted a blog about Contentment (known as “Santosha” in Sanskrit), which I described as one of Yoga’s “Nyamas” or lifestyle practices. Last month, after completing an advanced Yoga teacher training, I was assigned homework – to practice each of the Niyamas for a month. I recently finished a month-long practice of Contentment, and discovered some things that I would like to share in this blog. What I thought would be an easy practice turned out to be much more difficult than I had predicted.

Very early on, I realized that it is easy to be content when things are going well in your life. But that’s really not the point. What happens when things don’t go well? When I began this homework, I quickly saw that even though on the surface I can say I am content, I also live in constant fear of "what will happen if…." What if my husband loses his job? What if one of my kids gets in an accident? What if someone in my family gets very sick?  and on and on….you get the drift. Could I then be content?

During the month, I began to realize that true contentment starts with a practice of gratitude. Even under the worst of circumstances, we all have something to be grateful for, and that is an anchor for contentment. So, my month-long practice of contentment turned into a practice of gratitude. Each day, instead of looking to see if I was content with my life, I looked to see what I was grateful for in my life. In this way, I began to cultivate an awareness of the many blessings that life offers me. And of course, that little voice would pop up periodically – the one that would say "well the sun is shining today, but they are predicting a week of rain." After a while, however, I found that with the gratitude practice, it became easier for me to be content in the moment. I realized that I actually could be grateful for the shining sun today, and let tomorrow bring what it would.

Of course, none of us can predict how we will react when some major unforeseen disaster strikes. All we can do is live our lives fully in the moment. Taking the time to be grateful for what you have each day is a valuable tool for training your mind to accept what life has to offer. Try it – you may be surprised at how much you are taking for granted in your life. And you may find that being grateful for what you have will lessen the constant desire for what you don’t have.