Cultivating Joy
It’s 39 days into summer break, and I still wake hopeful that today will be magically free of fights, tantrums, and tattles. Each day, I am proven severely incorrect.
My social feeds feature others’ vacation highlight reels, so I am convinced everyone else is living it up on pristine beaches, licking perfectly swirled soft serve, and jetting off to Sardinia. Meanwhile, I’m home and the referee of a cage match I feel unqualified to navigate. (Some stats report siblings fight 3.5 times every hour. I estimate 6.75).
During an especially challenging morning, I lamented to my husband about the lack of joy I was feeling. I was exceptionally Shakespearean in my lament, as I recall my forearm strung across my brow as I bemoaned the scarcity of joy in my life.
A passerby could dispute my sentiments by finding at least five aspects of my life I should find joy in. Anyone’s life appears idyllic until we better understand each other’s suffering.
The joy-void was my problem, and one I sought to address. I began a treasure hunt for joy, and the valuable things I learned can support you, too.
The Science of Joy
Joy takes longer to experience than fear or stress—a quick revision of your week likely contains dozens of moments of sharp stress or distress and a sprinkle of delight. There’s a neurological reason for that: “Human beings were not designed to be stressed out all the time” (Doty 26). Our nervous system clashes with modern life, causing a “chronic activation of fight, flight, or freeze response and its release of…damaging effects on the body” (Doty 26). We are stuck in a quicksand of stress wherein “our brain and nervous system receive such an overwhelming data from both the inside and outside of the body, we can not possibly give our attention to every detail” (Doty 39).
To get out of this frantic state, a crucial step must first occur:
we have to relax our bodies
Good news: this is totally possible. You may already have a relationship to a mindfulness practice like Reiki, Yin Yoga, Yoga Nidra, or meditation to facilitate your deeper states of relaxation. These methods are accessible but require our committed, attentive, sincere time to bring the body towards a soothed state of rest and repair.
The body takes time to acknowledge an altered state, which is why in facets of yoga, like Yin, we hold deep stretch postures for length. The body takes 28-30 seconds to even begin to receive input regarding a physical change, like a stretch or movement. We can’t simply command our bodies to “relax!” and have it magically happen with a finger snap. And, if you’re an anxious over-thinker like me, it’s wildly irksome when someone tells me to relax or calm down, as if it were that easy. To relax the body, we need a tangible relaxation practice that involves focused engagement. Here’s a favorite of mine.
Then We Attune Our Minds
While relaxation starts with the body, the mind unlocks a world of possibilities. Our minds may be used to gripping onto the swirling waves of stressful thoughts and chatter, but—drumroll—we control our thoughts. Assisted by a relaxed body, we can “decide what we let into our minds from our environment and what we don’t…This is our power of choice” and it “allows us to focus our attention where we choose, no matter how loud or frightening or seductive the external stimuli trying to distract us” (Doty 60).
A relaxed body generates a focused mind, and a focused mind can direct its attention towards positive emotions, like joy.
Defining Joy
It’s essential we clarify our working definition of joy. While we each have a personal relationship to the term, I propose we avoid likening it to sweeping explosions of emotion, like exuberance or elation. Those are valid, necessary emotions. Yet, in our modern human existence, those bursts of heightened emotion do not occur daily; thus, an everyday hunt for exuberance could create an unnecessary pressure to experience this rarer emotion.
Rather, joy is a deeper upwelling that comes from within ourselves. It extends beyond what is happening around us.
The yogic definition of joy is contentment, or Santosha. Santosha has the roots of San: completely, entirely, and Tosha: contentment, satisfaction, acceptance.
Contentment does not guarantee unbridled ecstasy. It encourages us to acknowledge and accept the present situation, rather than clinging to our preconceived notions.
Joy begins and ends inside of each of us.
How To Cultivate More Joy
Small mindfulness moments can bring some peace, but lasting joy comes from consistent effort and time.
We can experience daily joy by:
redefining our definition of joy
relaxing our bodies
centering our minds
nurturing a gentle space for joy to unfold over time
This last cultivation was my biggest area of work to evoke more joy. I was trying to shortcut and fast-tack joy until I realized joy needed a comparatively spacious timeline. For example, I drink a daily morning cup of cacao. It’s part of my meditation practice and sets the tone for the day. Yet, I had grown to gulp the cup mindlessly, often burning my throat and later forgetting if I had even had drunk anything at all. I needed to apply the magic formula of presence + time to inspire joy from my cacao practice. Mere swigs over seconds were simply not enough to engage with the beauty of the practice and lineage of the small ceremony I sought to cultivate. Thus, it felt fleeting and not the embodied sense of contentment I was seeking.
The practice of presence + time applies to any activity in which we seek to experience more joy. Seeking more joy from your favorite meal? Presence + time. Wanting a more impactful nature walk? Presence + time.
As my teacher says, “Joy lives in you.”