Santosha is one of the prescriptions (Nyama) indicated among the preliminary practices in some classical yoga texts which expound a practice in eight phases. James Mallinson, in The Roots of Yoga, translates this term as contentment (1), and Federico Squarcini (2) and E. Bryant (3) do the same in their translations of Pātanjali’s Yogasutras. The Pātanjalayogaśāstra 2.42 says “From contentment one gets supreme happiness”. Thus it has been said: “The pleasure that comes from love in this world and the great pleasure that there is in the divine realms are not worth the sixteenth part of the happiness that comes from the destruction of desire” (4). The philosopher Epictetus in one of his famous aphorisms said “don’t explain your philosophy. Incarnate it”. If I listen to the body, I feel that a strong desire manifests itself as a loss of balance, a sense of uprooting, it takes me away from the present moment and from the center of gravity. Away from the path indicated by the spine, which teaches us to take root and to flourish. If I manage not to let myself be enraptured by desire but observe it and let it flow while maintaining contact with the earth and the breath, a deep bodily feeling of fullness and of expansion emerges to awareness. Here I can observe the motion of desire without letting myself be overwhelmed. I will have the ability to observe things with new eyes with a mind free from expectations: I will have the opportunity to marvel, to feel interest in life in all its aspects without undergoing the imposition of a model, a pattern of movement, on a bodily level, or behavior and to act with awareness. Reflecting on Santosha also teaches us how to approach the body, accepting it as it is, with gratitude and caution, respecting its possibilities and with moderation. On the other hand, we can take the opposite path, starting from listening, from the body, receive his messages and receive a sense of contentment. Deep listening, the acceptance of one’s emotions, brings satisfaction. The feeling of being at ease, of needing only a few things to be happy: fresh air and space around, a little food, the essentials. Then we discover that the body wants to rejoice, it is “innocent” as Vanda Scaravelli loved to say. The body expresses joy in an intuitive tactile way, with a sense of expansion and fullness in its rooting. It manages to bring out its deepest rhythms to our awareness, a dance that brings all its parts together in a single wave/pulsation. In this moment, if we look around at our immediate surroundings and observe, we marvel at the little things that sit close, a plant, an object. We have the sensation of seeing them for the first time in their beauty, we manage to capture details never seen before, often emotional. The bodily experience renews and gives contentment. This is the power that arises from having rid ourselves of the habit, even, absurdly, by retracing usual movements, almost rituals, but each time with a new listening. Vanda Scaravelli said that when one takes the opportunity hold back, to abandon the effort to become, to cling to something for fear of losing what we have accumulated, then we really begin to learn. We can step out of the box without fear of getting lost. Life can never be enclosed in a pattern determined by a tired habit; it wants to flow like the water of a torrent. When we let life flow, joy flows. So, in a sense I see Santosha as a mental movement that makes us lighter, more fluid, fulfilled.

This is possibly thanks to the letting go of desires, especially the desire to succeed that goes hand in hand with the fear of failure. “With that fear that in life it will escape you something, you end up losing everything, missing Reality (…)” says Etty Hillesum in her Diary (5). Vanda did not specifically mention the concept of Santosha, but often spoke of ‘joy’, a state of mind that leads to resilience and letting go of what no longer serves us. She writes in her book: “…the art of yoga implies severe rigor but at the same time, a gaiety experienced every day. The Italians call it “allegrezza”, that is, cheerfulness, vivacity, a concept that we also find in the Bible expressed by Saint Paul: “And whatever you do, do it with heart” (6). The sense of contentment has always been present in us because it has a direct line with joy, it is its bell. Sometimes in practice the feeling of being loved arises, of being held by big, invisible, loving arms. Fulfillment is about nurturing, maternal, fullness.

