Category: Wellness

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Letter To My Dad

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England, 1972-73. A French man in the UK North Sea. A builder and an adventurer at heart, my dad, Jean-Louis, overlooked the construction of a "jacket", the metallic structure that supports an oil offshore platform. This was the day the "jacket" set sail in the North Sea.

Two years today since my dad went to the other side. Time for a letter...

Dear Pa,

It’s been two years to the day since you passed to the other side. I miss you. Thank goodness, I feel your presence. Always.

After you passed, mom asked me what I wanted to keep out of all your stuff. Your hi-fi music system—the one you bought in England in the late 70’s--and your collection of vinyls were the first things that came to my mind. While I was in France this past month, I listened to your music, many from Latin America--samba, bossa nova, flute of the Andes—while lying down on the couch. With my eyes closed, I could see you sitting in your rocking chair in our living room, savoring your music—something you used to do for hours.

You’ve always loved music and dancing. Oh man, you had so much fun telling me over and over again how you first met mom. You saw her at a dance in an Italian neighborhood right next to Paris, when you were both 19. You invited her to dance. She first turned you away before finally accepting a dance with you--unable to resist to your charm, as you always said. Since then, you two danced every time you had a chance.

Naturally, I’ve always loved dancing too.

You had a work capacity that was out of the ordinary. It was fueled by the fear you always had of not having a roof above your head. Your family marginalized you when you were 17, so you left home, and slept under the staircase of Parisian apartment buildings until you had enough money to afford a hotel room.

Remember when I was five or six? As a carpenter, you brought me with you in your Parisian workshop on Saturdays. Ah the smell of wood… A little later, you sometimes took me with you when you supervised workers on construction sites. You talked with them about the week’s work while we all had charcuterie together for morning break. That’s taught me to adapt anywhere. Today, I cruise from one community to the next, in Atlanta, regardless of people’s economic status, religion, color, and whatever other characteristics.

You had the soul of a sailor and worked on the oceans, on oil rigs, for over 20 years. Maybe that’s got something to do with me living at the other end of the world.

A disease is a shortcut. Shortly before you passed, you succeeded to give yourself over to softness in our relationship. Remember our very last phone conversation? You told me how proud you were of me--of the way I had fought to become a yoga therapist--in America, on top of that. You said “chapeau!” (“hats off!”) to the fact I never gave up on my dream of teaching my own style of yoga. With those powerful words, you finally recognized who I was.

My yoga activity is starting to take off. Can you imagine? I’m actually helping people dance their body and soul through yoga, and recognize who they are. Doesn’t it all make sense, now?

This coming weekend, I’m going to South Carolina, to a festival which will be followed by my friend Stacie’s wedding on the day of the total solar eclipse. My astrologer friend, Randy, says, “Solar eclipses help us to identify the crapola that we need to really, really, really work on. They are a living metaphor. They remind us... They warn us of our most serious needs both individually and collectively. They are not easy to navigate sometimes largely because the truth hurts and we feel naked and weak at such times“. I can feel my own “crapola“ come up today –fear, fear of love mainly. This morning, during my meditation, I heard you whisper, “Let the fear go, ma cherie, you’ll be fine. And I’ll be always here for you anyway“.

I’ll see what I can do, I promise, pa.

My dad and I the day of my wedding on Bastille Day 2007, in our family home close to Paris. Photo credit: Augustin Detienne.

Je t’aime,
Babette

 

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The Man Behind Yoga For Renewal

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Laurent Malterre co-hosted, for years, therapeutic groups in the Bordeaux region with two other French therapists who trained (among other places) at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, in the 80's.

As a yoga therapist, I help my clients speak of their hurt. I work under the supervision of a French, licensed psychologist, Laurent Malterre, who guides me where to go and where to stop in that journey.

Yoga for Renewal is based on what the yogis have been saying for thousands of years—the body and mind are inextricably bound together. That’s how Yoga for Renewal has become a combination of yoga practice and the expression of one’s true feelings through language.

Aline Frati, my yoga master who lives in Paris, inspires the unique style of hatha yoga (yoga of the poses) I teach. In addition to Aline, a man is also part of Yoga for Renewal’s family. Laurent Malterre is a French, licensed psychologist whose practice is niched in one of the oldest streets of Paris, rue des Gravilliers.

