​Yoga is not meant to be practiced solely on the mat. While the mental clarity and inner peace accessed during a typical yoga practice have far reaching benefits, the lasting effects of yoga truly come from the integration of yogic philosophy into an entire lifestyle shift.
 
The Yamas and Niyamas are the guiding forces in yoga that allow for such a lifestyle shift. The Yamas are the ethics of yoga, or the moral compass we should use to guide our lives. The Niyamas are our opportunity to develop inner strength and inner peace. Last week, the Yama of Ahimsa was defined in more detail. This week, the Niyama, Santosha is explored.
 
Santosha, easily translated, means contentment. Finding contentment within ourselves means practicing gratitude for all we have, avoiding the temptation to compare what we have to others, and recognizing that happiness does not come from material possessions alone.
 
So, how do we achieve this? In practice, striving for Santosha might require you to make some daily shifts that could have far reaching benefits.
 
Here are 2 tips for bringing more contentment and gratitude into your daily life.
 
1.Start a nightly gratitude journal
A sure fire way to bring more gratitude into your heart is to reflect on what you are grateful for on a daily basis. When you first start, you will most likely find yourself writing things like “family, friends, home, food,” aka, the basics. While this may seem redundant, you will slowly start to fill the pages with more specifics. Suddenly you are writing about a special conversation with a friend or a tearful moment with your child. Even more so, with the knowledge of your nightly gratitude journal sitting in the back of your thoughts, you might find yourself more mindful of things to be grateful for as you progress throughout your day. This can easily become an entire attitude transformation if you remain consistent with the practice.
 
2.Take a break from social media
As much as we can try to deny it, spending time scrolling on social media only exacerbates our innate likelihood to desire what others have. These desires are set on fire when all social media allows us to see is happiness and perfection. Everyone puts their best foot forward online; which causes us to feel envious of a reality that isn’t completely accurate. The solution? Put down your phone an hour before bed. Consider deleting social media apps to remove the convenience of one-click access. You don’t need to delete your account, but logging on through your phone browser makes it more inconvenient and less tempting to scroll mindlessly when you’re bored.
 
Practicing these suggestions and identifying the many blessings in our lives allows us to have a deeper appreciation for the place we are in rather than constantly striving for more.  This brings our focus to our center, which is essentially where all happiness and contentment flows.
 
Blessings and contentment,
Yoga-Cise
 

​The philosophy of yoga is what allows the physical practice on our mats to transform into an entire lifestyle shift toward inner peace and contentment. One of the foundational yogic philosophical compasses are the Yamas—or the guidelines for our ethics and morals.
 
There are five Yamas, each embodying a philosophical pillar of yoga. Each month, Yoga-Cise will publish a blog elaborating on these Yamas and how we can become better at incorporating them into our lives.
 
September has been chosen as the month to reflect on Ahimsa. Ahimsa, in yoga, means non-violence.
 
On the surface, non-violence appears to be straightforward. Interpreted literally, it means to refrain from acting in a violent way. However, the true depth of the meaning is in the intricacies of what it means to be violent—toward ourselves and toward others.
 
Toward Ourselves
Violence toward ourselves becomes most apparent when we pause to take a look at the inner dialogue we have on a regular basis. How do we speak to ourselves? Are we overly critical, are we consistently showing ourselves loving kindness, or are we maybe somewhere in between?
 
Think about the first things you tell yourself when you wake up in the morning. Your inner dialogue might be more negative than you even realize. Are you condemning yourself for not getting something from your to-do list done the day before? Are you stepping on the scale and feeling defeated when the number is not what you wanted? Are you putting yourself down for waking up later than you planned to? If any of these things ring true, you are allowing yourself to begin the day from a place of self-violence—and this place has the power to impact your mood and your thought processes for the rest of the day.
 
Instead, consider using the morning to practice loving kindness toward yourself. What would it look like if you woke up in the morning, looked in the mirror, and pointed out one thing you love about yourself (mind, body, or spirit). How might your day be different if you reflected on all you accomplished the day before rather than what was left over for you to do?
 