Santosha does not depend on material conditions, it depends only on the love that flows from the depths, like a fresh and inexhaustible spring. Satisfaction doesn’t mean inertia, heaviness, but it must lead us to commit ourselves to the values ​​we believe in without attachment to the fruits of action and without the fear of failing. Santosha cannot be obtained with the will, it cannot be born from the repression of desire, it is not a smiling mask that I can wear to cover ambition and greed. It is not even a form of mortification or deprivation which absurdly would become itself a strong desire for dominion and control over the deepest impulses. We need to honestly recognize what is manifesting within us, and know how to wait. Not wanting to speed things up, knowing that the growth of a sense of stability and contentment comes from a complex and non-linear process. Sometimes I like to remember Hamlet’s words – “I could be locked in a nut shell and feel like king of infinite space” and stop there, stay there and sink into this feeling. But Hamlet’s sentence continues: “except that I have bad dreams” (7). We cannot erase bad dreams with our will, but can set in motion a healing process through constant practice. It is like a flower, a plant that will develop from the seed, remaining in contact with the earth, the water, the sun. I can invite this feeling of contentment to stay with me a little longer each time I recognize it among many, with gratitude. Santosha leads us to improve effortlessly by accepting what is there, even the “bad dreams”. We need to be able to start from where we really are in our practice knowing that everything changes and transforms and that, if we are in the flow, we will always be surprised and we will learn. Santosha also means knowing how to measure one’s resources, knowing how to modulate one’s strength so as not to harm ourselves and other beings, knowing how to stop. An ancient Chinese tale tells of a prince who wanted to decide who was the strongest in his kingdom. Many young competitors arrived, they were capable of lifting enormous weights. Then came the man who had the reputation of being the strongest in the kingdom and he gave a demonstration of it. He also carried a small red lacquer box with him. When the prince asked him what it contained, the man opened it and took out a beautiful multicolored butterfly, holding its wings between his fingers. The man said to the prince “this delicate and subtle force is the greatest, I can hold the butterfly by the wings without damaging it”. He opened his fingers and the butterfly flew away. In the tradition of Hatha Yoga, practices are often proposed that are associated with physical effort, with intense exercise. Vanda Scaravelli instead taught us to practice diligently but effortlessly, she taught us to be kind to our body, to become friends with it, to wait until through contact with gravity and an open and free relationship with the breath both the body get in tune with “this inexplainable cosmic interconnection of dynamic movements that obeys the force of gravity….”(8). By developing energy and lightness, in contact with the forces that sustain our lives, in harmony with the breath of the Universe, we will know how much delicacy is needed to look deeply, to let go of what we don’t need. Our path in yoga remains deeply personal and intimate, but inevitably sooner or later we will realize the interdependence that characterizes Life and how connected we are to all beings that inhabit the planet. “Interbeing” is the term used by Thich Nhat Hanh, to say that we are just a thread of a single fabric, each of us is interconnected to all that exists and his life cannot exist separately from the whole. So living Santosha, listening carefully to our desires and recognizing how conditioned we are, will also lead us to understand how much our daily choices can affect the balance of our ecosystem. Living Santosha we remain in harmony with this beautiful dance of life, in which we are not at all in the center, but only a small part, one of many. Life is luxuriant and abundant, and wishing is healthy, it’s part of us we shouldn’t be afraid to fulfill a wish, but we must do it by ‘breathing’, receiving a gift and giving it back, as trees do, they breathe with us, giving us back oxygen. Reflecting on the concept of contentment inevitably brings out not only a sense of social responsibility towards our fellow human beings but extends this responsibility to all the living ecosystems of this planet. The Native American peoples knew it well: when they hunted they limited themselves to what served their people without affecting the possibility of survival of other species. We have to find their gaze again, the natives saw the planet as a single sacred living being.

NOTE:

J. Mallinson and M. Singleton, Roots of yoga, London, 2017

Patanjali, Yogasutra, edited by F. Squarcini, Turin, 2015

Pātanjali, Yogasutra, II32, edited by E. Bryant, New York, 2009

J. Mallinson and M. Singleton, cit. p.110, which also reports what was quoted by Vyāsa.

(5) E. Hillesum, Diario, Milan, 1985, p.71-72

(6) V. Scaravelli, Awakening the Spine, London , 1991, p.73

(7) W. Shakespeare, Hamlet

(8) See Scaravelli, Awakening the Spine, London, 1991, p.10