Every other week, Laurent and I have a skype session where we share questions, challenges and results that my yoga therapy brings. How does yoga help a person melt their barriers down and, ultimately, share their true feelings? What does a specific symptom--physical, mental or emotional, say of a person, their story and healing path? What does sharing through language, after a yoga practice, bring to the table? How far can I go as a yoga therapist--not a talk therapist— in inviting a person share what they really feel through language?

We’re crafting Yoga for Renewal and what yoga therapy can be.

Laurent is a husband and father to four kids, who loves to spend time in his impressionist-style family countryside home, an hour’s drive from Paris, that he’s transformed into a small retreat center. Professionally, he has a passion for working on issues in intimate relationships and on gender and sexual orientation. He’s also an author and teacher of clinical psychology.

We came into each other’s lives 15 years ago when he helped me through my first breast cancer. Back then, I lived in Paris. Laurent and Aline, who have never met, helped me find my way to health. While Aline guided me to connect deeply with my body, Laurent helped me become aware of the woman I was. Less than two years later, I left Paris for Atlanta--for love.

Fast forward ten years. I knocked on Laurent’s door again, in despair. In the course of one year, I had bought a house in Atlanta with my husband, met a soul who changed the course of my life, walked out of my marriage, and been diagnosed with a second breast cancer a day before my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. I felt so confused I thought I was mentally sick.

Rue des Gravilliers, Paris, France.

The ordeal forced me to look deeper at my shadow side. In those past ten years, I had, again, done so much in an attempt to feel loved, that I exhausted myself.

Breast cancer is the disease of too much giving and lack of self-care. Trust me.

Instead of searching for the love of another, this time, I started to turn the gaze to myself, to see the beautiful soul that I am--to see what my life purpose is. I found that inside my soul, there was Yoga for Renewal. With Laurent’s help, I explored, while navigating through treatments, what healing meant for me as a woman, as a yoga therapist, as a patient and survivor--what the yoga practice did for me, how the relationship with others and speaking my truth were also key to my health.

With Laurent’s impulse, Yoga for Renewal emerged as a “wellness protocol” involving a lot of yoga practice, punctuated with self-awareness and self-expression, through language.

The retreat center, outside of Paris, where Laurent Malterre hosts small therapeutic group week-end workshops.

Giving birth to Yoga for Renewal helped heal my body and soul. I physically felt the miracle unfold. Slowly, from being my therapist, Laurent became a mentor. Yoga for Renewal was born. And so was I.

 

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Speak Your Truth. And Start Healing.

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Sometimes yoga won’t do it. How I realized that going into the hurt and speaking my truth is a must for healing.

Sometimes you can practice all the yoga you want but, it doesn’t do the trick emotionally. The poses and the breathing might help you relax and unknot the tension in the moment, but still, if you struggle with an unresolved emotional hurdle, you may need to find help outside of the yoga practice—perhaps by using your voice and speaking your truth—something that many of us dread.

Years ago, I had a personal experience that made me realize, in a powerful way, that there’s nothing like speaking my truth for my wellbeing. I had moved from France to the States only three months before. John, my fiancé at the time, and I had planned to get married six months later, in France, with our families and friends. We suddenly had to change our plans. An immigration lawyer advised us to get married within the next three weeks as I was on a tourist visa and the U.S. Immigration could stop me from re-entering the country the next time I was going to travel overseas. Three weeks later, we got legally married at the city hall of Marietta, GA. The experience turned out to be traumatic. The “ceremony” at the city hall was a group wedding—which neither of us expected. A dozen of other couples, most of them dressed in jeans, repeated their vows, along with us, after the city’s official, in a large dark room with no windows. It felt surreal. The cherry on the cake was that friends who said they would attend, didn’t show up at the “ceremony” nor at the small get together we had organized, without giving us a heads up.

Freshly arrived from my French culture, I was dipped into an ocean of ruthlessness—at least, that was my perception. I came out of the experience physically shell-shocked. And talking about my feelings with my new spouse brought tensions, so I gave up. I had to find a way to come to terms with my first life experience in my new country of adoption, one way or the other.

I naturally turned to the one tool I knew –my home yoga practice that I had learned from my teacher in Paris. I had never stepped into a yoga studio before and wasn’t going to until two years later. So there I was in the early morning, for many days in a row, doing yoga on my mat in our living room. Each day, the practice helped me unknot the tensions. Yet somehow later in the day, the feeling of being physically shell-shocked came back. Something was unresolved and showed up in my body despite the hours spent on the mat.

