8/27/26 Live Session Recording (Module 10)

Niyama of Satosha (contentment)

I started to have a great interest in yoga philosophy. I have been doing yoga quite a long time but it was only asana and breathing. Yes, I had learnt the theory a little bit before but I thought it was kind of boring to me at that time and I was more focused on achieving a good looking posture. Didn't really realize yoga is so much beyond that.

Finding contentment in a discontented world. That sounds like tremendous of practice, dedication and on going discipline which I kind of lack of and I have to admit those are my weakness that I need to work on. Contentment is from the connection to yourself, unwavering trust in self. A lot of individuals have difficulty of trust in self including me. Is it meant to be hard? However listening to affirmation and talking to myself in front of mirror every morning helped me a lot to overcome this self trust issue. For a long time, I let my ego control myself. I still hear my ego telling me whatever it wants to say but the difference now is that I do not let my ego to dictate myself. Today I can observe it and kind of know how to gently separate it from my true self. I found out this practice is not one time practice. This is the practice that I have to do every single day just like we need to injest food and sleep every single day. When I miss this practice several days, I know immediately I am going back to my old self. So our mind needs to be nourished as much as our physical body, definitely.

I enjoyed listening to the story of going to the wood and live there for 27 years. Maybe not 27 years and not completely alone by myself but I would love to live in the wood without the connection to the outside the world for 6 months. That has been always my dream. But at the same time I also try to be contented wherever I am at this moment and feeling gratful of what I have right now because there are happiness everywhere. Everyday not might be happy but there is a happiness in every day if we know how to perceive it.

Watching this week’s recording on Santosha felt pretty validating and comforting to be with my fellow “recovering perfectionists” and overachievers. I couldn’t help but think that it makes a lot of sense for folks in this class to relate to that, because we are literally all enrolled in a class that no one forced us to be in simply for the sake of improving ourselves and becoming “better” humans in service of others. A little ironic, lol.

In the module reflection assignment for this week, I talked a lot about how I have spent most of my life always striving for the “what’s next.” From getting into the “right” college, to landing the “best” internship, to finding the “perfect” job, it just felt like a never ending cycle of needing more and never fully celebrating or being satisfied with the work it took to get there. So contentment feels like a super salient and resonating topic for me.

I feel like contentment is both a practice and an innate knowing or feeling. It is a practice in the sense that I have to consciously slow down to notice and appreciate what is already here. I practice gratitude for the life I have built, the people I have in my life, the experiences I have had, etc. Santosha reminds us that we don’t have to be continuously chasing the next thing, and that we can be grateful for what we currently have in the present and recognize that it is enough. But I also appreciate how it doesn’t equate to not having goals or wanting to be better. Those things can and should still exist simultaneously.

I also think contentment is a knowing or feeling. For me, it feels like a genuine trust that I am exactly where I am supposed to be, even when where I am feels difficult, uncertain, or different from what I imagined. This connects to some of my previous reflections about learning to trust my own inner knowing rather than getting caught in the endless “what ifs” and “maybes” of my mind. Santosha feels like an invitation to trust and find contentment in knowing that I can navigate life without having everything figured out. It’s like true contentment with self.

I have always had issues with sleep and have had weird sleep paralysis and vivid dreams that keep me up at night. Sometimes I find it hard to go back to sleep after these incidents. I found the sleep study/mindfulness interesting because I am always aware of my sleep habits so it was nice to actually be able to write what I noticed down instead of noticing it and then moving on. I think I am going to invest in a sleep journal. 

Santosha made me reflect a lot about how I am perceived by others and how that may or may not affect how I behave. A lot of these modules and weeks have been heavy on self exploration for me so this one particularly was interesting. 'what are the things that disrupt your peace when you are truly alone' was a huge question that I had to keep asking myself and I think I am still trying to figure that part out. 

Seeing the obstacles to contentment slide was enlightening because some of the things I didn't even really consider to be barriers personally, but they could be holding me back subconsciously. 

I love the chakras and I spend a lot of time focusing on them in my own practice! In this line of work especially since a lot of us are social services or human service workers we often have to ask ourselves what we are contributing to the community and what do I stand for? This can change day to day and can look different for everyone. I try my best to think about my contributions often to help keep myself from burning out. It is not always about what we are giving and more about what I am gaining. 

I have learned that rest does not always come naturally to me, especially when I feel like there is always something else I could be doing. I am working on viewing rest as part of the process rather than something I have to earn after being productive. In facilitating, I would share the importance of giving ourselves time to pause, process, and integrate new experiences. Sometimes creating space to simply breathe and notice what is happening internally can be just as valuable as continuing to move forward.

