Tag: Santosha

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The best way out is always through

Resilient tree growing through a fence
A resilient tree shows us the way through

Resilience. That’s what comes to mind each day as I pass this tree on my walks around the neighbourhood. Resilience in the face of suffering. Perseverance in the midst of pain. 

You might have seen this unusual tree in the photos I shared on Instagram last week as we saw yet another stay-at-home order announced. I offered it as a reminder that we have within us the strength to overcome whatever challenges stand in our way, to make it through to the other side – we need only find a way to connect to it.

Sometimes the challenges we encounter are of our own making, and sometimes they’re beyond our control, arriving seemingly out of nowhere – like this fence. We could be going about our business, this tree was simply growing in the forest, and suddenly something stops us in our tracks. To be honest, I’ve found myself in that very situation in recent months: stopped in my tracks by unexpected health problems. In the face of challenge, in the face of pain and suffering, how do we connect with our inner strength and resilience and harness its power to guide us safely through?

For me, this connection comes through mindfulness, which of course, can take many shapes and forms. Asana and pranayama, the postures and breathwork of yoga, help me release tension and create space in body and mind so that I can open my awareness to signals arising within. Meditation deepens my practice of svadhyaya (self-study) and santosha (contentment) as I observe, notice, embrace my experience without judgment or attachment, with lovingkindness and compassion. I invite mindfulness into my favourite everyday activities – gardening, baking, walking in nature. I give thanks for the many blessings in my life, without glossing over the fact that I’ve lost my job, that I’m struggling with health issues, that I’m tired of being stuck at home in lockdown. I remind myself of the vital importance of self-love, self-care, self-compassion, and self-acceptance. Connecting to the present moment through these practices fosters in me a deeper connection to myself, a greater awareness of who I am beneath all the mental busyness, beneath the self-doubt, the pain, the expectations and uncertainties.

In his poem A Servant to Servants, Robert Frost wrote that “the best way out is always through” and I believe that’s just what mindfulness teaches us. We learn to welcome the present moment exactly as it is – its joy and its pain, its triumph and its sorrow. We learn to practice acceptance of what is rather than fear of what might be or regret for what was. We take it day by day, moment by moment, breath by breath. We make our way through the challenges, fueled by strength and resilience we’ve cultivated within, and like this extraordinary tree, we keep reaching our branches to the sky.

Tree branches reaching to the sky
Branches reaching to the sky
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Pulling weeds & planting flowers

Spring blossoms

There is a Sufi story I have shared in class several times over the years, its author unknown. It’s called Mullah Nasrin and the Dandelions, and it goes like this:

One day a man named Mullah Nasrin decided to take up gardening. He loved flowers and vegetables and he became an adept gardener. But when his garden became plagued with dandelions, Mullah became more and more upset. Finally he couldn’t take it anymore. He travelled to the palace of the king and consulted the king’s own personal gardener. The royal gardener gave Mullah instructions on how to get rid of the dandelions. Mullah returned home full of enthusiasm and followed the instructions perfectly. But still the dandelions returned. Really angry now, Mullah returned to the king’s palace and found the royal gardener. “You’re a fraud!” he hollered. “Your remedy was no better than the rest! What else can I do about these dandelions?” The royal gardener looked thoughtful and stroked his chin. Finally he said softly, “Mullah Nasrin, there’s only one thing to do. You must learn to love dandelions.“

In mindfulness practice, we are constant gardeners, tending the landscapes of mind, body and spirit. Yoga teaches us the merits of self-study, Svadhyaya, deepening our awareness to reveal the nature of our true Self. When we take the time to observe things like physical, mental and emotional patterns in daily life, we might notice habits, biases, judgments, or assumptions that are shaped by past experience but no longer reflect who we are in this moment. Once we become aware of these old patterns that no longer serve us, we can choose to release them – to pull these weeds from our garden and make space for new plants to flourish.