All of that changed the day a therapist I knew in France asked me over the phone, “How are you?” The question triggered tears and words. I started sharing what had been weighing on my heart for days. His full presence and deep listening changed everything within minutes. Suddenly, I could heal, continue on with my life, and plan our wedding party in France on Bastille Day 2007.

The experience came out to be a great teaching. I realized that, as a yoga teacher, I was going to use yoga to help people connect physically with the issues, and also help them use their voice to speak their truth. There was no way around bringing clients go into and speak about their hurt.

Being present. Listening. Going into the hurt. That’s what my yoga therapy method is about.

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Is Yoga Therapy Fake News?

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As yoga therapists, we're breaking grounds and making the field--a challenging and exciting time to live!

If you're like everybody else, you don't know what yoga therapy is. Here are four questions to help you see clear.

I get the question almost daily, “What’s yoga therapy? Isn’t yoga supposed to be therapeutic, in the first place?” And it’s true, yoga is a 5,000-year old mind-body practice that early seekers came up with to feel happier. So, yes, yoga is therapeutic by definition. That was years ago, though. Since then, yoga has turned into a physical practice mostly for those who are “fit”!

In the ocean of yoga styles, yoga therapy is a new yoga, a yoga for the “misfits”, which really means a yoga for each one of us since we all shift from being “fit” to “misfit”, and vice versa, during the course of our lives. Here are four questions to help you understand this practice that hardly no one knows yet, and what to expect from it.

Is yoga therapy actually a thing?
Yes and no.

Yes, in the way that the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT), a non-profit founded in the late 80’s in the Western U.S. by a handful of yogis and doctors, has released training standards for yoga studios that want to offer a yoga therapy training program, and for yoga teachers who want to teach yoga therapy. There are 27 IAYT-accredited yoga therapy training programs, and 2,500 IAYT-certified yoga therapists, in the world. Each certified yoga therapist has received a training that answers the IAYT’s requirements, and is committed to obey to a code of ethics.

No, in the sense that yoga therapy is unregulated. Unlike acupuncture, chiropractic or counselling, there is no license given to those who are trained as yoga therapists. The IAYT is working on establishing yoga as a respected and recognized therapy. In the meantime, we’re the first generation, and breaking grounds.

That being said, there are yoga teachers out there who have had no formal training in yoga therapy and, still, who do a job just as good, if not better, than certified yoga therapists. It all depends on the teacher’s quality of presence and knowledge.

Who can yoga therapy help?

Anyone interested in deepening their healing journey. The practice is accessible to everyone, regardless of their fitness level, body type and mobility. I’ve had clients come to me for physical issues--lower back and hip issues, weight management, post-surgery recovery, post-cancer treatment recovery, Parkinson’s disease, and more—as well as for emotional breakthroughs--post-partum depression, grief after loss of a loved one, anxiety, to name a few. Yoga therapy can also help when we simply need to check in, feel and know what is truly going on with ourselves emotionally and physically, so that we can take the necessary action whenever we’re ready.

How does yoga therapy work?

It depends on the yoga therapist. Each one of us works with who we are as a human. Some yoga therapists have a background in physical therapy, others in psychology, others in the arts and more. We all do share one thing in common—we use yoga techniques to help a person create, develop and nurture their physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well being.

I personally love helping a person dive into their body, and feel the emotions that have been stored. My classes start with a specific hatha yoga (yoga of the poses) practice that’s geared to help participants connect deeply with their body. The practice is usually followed by a time where I invite them, thanks to a “toolkit”, to become aware of how they truly feel and then share it with their own words. Body connection, awareness and spoken word. These, to me, are the keys to wellbeing, if not health.

What does a yoga therapy session typically look like?

Yoga therapy works well in one-on-one private sessions or in small group classes or workshops. Other than that, each yoga therapist works their own way. Whatever the setting, you should expect a high quality of presence from a yoga therapist.

In a nutshell, the keys to achieving the benefits of yoga therapy is finding a teacher that you connect with, the believe in the body-mind connection and the willingness to step into that space.

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The Beauty Of Connectedness

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Taking the time to be together with friends for a Sunday lunch, French style, which means home-made food, wine and therefore staying hours at the table.

My journey of bonding in the past decade in the States, with its ups and downs.

Things have shifted for me recently--in a good way. I’m rediscovering the joy of being connected with others. I now have friends who call me, text me, stop by my place. And I do the same.

