By Joy Meade
My eight year old son is an avid collector of rocks. From the time he could walk, he started
amassing his collection. Now, he brings new rocks home from the school playground every day.
I’m no geologist, but I’ve learned by reading with him, that different types of rocks form different
types of mountains. One type of mountain manifests itself as enormous slabs of rock jutting
through the ground. This type of rock (metamorphic) is the deepest layer of the earth’s crust and
is drawn to the surface by seismic events, like earthquakes and volcanic activity, the earth
shifting to reveal what lies at its core.
When I was new to yoga, a teacher asked us at the beginning of class, “What if the only yoga
pose you could practice was Tadasana/Mountain pose?” It became an engaging inquiry during
class to discover our Mountain energy and explore how we were rooting in each of our postures.
Even backbends and inversions became an opportunity to explore our foundation giving rise to
the posture unfolding and opening. This inquiry flows through my mind on a regular basis, but I
had no idea at the time how it would help me build stability through a seismic event that lay
ahead in my life.
For me, Tadasana is an embodied representation of santosha, or contentment. A reminder to
relax into the present moment rather than bounding into the next thing. In the Yoga Sutras,
Patanjali states that “Contentment brings unsurpassed joy” (YS 2:42). Santosha is the second
in Patanjali’s list of niyamas, or internal disciplines. The niyamas bring us into an awareness of
how we relate to ourselves and tend the inner landscape of our minds and hearts. It can be so
easy to get caught up in what is physically visible and present, but our yoga practice reveals
that the source of true fulfillment and purpose lies beneath the surface. For many of us, the
pursuit of having and doing leaves us feeling trapped in a cycle of emptiness and futile attempts
to fill that emptiness. The niyamas are an invitation to bring these cycles of internal suffering to
stillness, and in the stillness discover that we already embody a boundless capacity for the joy
we are looking for.
I haven’t always found contentment a very joyful place to be. It can be so easy to think of
contentment as an inertia into which we settle when we wish our circumstances were different
but feel powerless to change them. Forgive me if I am projecting here, but does anyone else
ever struggle trying to be content while pursuing career aspirations, or while seeking deeper
connection and more fulfilling relationships? My yoga practice began to unfold a new
perspective of contentment: rather than a defeated acquiescence to my situation, a commitment
to meeting the moment with whatever energy and ability I have in each new moment. My
teacher Rolf Gates phrases it as “acceptance without resignation.”
In 2020, my yoga practice was catapulted back to the inquiry of that early class. While the world
was reeling from the Covid pandemic I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Through a
mastectomy, chemo, and radiation, my yoga practice supported me in unimaginable ways. I
would like to be perfectly transparent here, it’s not that yoga made this experience easy or
painless, but my practice did give me a framework for finding stability in the chaos and the
unknown. Throughout this journey, I felt the very tangible, present choice to either give up on
my practice or to show up powerfully for myself. To think this was the end of yoga, the end of
vitality, the end of feeling good in my body, or to surrender to the process and get to work…in
whatever capacity I could…even if it looked VERY different from what I thought yoga was.
One of my first rehabilitative exercises was to stand with my back to the wall and work to stand
up straight until my shoulders could touch the wall. As I stood there for a few minutes at a time,
working through scar tissue and fatigue, the words from all my teachers and decades of classes
came flooding back. I worked to root the four corners of my feet into the earth, to feel that
rootedness bring active energy to my legs, thighs drawing my knee caps up. Allowing that
energy to flow up into my core, I worked to lengthen my spine any amount, micro-shifts. I
worked to roll my shoulders open, broadening my clavicle, and opening my heart. Opening my
heart to THIS present moment, and being available to THIS body breathing, even though I felt
like I had been transported into someone else’s body.
It can be easy to overlook a pose like Tadasana and think of it as something we’ve outgrown
and moved beyond. In reality, it is central to the heart of every posture. As we draw our attention
inward, rooting into the strong stability of our core, we are then able to expand to our greatest
height. Tadasana punctuates our practice, a place to collect ourselves and gather our energy,
where we can reflect on the journey and come home to the heart. I would guess that we have all
experienced our own seismic events in life. I want to invite you into this Tadasana practice,
wherever you find yourself in your life cycle. To root in whatever way you can, to grow spacious
in whatever way you are able, to breathe whatever amount of air you can sip in, and to feel into
the strength, courage, resilience, and vitality that is being drawn from the deepest layer of your
core.
Santosha does not make us the passive recipient of all life has to throw at us, but it allows us to
meet life with the active engagement of the mountain. Not the reactive volcanic mountain, but
the shoal. Slowly, over time, building and gathering strength beneath the surface to eventually
push through what has covered it, the deepest layer of your core emerging from the center of
your experience, and bringing with it unsurpassed joy!
Quotes
“Contentment brings unsurpassed joy.” – Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras 2.42
“Without concern for results, perform the necessary action;” – Bhagavad Gita 3.20 trans.
Stephen Mitchell
“Even in the face of all the things you can’t control…there’s something you do get to control.
Choose to let it give you wisdom. Be willing to find joy in the small spaces between fear and
confusion, and make that the moral of your story.” – Dawn Barton, Laughing through the Ugly
Cry
Feeling it in Your Body
Tadasana/Mountain Pose
Feeling into the four corners of your feet (the big toe ball mound and the pinky toe ball mound
along with the side edges of your heels), root energetically pressing those corners into the mat.
Feel that energetic rootedness bringing engagement to the legs and flowing all the way up into
your spine, bringing the energy to lengthen the spine all the way through the crown of the head.
Notice if your shoulders are tensing and rising. Could you exhale and release them down? If the
shoulders are rounding forward, as they often do to protect our hearts, could you round them
out and back to broaden and open through your chest? Meeting this posture with the
spaciousness of your breath, feel into your ability to meet this moment with the actively
energetic stability of the mountain.
Goddess Flow
From Tadasana, step one foot out to the side a little wider than hip width. Engage your
mountain rootedness, pressing through the four corners of your feet, and reach the arms
overhead as you inhale. Exhale bending the knees, and bend the elbows to come into Utkata
Konasana/Goddess pose. Remaining rooted through your feet, keep knees stacked over ankles
and spine lengthening over your hips. Firmly rooted, recognizing your divine birthright of
wholeness, with your open heart seated at the center of your experience.
A mantra for cultivating a love that can surround everyone and everything you
encounter:
Aham prema (I am divine love)
Shanti, shanti, shanti (peace)