The Second Niyama - Santosha

What is Santosha?

I think being happy is probably something that a lot of us struggle with doing a lot of the time - being happy in the now, being happy and living in the present moment. The social media world in which we live has us all constantly striving for more, and although that’s not always a bad thing, wanting to better yourself and improve in something, we should also enjoy the ride and be happy in the now.

Within the Yoga Stutras of Patañjāli he wrote about the 8 Limbs of Yoga. The second limb is Niyama of which there are five - these are described as inner observances. The second Niyama is Santosha, this translates roughly as contentment and/or satisfaction.

I think if last year taught us anything it's that we need to be happy in the now, because we don't know what tomorrow might bring. The same can be said within our yoga practice, although we want to progress, each time we step on the mat, it is a completely different practice and more than anything we should just be happy and content that we are dedicating some time to ourselves. It doesn't really matter what our practice looks like from day to day, just that we’re giving ourselves that time to practice.

As I said at the start of this blog, social media can be a real force in our lives that makes us feel sometimes inadequate in relation to lots of things, like how we live, where our practice is up to and what we look like. We have to remember is, that social media isn't real life, people are just showing snippets of the best parts, and sometimes even those areas are filtered.

Something else I'd like you to consider in terms of Santosha and how we can incorporate it into our lives, is to try and remove ourselves from the mindset of ‘destination happiness’. This is actually a real thing that people can genuinely suffer with, where they constantly feel like they will be happy when they …get that new job, buy that new dress, they lose or gain some weight. It’s having that constant feeling of never feeling good enough, and the things that we have in our life aren't good enough through constantly comparing with social media content that might not even be real.

When you focus too much on social media or just other people and the lives they're living, it can start to really affect your own life. You can sometimes start to change the way that you would naturally behave, the things that you would naturally choose and start to try and live like that person, and therefore not like yourself. In the long run this won’t lead you to a happy place because you’re essentially living somebody else's life!

Is this you?

If this is you, consider practicing being happy ..sounds a bit weird right? ..but happiness is really a choice, the choice to actually look each day at what you already have. That might be your friends, your family, your health, your job, your pets, your car, your home ..anything that brings you joy, hold onto that, being happy in the now and in each present moment that you are gifted. Instead of focusing solely on things that you don't have that may or may not make you happy.

My advice would be to write a list of all the things that you currently have in your life that make you happy now, and if you ever feel yourself slipping back into a mindset of being happy when you …whatever it is, go back to that list and remind yourself that although that other thing might make you happy, ‘might’ being the operative word, you are still happy now, you do you still have things in your life now that bring happiness, contentment, satisfaction …Santosha to you.

Want to learn more?

If you’d like to learn more about the 8 Limbs of Yoga, our Yoga Basics course has an individual module on them. Or if you’re considering teaching our 200hr, 300hr or 500hr training all touch on the History and Philosophy of Yoga within the syllabus.