Practicing Contentment on Hard Days

I try and live the yamas and niyamas, yoga’s ethical principles. It’s not the only framework I turn to, but it’s often the place I start.

Lately, my attention keeps circling back to santosha, typically translated as “contentment.”

But contentment has felt hard to come by in recent weeks. My mom went into the hospital on Christmas Day with a serious blood infection after foot surgery. She was there for 13 days and experienced a lot of pain. It was difficult for me to feel “content” when my mom was in pain, and there was little I could do to help other than to sit with her and listen.

Then, on the day my mom moved out of the hospital to transitional care, Renee Nicole Good was killed by Jonathan Ross less than two miles from my childhood home.

So there have been many days recently that I’ve found it challenging to feel “content” living in Minnesota. Lots of people I know, including many of the folks in my yoga classes, have shared that they are feeling unsettled.

What Contentment Does Not Promise

We all live messy, complex lives that can’t easily be smoothed out by “practicing santosha.” Yoga encourages us to embrace the truth of change. Contentment is not about getting our external lives just the way we want them. All things are subject to change. Sickness, aging, and death are unavoidable.

Instead, contentment invites us to take an honest look inside and ask, where does the unrest come from in this moment?

Finding the Root

Part of my discontent comes from fear, especially fear of death (abhinivesha). I don’t want to get shot by ICE. Fear leads to stories about safety and danger. Those stories have been loud for many of us.

Perhaps the stronger feeling for me has been hatred (krodha). Faking kindness around other people while hatred simmers underneath helps no one. Wisdom traditions like yoga ask us to look closely at our lives and maintain a willingness to choose different words or actions when we act unskillfully.

This process involves looking at our actions, not judging ourselves. There is a degree of wisdom in simply recognizing the foolishness of our unskillful actions. But there is more.

Practicing the Opposite

Yoga offers a practical tool for confronting feelings like fear or anger: practice the opposite (pratipakṣa-bhāvanam). We do not have to simply “accept” these feelings. This path calls for action, not just watching thoughts drift by. Observation alone leaves the fire burning. When we ignore or suppress these feelings, they can show up elsewhere, through poor sleep, increased pain, tension in the body, and strain in our relationships.

Fear

For many people, yoga practices cultivate courage, inner peace, and resilience, the opposite of fear. Deep breathing techniques (pranayama) calm the nervous system, helping to manage anxiety and promote a sense of security. Physical postures, such as Warrior poses, help build a sense of strength and confidence.

One easy method I have found to counter feelings of fear is to simply look around me. Yesterday, for example, before I started my meditation practice at The Marsh, I marveled at the beauty around me, both in the meditation tower and the nature that surrounded me. In that moment, nobody was coming for me.

Hatred

Hatred does not dissolve through force. One of the most common methods to overcome hatred is to cultivate goodwill. The practice of loving-kindness (maitri) meditation invites wishes for well-being, both for ourselves and others. The practice is to wish others to be well, happy, skillful, and peaceful. Goodwill is a pleasant state. Loving-kindness training is a research-backed practice associated with many benefits, including reduced stress and stronger social connection. (Incidentally, it also works for law enforcement officers.)

Goodwill does not mean cheering on harmful policies or actions. Wishing well does not equal approval. Unskillful actions hurt everyone involved. Nearly every wisdom tradition’s ethical framework starts with nonviolence. Yoga does too through ahimsa, the commitment to non-harming.

If you want to practice right now, these are some loving-kindness meditations from Pretty Good Meditation: 72, 67, 52, 41, 25, 19, 4.

Carrying What Cannot Change

Practice requires participation. For these practices to “work,” I have to actually get on the mat and move. I have to sit down on the meditation cushion. I have to slow down and feel the heat of anger without feeding it. Reading about these practices, or writing a blog post about them, at least for me, isn’t the same as doing the practices and integrating them into my daily life.

We all have to find our own path, and yours might look much different from mine. As Megan Devine wrote in It’s OK That You’re Not OK, “Some things cannot be fixed, they can only be carried.” Santosha does not erase pain. It offers a way to carry it with less harm.