The morning can be a great place to start becoming mindful of our thoughts because we are essentially waking up to a clean slate. Choose to let your first thoughts of the morning be positive ones. Practicing loving kindness in the morning can also allow us to be more aware of the inner dialogue we have for the rest of the day.
 
Toward Others
As with personal non-violence, violence toward others extends so much further than the simple act of physical aggression. Consider, for example, how easily we place judgments on other people. We judge people’s clothes, their jobs, their parenting styles, their skills and abilities, their interests. We do this without even realizing it. Most often, we judge because what we see in others is different than what we see in ourselves.
 
I believe we have all placed judgment on someone else’s interests, beliefs or views because they are different than our own. Through this judgment, though, we forget one very simple and important truth. We all live within our own subjective, personal realities.
 
Each decision, thought, and experience that we have occurs within our own frame of reference. Your beliefs are engrained in who you are because of your personal reality. Even your best friend, who might seemingly believe in all of the things you do, has their own personal reality that causes them to think differently than you.
 
By placing judgment on others, we neglect the fact that their experiences of the world, their reality, is just as credible as our own. We also don’t allow any space to learn from them and their reality. We choose to believe that our reality is the correct reality—when in truth, it just feels that way because it is ours.
 
When we allow judgment to reign free, we shut out some of the light in our own hearts and replace it with darkness—or an inability to connect to others more deeply. Therefore, choosing non-violence toward others requires us to monitor our thoughts, recognize when we are placing judgment, and choose to let it go. We can choose, instead, to find a common ground. To replace judgment with loving kindness and to find a way to connect with those different than us moving forward.
 
 

Bringing mindful awareness into our lives has benefits that are far-reaching. We can bring mindfulness into all facets of life: our exercise and nutrition, our relationships, our careers, our spirituality and our emotions.
 
Emotional mindfulness promotes healing. It requires you to think about what sparks your emotions, how you process them, and ultimately—how you let go of your emotions (or continue holding on to them).
 
Let’s start at the beginning. Think about how often emotions arise in you throughout any given day. Maybe you noticed anxiety starting to bubble up last week. Maybe feelings of anger or frustration reared their heads at some point yesterday. Or, maybe you’ve been feeling gleeful joy for the past few hours. Noticing these emotions is certainly a critical step, but pinpointing what sparks them might be even more important.
 
When we bring mindfulness into our emotions, we are able to detect the onset of an emotional change. This allows us to immediately bring attention to our thoughts.
 
By bringing attention to your thoughts right away, you might recognize that maybe you are feeling anxious because you suddenly remembered the work project due next week that slipped your mind. You might be feeling angry because you began subconsciously reflecting on an argument you had last week with your partner. Maybe those feelings of gleeful joy have been hanging around because you’ve kept your thinking positive and your mind fairly clear.
 
Knowing what sparked the emotional change in us gives us control over what can sometimes feel like a daily or weekly emotional roller coaster.    With careful inspection of our thoughts overtime we will be able to identify our triggers and be more able to cope with our emotions.
 
If you’re ready to start taking back control over your emotions, bringing mindful attention to your thoughts surrounding them is a great place to start.
 
Mindfulness allows us to handle our emotions more effectively because if we are paying close attention to what we’re thinking when our emotional changes occur, we become more apt to reduce the thoughts that bring about negative emotions and increase the thoughts (or lack thereof) that produce positive emotions.
 
Take, for example, that moment you begin feeling anger and frustration. You paused, and you realized that your mind drifted back to a fight you had last week with your partner. Once you have this realization, you now have the choice of what to do next. If you continue to ruminate and obsess over that fight, you might feel your anger continue to build. But, if you allow yourself to shift your thoughts into something more positive (maybe replacing those memories of fighting with a positive memory of your partner), you will begin to feel a shift in your emotions.
 
By choosing to change your thoughts, you’re allowing your emotions to follow suit, thus reaping the benefits by feeling more calm, centered, and at peace.
 
Now, if this fight from last week wasn’t actually resolved, choosing to change your thoughts doesn’t make the bigger problem go away. But, if you allow yourself to relax, you will most likely be more level-headed in your approach to speaking with your partner about whatever it is that’s still upsetting you—thus hopefully leading to a more productive discussion rather than a heated argument.
 
