Yoga, Health, and Wellness Articles + Recipes

You can find santosha and cultivate contentment through yoga. Does your happiness depend upon what is occurring around you or does your sense of joy and serenity arise from within? According to Patanjali’s eight-limbed path of yoga, we can learn to cultivate contentment from the inside out. Santosha, the second Niyama or moral observance, means contentment. Like everything in yoga, the concept sounds simple, but the implementation takes discipline, desire, and focus. With a dedicated practice, we can shift our perspective and learn not to be constantly derailed by what’s happening around us. When we are living in the midst of a global crisis, you might wonder how in the heck to feel content or happy. You aren’t alone. We’re all in this together.

As I sit here and think about this blog post, I can hear in the back of my head, "I will finally be happy when this post is written." Here I am placing conditions on my happiness and I know that I am not just doing it here, but I am guilty of it in many other area of my life. Thinking about this thought, I ask myself, “am I really going to be happy and content long term when this blog post is written? Or will I be seeking the next goal to place my conditions of contentment on?” Conditions on contentment was never something that I ever gave much thought to, I just assumed that they came with the process of being content, however, fleeting it may have been. However, true contentment does not lie in reaching the destination, but rather in enjoying the process. Something that I would come to learn through my personal yoga practice and the trials and errors of seeking lasting contentment.

What is it about being ambitious by nature? I am always playing with the prospect of somewhere else, or something else, something new. Seeking it has always been my mindset, for as long as I can remember. Until now. Finding balance between my self-determination and so much my brain space can handle? I have to work on getting my life sorted, get a health check, or my goal of drinking more water in this moment, and I can write a list of 20-something things I want to do, or I can try to schedule (more like squeeze in) back-to-back yoga classes into my daily schedule, and I can try to become a better photographer or writer or whatever it is yet all I’d like to do is sit still.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! This week we celebrate how to capture those feelings of good luck and happiness and bottle them up for the entire year. It’s just like the leprechaun finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, right? Check out Mark Morford’s latest class: How to Get Lucky Vol. II: Get Luckier.

If you’re reading this, you’re a seeker. A warrior of love and quester for experiences and purpose. You’ve been on the journey, maybe for a day, maybe for years. This journey of becoming who you are. And, it occurs to me that, at times (maybe at this time) you might feel lost. Your path may feel far away, and the road ahead may seem very murky and uncertain.

About a year ago I shared an article about the Ayurvedic perspective on circadian rhythm. In it, I shared how different times in the day have different qualities associated with them, thus making certain times more appropriate for specific activities.

There is an epidemic in the industrial world that is accepted, embraced, and nearly revered by most of us. Do you suffer from this vastly-spreading, oddly coveted disease? It remains nameless, but you know of it, for sure. If you don’t have it, then you most certainly know a person — or ten — who has caught it and talks about it with a hint of self-importance.