Life hasn’t always been like that.

We all need to be recognized for who we are, to be heard, to be hugged. In other words, we all need to bond. And since I moved from Paris to Atlanta 11 years ago, I’ve learned not to take bonding for granted.

First, there was that feeling of being uprooted. Thank goodness, I was with my new love and husband at the time. My focus was on him--on us.

Then three years ago, I returned to France to rebuild myself during what I call “the nuclear explosion”. My dad was diagnosed with lung cancer and I was diagnosed with breast cancer, all while I was separating from my husband. Once I recovered, a year later, I returned to Atlanta. By then, everything had changed--me, for a start. My friends too. The friends we had as a couple had faded away and created new friendships elsewhere. The few friends who remained in my circle were scattered around the Atlanta metro area--these American city hubs are tough on friendships! On top of that, I let go of my 20-something year job as a corporate journalist, last year, to be a full-time yoga therapist. With that move, another layer of connections-at least via phone and email, went away too.

Amidst the discomfort and shock from all of the change, I almost decided to move back to France, when suddenly, this spring, everything changed. I started meeting people who recognized who I am. I mean, a bunch of people. All at once.

I met people who had done crazy things—just like I had. I met people who instantly understood what I do in yoga therapy. I even met people who remind me of me when I was 17 taking drama classes in Paris. (Yes, there was a time I wanted to be an actress.) Picking up pieces of myself I left along the way, being recognized and heard for who I am now, showed me that life is meant to be lived, not a struggle.

It was during those three tough years, though, that something changed within me, which laid the foundation for the transformation that occurred this spring.

I paused. I started turning my gaze towards me, seeing and recognizing who I am, the making of my own soul. For the first time, I decided I was not going to wait for someone else to recognize and approve of me. I started recognizing my beautiful side as well as my shadow side. Then, I started feeling love for myself. Slowly, steadily, surely. Love, in all its forms and shapes, needs to start with oneself. There is just no way around this if we want to live a joyful life. And sometimes it takes a nuclear explosion to get there. David Peace, the pastor of my little church, said it quite eloquently, “It’s in the darkness of the soil that the seed grows”.

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What Does Your Body Say?

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April 27, 2017. Imagine a Japanese garden in the mountains of Santa Fe, New Mexico, with hot tubs, saunas, the sound of water and birds... Ten Thousand Waves is the most awesome spa experience I've ever had. 

Learning to listen to our body is a beautiful gift we can give ourselves. Yoga therapy helps do just that--listen to our body, un-knot the muscular structure, feel fully in the moment and find the words to say who we are and what we feel. All crucial steps in our healing journey.

If we’re not sure of how we feel about something, our bodies hold the key to helping us determine our truth. All we have to do is listen. That’s because our body has a consciousness. In fact, our body is the exact reflection of our soul, and goes through our life’s experiences–whether positive or negative—just like our soul does.

For example, when we’re around a person who brings us joy, we feel comfortable and relaxed in our body. On the contrary, when we’re in the company of a person who we feel is hostile, we feel tense and unease. If we could step out of our skin and see ourselves, we would see how much our body language speaks to us.

Sometimes, we experience something that puts us so much in despair that there is no way to vent the grief and the pain. Both feelings become buried in the body.

Dr. Alexander Lowen (1910-2008), American physician and psychotherapist, developed a specific type of body psychotherapy called Bioenergetic Analysis, and worked all his life on the continuity between body and mind. He said “Every chronic muscular tension in the body has associated with it sadness, fear, and anger.”

I see it in my clients and I see it in me. A wound, when not healed, will show itself in the body in one form or the other—through a muscular restriction, or shallow breathing, fatigue or even an illness.

That’s when yoga therapy –which is delivered on a one-on-one basis or in small group settings-- kicks in. First, the practice requires that you pause--a must in the healing process. Healing only occurs when the body and the mind are relaxed, not when on the go. Then, the yogic breathing associated with the movements help you go inwards, un-knot the musculature structure, and read your body’s messages.

Yoga gives you access to your wound, helps you become fully aware of it, feel and sense it completely. Exploring and recognizing your wound, what is weighing on your heart will, in turn, help you express the grief through words and even crying releases. All for the sake to clean the wound and let the healing occur. The process may be challenging at times as we have this natural feeling of being scared of approaching our wounds. Still, when we do the work, it always brings us to a state of feeling more alive and experiencing more joy. And that’s the beautiful thing about yoga therapy.