This is what mindfulness affords us: the opportunity to bring more attention into our thoughts so that we can have more control over our emotions. By having more control over our emotions, we can make less impulsive, emotion-driven decisions.
 
We cannot control the behaviors of others around us or the circumstances which may cause us some grief but we do have control of how we respond to those behaviors and circumstances by choosing to focus our thoughts on harmony and peace.
 
An added bonus of mindfulness is the peace that it brings with it.

Sometimes, it is not until we slow down and tune in that we truly feel the weight of our emotions living in our bodies.
 
Bringing awareness to the emotional heaviness we’ve been carrying around is a necessary step in working through and then effectively releasing those emotions (rather than simply ignoring them).
 
So, how do we slow down to become reacquainted with ourselves on this deeper level?
 
Yoga.
 
Yoga can be the pathway to finding peace in our minds and a calm serenity in our emotions. Being able to use our bodies and our breath as a tool to emotional recovery is a profound healing resource that is completely at our disposal, and theoretically without cost, through the practice of yoga.
 
When we cultivate mindful awareness of our thoughts, bodies and emotions through our yoga practice, we create more space to work through these emotions in a meaningful, productive and healthy way.   
 
Here are 5 yoga poses that may allow you to release some of that emotional tension in your body.
 
1. Forward fold, with hands grabbing opposite elbows- Forward folds allow us to physically let everything go, which promotes emotional release as well. 
To get into this pose, find a standing posture at the front of your mat and then hinge at the hips, allowing the top half of your body to fall forward. If needed, bend your knees slightly so you can effectively hang in suspension, bent at the hips. Then, grab hold of opposite elbows and gently sway back and forth. Stay here for 10-20 breaths.
 
2. Humble warrior- Humble warrior serves a dual role as a hip opener and forward fold in one, allowing us to reap the benefits of both. 
You can get into humble warrior from a warrior 1 pose. To get into warrior 1 from a standing pose, bring one leg back in a high lunge, with your hands coming to the mat in front of you. From here, you ground your back foot into the mat on a 45-degree angle. Once you find your balance in this posture, your arms will rise up above your head—ensuring that your hips are facing forward and your front, bent knee is directly above your ankle. Once in warrior 1, bring your arms down to your sides and hinge forward at the hips, allowing your chest to find the space between your legs. Your arms can either remain at your side or rise up behind you. Hold this pose for 10-20 breaths and repeat on the other side.
 
3. Tree pose- Tree pose forces us into stillness, which can bring up a lot of stuff mentally, pushing us to feel the emotions we can otherwise ignore in our hectic lives. 
You can move into tree pose from a standing posture. There are a couple of levels of tree pose, so pick the one that feels most comfortable to you. To begin, ground one foot into the mat, focusing on using this foot as your base. Your other foot will pivot out to the side, with the heel of your foot resting on the ankle of your grounded foot. You can stay here, or, if you would like a little more of a challenge, you can bring your foot up to your calf and find balance. Finally, if you would like more of a challenge, you can bring your foot up to rest on your thigh, ensuring that it is not resting on your knee joint. At this point, you can do anything with your hands, but bringing them to prayer in front of your chest can be calming and centering. Remain in tree pose for 10-20 breaths and then balance on the other side.
 
4. Cat/cow sequence- The fluid and calming motion of this sequence, linking breath to movement, can lead us back into our bodies and out of our minds—allowing our emotions to settle down.
To move into a cat/cow sequence, come to all fours on your mat in a tabletop position. Once here, make sure that your shoulders are above your wrists and your hips are above your knees. From this place, take a deep inhale. On the exhale, round your back into a cat pose, engaging your core and allowing your head to fall. Then, you inhale into cow pose by arching your back and bringing your gaze out in front of you. Move through this sequence at your own pace, linking breath to movement for 10-20 breaths.
 
If you have never practiced yoga before, these are great poses to introduce when you are feeling emotionally tense and stressed.
 
If you are a regular yogi, allow yourself to get reacquainted with these poses—using them as an opportunity to slow down and check in with your emotions from time to time.