Neuropsychologist and meditation teacher Rick Hanson speaks often of our ability to change the way our minds work by attending to our thoughts and experiences (check out his fascinating book, Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love & Wisdom). As human beings, we have a negativity bias that is built into us as a survival mechanism. We learn from our past experiences, and those that caused us physical or emotional harm influence the way we perceive and respond to similar situations in the future. To balance this negativity bias and give positivity a chance to take root, Dr. Hanson advises us to take the time to fully embrace positive experiences, allowing them to be absorbed into our awareness to create a lasting effect over time. In an excellent TEDx talk several years ago, he offered a simple exercise to illustrate this practice: recall a positive experience (e.g., the love of a friend/partner/child/pet), sit with that experience for a short time to enhance its effects (e.g., the warm glow you feel inside as you think about the person), and let those effects be absorbed by the mind and body. The more we allow ourselves to fully experience positive thoughts and emotions, the less room there is in our mental chatter for negativity and distress.

Now, what about Mullah Nasrin and his dandelions? Dr. Hanson might say that Mullah could call upon the warm glow he feels when he looks at his beautiful garden and try to associate that same warm feeling with the dandelions. When negativity arises, this technique does not ask us to push it away or deny it; rather, we infuse the negative with positive, we use the positive experience as an antidote to help release us from the suffering caused by the negative one. This could be an effective tool for addressing difficult or traumatic experiences from the past that are creating unhealthy or unhelpful patterns in our thoughts and actions today.

On the other hand, yoga has another teaching that Mullah Nasrin might find helpful: Santosha. Through the practice of Santosha we find contentment and acceptance, embracing whatever arises in our experience. Struggling against the reality of our experience can only lead to suffering – so instead let’s swim with the tide, let’s welcome each moment, each thought, each emotion and sensation as if we had invited it. Open your heart and your mind. Be curious. Explore. Take the time to notice the blessings and simple pleasures in your life and let the joy they bring you fill your vessel to overflowing. Maybe the joy will displace some deeply rooted weeds in your garden, making space for beautiful new flowers to grow. Or maybe, you’ll simply learn to love your dandelions.

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A balance of light & dark

When we assign labels or judgments to our feelings and experiences, we run the risk of diminishing what they have to teach us. Our natural inclination is to crave what feels ‘good’ and is deemed ‘positive’ by those around us, and we avoid what feels ‘bad’ and might be viewed as ‘negative’.  However, by only courting what is good and striving to ignore what is bad, could we not be depriving ourselves of fully half our life experiences? If we shun the dark, can we ever truly appreciate the light?

Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön reminds us that “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” We can try to hide from our fear, bury our anxiety, ignore our distress, but until we have acknowledged their lessons and allowed them to penetrate deep within, we will never be free of them. We will encounter them again and again on our path, sometimes in different shapes, with different faces, yet still they stem from the same roots. To shine a light on them, we must use our mindful awareness to look within, to reach into the darkness of our despair or uncertainty, our anger or fear, and allow ourselves to experience them fully. We open ourselves to the darkness or discomfort without judgment, without attachment, with a deep sense of self-compassion, and we listen to what these experiences are trying to teach us.

There is a reason we begin our meditation studies with awareness of the breath: it is the gateway between our external experience of the world around us and the inner landscape where our true and wisest self lies.  The breath lets us connect to our physical self in a simple, non-threatening way; it connects us to the familiar external world and the way it tastes, smells and feels, moment by moment.  We then begin to follow the breath as it moves within the body and we attune to the physical sensations we encounter there – the lungs, ribs and belly expanding and softening, the way the air feels as it moves through the nostrils and the throat.  Sitting in silent contemplation of the breath, the subtle beauty of the body rising and falling, enables us to connect to the present moment in a tangible way, and it provides an anchor that grounds us in the present and brings us back again and again as our attention drifts.  From this grounded place, we can then choose to open our awareness to the less tangible, to the ever-changing stream of thoughts and emotions that arise in each moment.  It is here that we are often most inclined to judge and label: welcoming happiness and pushing away sorrow, embracing the light as we run from the dark.

