2.2 Santosha: Cultivating Contentment

Santosha, the second of our Niyamas, means contentment, acceptance, or satisfaction.  This inward practice, more than any other, represents the practice as well as the highest state of yoga.  In this way the process represents the goal.  

Notice that the yogis did not suggest a bright emotion like cultivating inner happiness, inner joy, or inner bliss the way that some modern interpretations insist we approach yoga.  This is because when we move toward the technicolor of our emotions we must also experience their opposite: where there is a peak there is a trough.  Where there is rajas there is tamas and the constant struggle for sattva.

By moving away from those extremes we slow the mind and all of the ways it whiplashes through us, leaving us constantly roped in and swinging from highs to lows and back again.  

To be even-minded and content in all circumstances is the practice not only of Santosha, but reflects the attitude of the yoga adept.  It is both the process and the goal realized. Contentment is the small, soft smile on Krishna’s face when he speaks with Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, representing God’s attitude toward the human misunderstandings that nonetheless circle us back toward a generous divine.  

In one of Iyengar’s translations of the YSP Santosha is described in this way:

From contentment and benevolence of consciousness comes supreme happiness.

— YSP 2.42, BKS Iyengar

Contentment is remaining cheerful in our likes and dislikes.  If we accept our circumstances totally and with contentment, will we spend your energy seeking, craving, grasping, or belittling?  The Yamas, the codes of social restraint and social conduct, actually open us up naturally to Santosha by banishing that very greed in our hearts for more, better, and that sneaky “someday I hope that…” form of desirous attachment. 

How about accepting ourselves as we are?  This is definitely where the rubber meets the road in spiritual practice.  We are constantly trying to get better, heal, tinker with ourselves, develop our spiritual or physical or intellectual skills.  

Self-inquiry allows a time and a place for these efforts, but imagine taking on a spiritual, physical, or intellectual challenge while expressing contentment in the process.  It would change our project totally!  

Maybe the effort is the same.  Maybe the dedication is the same.  Maybe things get challenging at times.  But the journey, the process, the road itself is sweet and enjoyable. 

So much of Santosha is about drawing the line between effort and non-attachment.  This aligns the practice deeply with the yogic concept of sattva, or the middle-path of clarity and balance.  

Walking the Rope Between Effort and Ease, Creating Contentment:

If Santosha is what we find when we draw evenly from effort and ease, process and non-attachment, then the path of yoga becomes much more clear.  We have an opportunity to stop measuring ourselves by our successes and failures and focus more on our attitude through those successes and failures.  

We have enough perspective and vision to see what is too much and what is too little in the fabric of our lives.  In psychology this is called the “Goldilocks Principle,” where infants are drawn toward problems that are neither too complex nor too simple.  

We all do this as mature humans: we prefer problems that fall in that middle range.  What we do not realize is that we are constantly taxing ourselves into extremes because our five senses are just so tantalizing.  We just don’t seem to learn from our hangovers: overindulge in food and we’ll get a stomach ache; go somewhere that’s loud, crowded, and chaotic, we will probably feel lonely or withdrawn the next day; if we are sensation junkies and we push ourselves too far in exercise, we’ll feel that pain later.  The reckoning will always come.

There are so many ways that our senses draw us toward extremes even if our preference is moderation.

Our awareness does not change, only the circumstances that the awareness observes changes, and it does so constantly.  The yogi in a state of Santosha is able to remain vertical as that awareness in the horizontal plane of time and circumstance.