santosha

As I am sitting quietly on Easter Sunday, I am coming to terms with moving towards feeling at peace about this strange in-between, being stuck in my internal doldrums, in this gap that the various phases of my life have left by not quite lining up in neat little tectonic plates how it seems to happen for others.

I stumbled across these prints, leading me to reread forgotten descriptions of the Yamas and Niyamas, 2 of the 8 limbs (or fundamental principles) of practicing yoga in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras.

Santosha is the 2nd Niyama (personal observance), translated loosely as contentment or the practice of self-containment against the negative waves of the mind.

I have always wished for more flexibility. This little stint in the middle of nowhere is making me come to terms with what that actually means both in a physical and an emotional/psychological sense:
-becoming more flexible requires unexpected stretching
-accessing and sensing muscle groups in ways I had never felt before
-sometimes feeling pain at first
-learning how to accept the stiffness and relax into it
-just another moment is really just a moment
-remembering to breath through the mental cantankerousness and internal discomfort
-recognizing that it might not be great today but will feel differently somewhere down the road
-opening my skeletal structure by loosening

--the very elements in yoga that I love and keeps me coming back again and again.

I wish you a happy holiday weekend full of contentment, dear Friends, whether you are celebrating Passover or Easter or just plain Spring.

Santosa: modesty and the feeling of being content with what we have. To be at peace within and content with one's lifestyle finding contentment even while experiencing life’s difficulties for life becomes a process of growth through all kinds of circumstances. We should accept that there is a purpose for everything - yoga calls it karma – and we cultivate contentment 'to accept what happens'. It means being happy with what we have rather than being unhappy about what we don't have.

print via {onehundredforty}



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