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What Do You Need, Right Now?

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After all these years in the Deep South, I've finally found a Scarlett O'Hara decor! On April 6 at a fund raiser for breast cancer survivors, at the Callanwolde Fine Arts Center, Atlanta.

“What do I need?” is one of the most powerful questions a person can ask themselves. A rewarding one too since answering your deepest needs will give you more joy and better health.

“What do I need?” If your body is sending signs of being unsettled when you ask the question, this may be a sign that it’s time for some “you time” to check in and find out what you are truly feeling and needing in your life at this moment.

You may need to acknowledge sadness or grief that remains after an event that took place in the past—even a long time ago. You may need to step out of that additional work project that you recently volunteered to take on. The urge for closing an “unfinished relationship” may arise in your life. You may want to shout out an old anger, or to lie on a beach for a week.

There’s a great benefit to answering your deepest needs --it will give you more joy and better health. There’s also a challenge that comes with this process. Answering your own needs may not necessarily be what society, your friends or your family want you to be—which in turn can bring friction. To that, I’ll answer, there is no life without some friction--at least from time to time.

So, are you ready to identify your needs? First, you'll need to set aside some time. Then, you’ll need to pause and listen to your soul. A way to do this is to start a yoga practice. Consider your mat like a therapist’s couch—except your yoga practice helps you get in touch with your body with no risk of getting lost in your own words. The combination of breathing and movements brings up feelings, memories, insights that you’ve, most probably, unconsciously suppressed in your everyday life and “to-do” list. Once these images come up and tell you what your need of the moment is, you can choose to move into action or not.

That’s exactly how I moved from Paris to Atlanta. Twelve years ago, while I was living in my native Paris, an American friend invited me to a Thanksgiving dinner. Her brother-in-law had flown from Atlanta to be part of the festivities, and to spend a week in the City of Light. We fell in love... A week later once John was on the airplane on his way back to Atlanta, I convinced myself that the week of romance was just a fling and that it was better to move along and forget about him. Back in my Parisian routine shortly after, I went to my yoga teacher’s class. Once on the mat, tears started to roll down in the silence of the room and in connection with my breathing. At the end of the class, Aline, my teacher said, “there are things that we need to live.” A month later, I flew to Atlanta spending Christmas with my new love.

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Feeling

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March 21, Jekyll Island, GA. Spring equinox at my favorite ocean.

How feeling deeply, truthfully, fully what life wants us to feel is the pathway to healing.

“Feel what there is to feel.” That’s one of the things I keep saying when I teach a yoga class. Because whatever we experience in life --and especially when the experience is on the painful side--, allowing ourselves to feel fully our own humanness, our own soul is the only way to overcome a situation.

Sometimes, life feels like too much. That’s how I’ve felt the past three weeks. The spring equinox has brought me into an emotional swing. It all started with my Naturalization Oath Ceremony on March 10. Yep, I’m a Franco-American now. I felt like I was losing my roots. While getting ready for the ceremony at home the morning of the event, I stumbled at every step I made, dropped objects from tables and chairs, and realized that my 2-year old Aloe Vera plant was uprooted. I came out of the ceremony anxious and puzzled with a major question--what does my soul want, right now? Continue living in the U.S. or move to France? I’m still waiting for the answer to show up in my heart. I know it will soon.

After my naturalization, I left Atlanta to spend a few days in a small humble shrimp fisherman’s town of 2,000 souls on the Georgia coast. I needed a break after the weeks spent designing my yoga-based Thriving After Illness workshop. I ended up in a B&B run by JoAnn, a Northeasterner who gave up her corporate job ten years ago to move to the South, and open her own small hospitality business. I started coming down with a nasty cold on the very first day of my vacation and so I was in a blur the whole time I was there--but even amidst my haze, something beautifully unexpected happened. I immediately clicked with JoAnn and her friends. It made me reconnect with something I had long forgotten—being surrounded, daily, by friends who drop in and come and share a talk, share their feelings, both their happy times and their struggles. This is a lifestyle I had all of my life in Paris until I moved to Atlanta, ten years ago.

I drove back to Atlanta feeling JoAnn and her friend’s compassion, kindness and joy, as well as the isolation I’ve often felt in Atlanta. My reflection was not one of trying to change anything, but just being and feeling.