I think it is important to approach Santosha with compassion and without suggesting that participants should simply be “happy” with difficult circumstances. Contentment can be framed as finding small moments of acceptance, presence, or gratitude without denying what someone is experiencing. I could invite participants to notice what feels supportive in the present moment, even if it is simply their breath, a moment of quiet, or the ability to make a choice for themselves. This allows Santosha to be an invitation rather than an expectation.

I really appreciated a lot of the conversations during this section, and I particularly enjoyed this week’s grounding that Alejandro offered.

In terms of sleep, I used to be an excellent sleeper, and I could sleep anywhere and fall asleep whenever I wanted. Then I adopted my third child, who has significant special needs, most of which are early largely trauma-related. He didn't sleep through the night until he was about eleven years old, and so, for the most part, neither did I. Even though he's a bit older now, I feel that those years have really changed my relationship with sleep. I've been working on it, being more intentional about turning off screens and making sure I get enough exercise during the day, but I appreciated having my attention brought back to this aspect of health. I guard my sleep, and turn my phone off at about 8:00PM, and because we don’t have power late at night (off-grid living!), I got to bed early and wake-up early.

I also really appreciated the definition of Santosha that Jen offered, particularly the idea of it being a lack of desire for something we don't have (no problem), or not needing to alter or change something about ourselves (much harder!). That's still landing for me, and I've been doing quite a bit of journaling and processing around this.

And then there was the idea of an unwavering trust in self and gratitude for self, which I wrote in capital letters in my journal. I think that's a really profound way of framing this niyama - thank you, Jen!

I've also been thinking about something Stacy said about sometimes wanting to uproot your entire life and move to a cabin in the woods, because in a way, I've done that. I moved from a comfortable life in Canada, in a city, to living off-grid in South Africa. So I found myself wondering whether that actually leads to contentment. Does changing our external circumstances bring us closer to it? And how does that relate to our ability to serve others?

For me, this move was part of a much bigger expression of who I am, and the more I can come back to who I am, the more I actually have to offer others. I don't know that the decision itself, or being here rather than somewhere else, has necessarily brought contentment. Although I can't deny that there is a certain peace of mind that comes with geographical distance from places that feel unsafe in the world right now, as well as the mental stress of being constantly bombarded with this stuff. I grew up in Western Canada but lived for a long time in Ottawa, Canada's capital, and that sometimes carried a fair amount of stress about things happening politically, particularly with our neighbours to the south. Being geographically removed from some of that has genuinely brought me some peace. And I don't mean that as an insult to anyone, but at times living in Canada feels like we are living in a really dangerous neighbourhood, with little ability to participate in what needs to change.

I also appreciated Alejandro's comment about sometimes wishing he could just rescue kittens, but then saying “that's not his calling". I run a charity here in SA, and often (daily) think of converting it from a place that serves people into a pit-bull rescue centre. I love animals, and people are just so freaking complicated! But that's not my calling, at least not right now. Not today. Not today.

I also thought about the question: How can we be content when others are suffering?

I think that's a particularly relevant question in my life. The work I do and the community I live in mean that I'm often surrounded by suffering. There is significant poverty, violence, crime, loss of life and property, addictions, children raising themselves and just general hardship. And sometimes it can feel difficult to find contentment in the middle of all of that.

Something I have come to hold onto is this (I think I read it from a Byron Katie book?): it's not my turn. Today, right now, it's not my turn. At some point, we will all experience pain, loss, illness, the loss of a job, or any number of the difficult things that life brings. But today, in this moment, it's not my turn. So instead, what can I do to perhaps make someone else's suffering a little less difficult, and to help them to feel a little less alone with that pain?

I've also come to understand that I cannot make someone else's suffering any lighter by taking it on myself. All that happens is that now there are two people suffering. I've done that before, and I've worked really hard to recognize that tendency in myself. I think it's partly a trauma response, this instinct to take on another person's pain or suffering as though somehow that will help them.

Having a partner who is a recovering addict has really reinforced that lesson for me. Taking on his suffering doesn't make his load any lighter, and it doesn't support him in any meaningful way. What does support him is when I am grounded, when I'm regulated, and when I continue to attend to my own needs, even when he's struggling.

That's where a lot of my thinking about Santosha is taking me at the moment. I'm still sitting with it, still journaling, and still working out what it means in practice, and looking forward to watching next weeks recording!