Psychoanalyst Carl Jung sagely observed that, “Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.” What if instead of labeling happiness as good and sadness as bad, we simply accept them for what they are: feelings and experiences, in a lifelong journey of feelings and experiences? Perhaps if we can notice when we label and judge, we can begin to acknowledge that it serves no useful purpose. Perhaps if we let go of labels and judgments when they arise, we can instead choose to sit with experiences exactly as they are, opening up to their lessons as a guiding light from within.

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The unsung hero

“I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me.” ~Joshua Graham

When we hear about mindfulness, its many virtues are extolled.  We are told that practicing mindfulness will make us more productive at work, improve our memory, help us sleep better, reduce our levels of stress and anxiety.  All of these things are true, and there are so many more benefits to bringing mindfulness into our daily life.  However, at the root of it all is one important benefit that I do not think gets enough mention: resilience.

When we come to our meditation practice, we sit with our present moment experience exactly as it unfolds.  That experience might include pain, anguish, sorrow, frustration, or anger.  Our mind might throw up defenses against these feelings, try to divert our attention, carry us away into dreams of the past or future, but despite its best efforts, we must eventually return to the present and whatever that moment holds for us.  The more time we spend sitting with experiences we label as unpleasant, the more familiar they become.  Rather than seeing them as something to fear and avoid, we recognise that they are part of us, part of our journey, part of the natural ebb and flow of our daily life and experience.

In the yogic tradition, resilience is embodied in the practice of Santosha, contentment.  Through Santosha we learn to accept whatever comes and whatever goes; we cultivate a sense of equanimity and seek to respond to challenges from that balanced place within us.  We grow stronger, building up our resources so that when storms lash at us from all sides, when the waves are so high we cannot see the shore, there is a well of strength deep within that keeps us buoyed until the weather clears.

Looking back at our life, we see grief and loss, joy and triumph, we climbed tall mountains and traversed dark valleys, and we survived through it all by drawing on the strength within us.  On the days when you feel the weather turning, when the skies are dark and the seas are churning, dive deep inside and ignite the fire within, let it burn brightly and guide your way through the storm.

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The nature of change

Change is inevitable. Deep down we know this to be true. Why, then, do we so often fear change, struggle against it, fight to maintain the status quo? Perhaps it’s because we are creatures of habit. We take comfort in our routines, we feel safe and secure when we are surrounded by what we know. However, when we look within, I doubt there is anyone who cannot recall a time when their routine was shattered, when the best laid plans were completely, perhaps tragically, derailed. No matter how well we plan, how far we try to gaze into the future, we will never be able to see clearly beyond the present moment, and we will never truly know what changes the next moment might bring.

When we resist change, we are grasping at threads, as what we know unravels to reveal something unfamiliar. What if rather than viewing this new tapestry with fear and suspicion, we instead explore its unfamiliar patterns, seek out the beauty in its texture and colour, weave its threads into the fabric of our life. If this life is an ever-changing and evolving tapestry, we must acknowledge that there will at times be changes that challenge even the most masterful tailor.

BKS Iyengar wisely noted, “Change is not something that we should fear. Rather it is something that we should welcome. For without change, nothing in this world would ever grow or blossom and no one in this world would ever move forward to become the person they are meant to be.” To welcome change, we need to open our hearts and minds and learn how to accept whatever comes with grace and equanimity. This is the practice of Santosha. Through Santosha we find contentment with ourselves and the world around us, exactly as they are. We cultivate a place of balance, equanimity, and acceptance within us, and we begin to view all that arises in our life through this lens. When we can live from this balanced place within, the dizzying peaks and deep valleys along our path may seem less dramatic in their contrast, in the way they affect our daily life, and the terrain becomes easier to navigate. If we begin to acknowledge the inevitability of change and we release our fear of it, perhaps we truly can welcome change and all the possibility it brings.