I Thought Gratitude Was Cliché…Until I Learned This
Recently during Yoga Teacher Training class on Sunday we were talking about the Yamas and Niyamas, specifically Santosha, the second of the Niyamas, which means contentment. It's about cultivating a sense of enoughness and peaceful acceptance in the present moment.
People sometimes confuse it with complacency or just giving up, but it's actually more like an inner orientation, a way of being at ease with what is while still walking your path of growth. It's about accepting the present moment and recognizing reality as it is, rather than clinging to how we think it should be.
Santosha encourages us to stop measuring ourselves against others, because contentment really arises when we drop the comparison game. At its core, it's about inner sufficiency, "I am enough. This is enough."
One way to develop contentment is through a daily gratitude practice. And honestly? I rolled my eyes a little when I heard that. Here we go again…write down three things you're grateful for, right?
But then something clicked that I hadn't realized before. It's not just about developing a greater capacity for gratitude. It's about developing a greater capacity for experiencing emotions…period. And that leads to increasing the ability to experience the fullness of life.
In psychology, there's this concept called "The Window of Tolerance." It describes the optimal zone where we can think clearly, feel our emotions without being overwhelmed, and stay socially engaged. When we move outside this window, we shift into either hyper-arousal (fight or flight) or hypo-arousal (freeze or collapse).
I already knew that when we numb or suppress one emotion, we numb all emotions.
But here's the point that clicked… the opposite is also true. When we allow ourselves to feel more of one emotion, we create space to feel other emotions too. The more joy we let ourselves feel, the greater our capacity to feel sorrow. And learning how to actually feel our feelings matters, because if we don't, we end up with a tiny window of tolerance, which means we have a limited connection to our human experience.
The goal of yoga is to unite mind, body, and spirit. So by expanding our capacity to feel, we're experiencing more of ourselves. We're exploring a broader range of the emotional landscape of our inner world.
And that gratitude practice? It's not just about developing contentment. It's about creating a larger container of resilience that allows us to experience the full range of our emotions, and in doing so, forge a deeper connection with our inner world. (I realize I said the same thing just in three different ways but that’s how important it is to see the value in feeling your feelings. Don’t be like me who was disconnected for decades and coped via a buffet of unhealthy ways, there is a different way to exist!)
If you cannot bring yourself to that same old "write down three things you're grateful for" routine every night. I found a gratitude practice in Liz Tran's book "The Karma of Success" that actually feels different. Instead of just listing what you're thankful for, you write down three lists; the things you did well (qualities or actions you appreciate about yourself), things you did for others, and things others did for you.
This approach completely shifted my perspective. Gratitude isn't just about what I'm receiving, it's also about how I can offer kindness to others and maybe even be part of their gratitude list. It makes the whole practice feel more active, more connected, and honestly, more meaningful.
