Hi, friends.
For many of us the clocks have just sprung forward, bringing us another hour of sunlight in the day. The Vernal Equinox — when the length of daylight equals that of darkness - is drawing near. It’s a time of gradual but significant awakening, despite anything and everything. It’s a time that reminds us we don’t have to do or produce anything in order for the days to lengthen. They just lengthen.
That’s the thing about time: you don’t have to do anything, and it just passes.
Do you feel this?
I’ve been thinking about this lately because I continue to grapple with my drive to produce and do in order to feel worthy / satisfied / “good.” The drive feels so inherent I wonder if it’s at the cellular level.
I am meditating on how my experience of grinding, searching, longing, wishing, working toward, and grappling with have become synonymous with my own existence. Is this OK? Is this right? Is this the only way?
Since the start of the year, in my yoga classes I’ve been slowly weaving us through Patanjali’s Eight Limbs of Yoga. If you’re not familiar, the eight limbs comprise the larger ecosystem of yogic philosophy of which yoga-asana (poses) is just one. There are many layers and paths that lead us toward oneness, or the experience of being not doing. Physical practice is one.
I wrote about another limb, pratyahara or “going inside,” on the very day I had my son.
Most recently, we’ve been exploring the limb of the niyamas, or the inner observances meant to enhance your experience of self and immediate environment. I think of them as deep, holographic concepts that help us find our own peace on our own terms.
The niyama I’ve lately been pecking at is santosha, or contentedness. Steady. Abiding. Spacious allowing.
What does it mean? Here’s what I think it does not mean. Contentment is not complacency and it is not apathy. It is not giving zero fucks (santosha gives fucks!) nor is it a toxically positive everything happens for a reason / it’s all gravy baby vibe.
No ma’am. Santosha threads the needle, strikes the balance, makes the tightrope bounce juuuuust right. Santosha is steady, sturdy, and transcendent. This kind of contentment dives deep below the troughs and the crests of the waves, sinking peacefully down to the bottom and sitting aware on the ocean floor.
This contentment is peace in the midst of the deeply dissatisfying, wildly exhilarating, or terribly distracting.
Santosha is when the dynamic equilibrium HITS. That’s the spot! Santosha is the Vernal Equinox, only made possible by all the long nights before and the long days ahead.
It challenges me, can I be unbothered?
My identity has shattered, reformed, and shattered again. Things aren’t happening the way I want them to. I’m fucking TIRED. AND. Life is stunning and I am the absolute luckiest little fucking duck ever.
Where is my peace? Can I allow? Can I be unbothered?
Can you be unbothered?
Not unaware, not unaffected, not impermeable. Just…unbothered.
A favorite moment of mine is a subtle one: when someone jostles or brushes you slightly and they realize, and you realize, but no body says boo because you both just allow it and you know it’s fine.
When reflecting upon the idea of santosha, at first I thought of a fulcrum. This Libra loves a balance. But contentedness isn’t really that. Because while a fulcrum is steady, it’s also unmoving. It’s outside of the dynamism of the equilibrium. It’s there despite it. Contentedness must come from inside the dynamic equilibrium. A little of this and maybe a little more of that.
I wrote these words a year ago, pregnant:
As a kid, one of my ballet teachers would often tell me I looked like a Weeble. A Weeble wobbles but they don’t fall down. They’re roly poly toys from the 1970s with weighted bottoms so they always come upright, no matter how many times or how violently they get knocked over. She didn’t mean it as a compliment. I was doing chainé turns in pointe shoes in a body that was a long, long noodle.
I thought I was spaghetti but I was bucatini. No center, yet.
Nearly 6 feet tall by age 16 and grazing 100 pounds. Of course I was wobbling; my body was undulating as I searched for equilibrium within (note, dear reader, the search has been fruitful but remains underway).
With the Spring Equinox I’ve been thinking about this. The ability to experience imbalance and come back upright. Like Neo dodging a bullet in the Matrix. The ability to get pushed every goddamn which way — by the waves of life, by the tone of an email, by the sudden loss of a next door neighbor, by the collapse of another piece of scaffolding. Long nights of winter eventually become long-ass summer days. We have an extra hour of daylight these days (in the US) to remind us that. The Spring Equinox is coming too. We are approaching the fulcrum.
Nothing is static. Not a body, not a mind, not a perfectly still-looking yoga pose, not a relationship, not a planet. And thank god! The more we wobble and come back upright the better. The more we dance. Imbalance allows us to find balance.
To be honest with you, in times lately I’ve felt like a Weeble who did fall down. Can you imagine that. A broken Weeble. A roly poly who no longer rolls. A human who isn’t DOING enough (in the capitalistic, intense way that society and subsequently I have defined “doing enough”) they’re just being. A human who used to work pretty much all the time, make a good living, travel globally constantly (and have the STATUS to show!!!), and was right smack in the middle of so much; and now is very much no longer that.
