Be Content Even If You're Broke

Are you experiencing financial uncertainty or desperation, a sinking feeling over the Gaza situation, winter holiday blues, or any other personal stresses?

Finding Santosha (contentment) may seem difficult right now.

But here is what I love about the santosha....

Santosha is not translated as elation, bliss, or happiness. It is translated as "contentment". I find it more reasonable, but perhaps not as recognizable to experience santosha.

This is what contentment means, to me:

1. Being OK at this moment...or knowing that at some point in the future you will be OK again

2. Finding perspective

3. Being at ease

The thing about santosha is that you don't always notice it. This is because we tend to be socialized and habituated to exist in more extreme states of being. Sometimes fleeting moments of santosha, or even days and months of santosha are with us, but we do not notice because we are seeking (grasping) something more dramatic.

I offer this suggestion in the midst of troubling times...keep your senses open to noticing moments of contentment and when they come and go; as you become aware of these moments, allow yourself gratitude that a particular moment was OK.

This may not solve the world's problems or even your own, but not everything can or needs to be solved right at this moment. Perhaps however, the more individual and collective moments of contentment we live the more readily problems will resolve.

Another way to reinforce this "noticing of contentment" is as follows:

The next time someone asks you "What's new?"...rather than furiously searching your brain for a dramatically "good" or "bad" event to report.....respond with, "I'm content at this moment".

Deborah Bernstein is a yoga teacher, owner of Florian Villa Yoga Retreats on St. John, and former corporate finance director of a Fortune 500 company. A portion of all proceeds from Deborah's yoga retreat business supports families of fallen firefighters and disabled veterans. http://www.florianvilla.com and http://florianyoga.blogspot.com

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