WHEW the last couple of days have been busy! I've been running around like a crazy person with the big long experiment I started (that my boss told me was unnecessary...when I was halfway through) that my yoga practice for the past two days has consisted of one round of japa each day. I've been trying to work on my yoga exam in between the science, but I've had trouble concentrating on one question at a time. In the last two days, I've sequenced half of a sixty-minute stress relief yoga class and written paragraphs on three of the required five yoga styles that I need to define, which is a lot harder than it sounds, since I'm required to cite sources! It's one thing to know that, oh yeah, Bikram is the series of 26 poses and Iyengar is all about alignment and uses lots of props and Desikachar teaches highly personalized yoga with an emphasis on yoga therapy, but it's quite another to have to pull out the book and find something to cite! Ah well. I'll finish the exam one day. I hope. :)
It's times like this that I really try to work on santosha, or contentment. Santosha is one of the niyamas, the instructions for living laid out by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras. Satchidananda translates that sutra as "By santosha, supreme joy is gained." What a lovely sentiment! So simple, and yet so difficult--we can be happy if we can learn to be content with what we have. Santosha is definitely a practice, one that my whiny self is not terribly advanced in, but what was it that Dharma Mittra said? Until you get there, be Swami Pretendananda! I'm pretending, all right.
In other news, I think I got approved for my Yoga Journal liability insurance! They charged my credit card, anyway, so one would hope that means I'm approved. :)
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