Pregnancy permanently remodels your brain, though, so what was I even expecting?
We all have acts in our play of life. Sometimes we’re surprised when the scene ends and sometimes it feels like it’s just dragging on. In my current act, which is raising a baby full-time, I’ve often been surprised by the characters I thought would recur who have disappeared. But likewise there are dear ones who’ve appeared that I never saw coming. Losses and joys every single day.
The work is finding contentment in the joys and contentment in the losses. The work is having a damn sense of humor.
A dear friend leads a weekly embodied movement class which is… transcendent. While we’re nearing the equinox, or mid-point of seasonal light, we are nearing the end of the astrological year. Pisces is the caboose. She told us, “Let your body feel all of the wisdom it’s been carrying for the last year.” And I really fucking felt that. I felt steady and at peace with the totality of all the good shit and bad shit that a year will inevitably bring.
She pulled us a card from the Wild Unknown Alchemy Deck, in honor of the watery Pisces new moon. It dragged me all the way to truth town, USA.
REX MARINUS. The Drowned King.
“The Drowned King prevents tyranny and redistributes power. We all must experience this energy from time to time to stay balanced. Wear it like a badge of honor.”
“In alchemy, the archetype of the king is often used as a symbol for the ego— the aspect of the self that is attached to its title, name, and identity. It is said that the Drowned King is a required phase in the process of transformation. Only through dissolving who they thought they were is the king able to become who they are destined to be—a kind and benevolent leader.
How does the drowning occur? Not voluntarily (!), that’s for certain. Through circumstances beyond their control, the King is brought to their bottom, to their knees. […] The Drowned King eventually resurfaces as a fully change, benevolent being.”
Phew! Damn, I am the drowned king. I was a grinder. I ground myself, I ground others around me, I was always grinding. I lived a life of yang up until a few years ago; now I’m in the rooms of yin. Or arriving there, by hook or by crook. Watery, softened, giving birth to Rivers, being more and doing less (as defined by me inside White-Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy TM bell hooks). It’s sucks sometimes. It’s hard.
RARELY VOLUNTARY is key here. That’s the stinger. That’s the killer. Life will scrub ya! It’ll getcha! And you can fight it or you can allow it. The scrub comes either way. The drowning arrives. The acts change. The days lengthen. You get the point.
Perhaps you, too, are the drowned king (or drowning). Don’t fear the drowning.
I have to be honest that I have in recent times felt so obsolete, meaningless, and forgotten. I realize it doesn’t make sense, but motherhood is absurd in that way. Even if you’re not a mother, you may relate to this pang. You were once at the center of a web and then you find yourself dangling alone on a thread.
None of it matters at all and all of it matters a lot.
I was once in Ojai sniffing around and I found myself eavesdropping on two dudes. They were discussing respective journeys with intense amounts of psychotropics in order to scrub their egos. Leave it to the ego to try and scrub itself and then share about it! LOL
I was amused, maybe a little snarky in my own mind, yes, but unbothered. We’re all trying to find peace in our own ways. Bless.
It’s been a year since last Vernal Equinox and what wisdom is your body carrying? It’s been four years since the explosion of COVID and I don’t even know what to say about that, except that we are fortunate to still be here. Except that time is the slickest magician. Time expands and swallows you in those moments and then *poof* collapses into a single point: “it happened.”
I was reviewing my family tree the other day, my sister sent it to me. Full, complicated, beautiful lives, I can just imagine, distilled down into dates born and died, maybe married too. Larger than life humans become abbreviations in tiny font.
I felt deep appreciation looking at my ancestors in two dimensions and eight-point font. They became abbreviations so I could bloom larger than life, then I’ll return the favor to my son’s son’s sons someday.
Santosha is the allowing, though you can still have your emotions about it. Salty or resentful, devastated or joyful. You can be an activist while you’re alive. You can take it alllllll in. Santosha before the drowning; Santosha in the drowning; Santosha in the drowned. Santosha in the view from bottom of the lake, river, or ocean as your armor drifts away.
Love ya, bye!
Birdseed is for my personal, dharma-fueled writing, but I’m also a coach, strategist, and consultant. More ways to work with me here.
If you’re in Los Angeles…
March 30 at 9am is our next plant meditation at Merrihew’s Nursery in Santa Monica. We sell out and would love to have you. Tix here!
Embodied Creativity Workshop: What do you think about placenta paintings? I’m planning an IRL placenta-painting workshop in Los Angeles in May. Stay tuned + email me if interested.
Prenatal Yoga + Meditation Workshop: My lovely friend Kat Colla + I are leading a prenatal yoga and meditation workshop in April. Location + sign-up details coming soon. Email me if you want info!
Jess, thanks for this teaching on santosha! and for writing about acts, chapters, the experiences of mothering....Love ya!