by Jenny Saraswati Bichsel
Birthdays can be triggers for so many negative thought patterns: sadness, regret, failure, fear, and of course the ‘shoulds.’ I should have done … in my life by now. He/she should have done … for my birthday. I should be celebrating with a party/dinner/event with a fabulous group of friends… and on and on.
On paper, today I have woken up one year older, one more year ‘past it.’ I have woken up alone (my partner is away on business), away from family in a foreign country, with a sore knee following knee surgery two weeks ago. I’m ‘stuck’ at home, unable to walk far, with no special party plans. I should be celebrating this special day somehow.
But that’s how conventional society would have me see it. Contrary to convention, I find that today I’ve woken up with an enormous sense of santosha. Santosha is a Sanskrit word meaning contentment, or as an old friend of mine describes it, “gentle happiness.” I’ve woken up with a pervading feeling of gratitude, fullness, contentment, and gentle joy.
If I take away all the “shoulds,” all the comparisons and conventions that today traditionally brings, what is left?
I practised yoga this morning. Not the physical Hatha Yoga, but the inner meditative yoga. I practised connecting to the steady field of being that lies beneath (or above, depending on how you experience it) all the thoughts, all the shoulds. There I discovered the real celebration. Therein lies the freedom, the spaciousness, the joy, and that bright, bright light. We spend our lives searching and organizing everything around us in order to achieve a sense of harmony, balance and happiness, when it is precisely all the external things, including thoughts and beliefs, that obscure and cover up the reality of what we are.
In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, Yoga is defined as the stilling of the mind, or rather, what we experience when the mind becomes still. When we can brush aside all the ‘shoulds’ and allow the spinning thought patterns to settle, we can begin to see what lies beneath, what treasure lies within us. “Then the Seer (Self) abides in his own (True) nature.”
On this ‘special’ day, just as special as all the other days of our lives, my sincere wish is for all beings to experience, to know, to touch, or to taste the gift of Yoga.
Jenny Saraswati Bichsel was born in Switzerland, grew up in London, England, and began practising yoga 15 years ago after sustaining a repetitive strain injury from extended hours of computer work in the VFX industry. In 2005 a work transfer opportunity brought her to New York City, where she balanced freelancing in film & TV with teaching yoga and meditation.
Yoga brought her balance, strength, adaptability and ease when dealing with stress. Wishing to pass on these powerful tools, she completed her basic teacher training at the Integral Yoga Institute in New York in 2011, and was invited to teach the weekly Introduction to Yoga class there. She completed Intermediate level training in 2013. In 2015 she became an Integral certified meditation teacher. She is also qualified to teach Kidding Around Yoga for children, Prenatal Yoga, and Raja Yoga philosophy and is registered RYT500 with the Yoga Alliance.
In June 2016 she moved to Rome, Italy, where she teaches both yoga and English full-time. Her yoga lessons are in Italian and English, integrating asana, pranayama, meditation and Yoga Nidra in every lesson. She hopes to give each student a broader and deeper understanding of the possibilities of yoga and of themselves.