For the past three weeks, I’ve avoided the yoga mat. I’ve just started returning to it, this morning, breathing and moving as slow as I could, feeling deeply my own reality, as well as the muscular knots that go with it.

March 28th, my birthday, was a new moon. In numerology, 2017 is the year #1 (2 + 0 + 1 + 7 = 1 + 0 = 1). This new moon in the year #1 apparently means a big shift (I overheard it, the other day, at a talk on energy healing). If you’re also in the midst of a shift, here’s my advice. Stop doing. Instead, allow yourself to feel and dive into the depth of that feeling. I guarantee you, feeling is healing. Let’s meet on the other side.

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Pump Up the Energy with Yoga (and Dance)

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A daily fast-flow yoga personal practice and dance classes have pumped up my energy level, this past two months, and helped me design --from scratch-- my Thriving After Illness yoga-based workshop. Mission accomplished!

Wow! The beginning of the year has been invigorating. I just finished designing what is nothing less than one of my life’s accomplishments—a body-mind, yoga-based 3-day workshop designed for people who have been struck by physical or emotional illness ––and for anyone who’s interested in deepening their healing journey. The workshop, titled Thriving After Illness, invites participants to experience practices that they can do in conjunction with, or after medical treatment, to improve their general health and wellbeing, and re-ignite their life fire. Nutrition, self-awareness and yoga are the workshop’s pillars. Every idea, concept, practice mentioned in this workshop is there for one single reason—I’ve personally used them on my own healing journey, they’ve worked for me and, in some instances, they probably saved my life.

Now, picture this--I wrote the workshop’s script from my home office in Atlanta. Being a small business owner, it’s just me in the office. There’s no one to talk to over coffee or turn to for a motivation boost or a laugh. At the beginning of this process a month ago, I knew I needed to crank up my energy level. Yes, bringing together years of mind-body healing practice into a 3-day workshop script requires high energy—even if you used to be a marketing writer for years, like me!

So you know what I did? I adopted a high-energy morning daily yoga routine in my home studio in Atlanta. From one day to the next, I went from a gentle, slow-paced yoga practice composed almost exclusively of postures on the floor, to practicing breathing techniques that raised my energy level--dozens of sun salutations and standing poses that tested my strength, balance and endurance.

At the same time, I started dancing classes. These were meant to be pure fun. Every Thursday evening, Gordon Neil, Atlanta’s best salsa dance teacher (so I’ve been told), has led us in new Afro-Latin contemporary choreography. The class, which started last month, is small. I’m the only person who’s showed up every single week. The choreography part is hard as hell and I quickly learned that I have coordination and memorization issues. I almost dropped out after the first class, and if it wasn’t for my workshop’s script, I would have. But I realized that the dancing classes, too, kept my energy up. So, I kept on going. Last week, I told Gordon I’m quitting and going to a beginner class. “You’ll have the memorization issue everywhere you go, you need to train that part of your brain,” he commented. Yep, he’s tough. I said, “I’ll think about it” while leaving class, and still haven’t made my mind up yet. It may be time for more softness.

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The Power of Joy

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Moving to Northern England with my parents when I was ten was a time of joy in my earlier years. I moved away from a small Paris apartment -where sunbathing on the concrete rooftop of the next door indoor pool was the only connection to the outdoors-, and an abusive school teacher, to a house with a backyard, a public school 's headmaster who opened his arms, and friends (see picture). This positive environment brought me closer to who I was, and therefore to joy.

How a book on joy –deep joy that has its roots in ourselves rather than outside- has become my bible. Here are the author’s commandments—and mine too now.

When I was back home in Paris at my mom’s, last month, I picked up a book that I had first read a year and a half ago. I had bought it in the neighborhood bookstore that I sometimes visit when I’m in the area.

This time back in September 2015, I picked up the book La puissance de la joie, literally The Power of Joy (the book has been published in the U.S. under the title Happiness, A Philosopher’s Guide). Just by reading the title, I knew it was the right pick for me. I had just lost my dad, and I was recovering from breast cancer and the treatment, while navigating through my divorce. The book turned out to be a revelation.

The author, Frederic Lenoir, is a French philosopher, sociologist, and speaker who specializes in religions and spirituality. He’s been drawn by the subject for a long time. When he was a young adult, he almost became a priest before realizing that it wasn’t the right path for him.

The book is a journey that examines how history’s greatest thinkers and religious figures have defined joy and ways to experience this feeling—sustainably. So much in this book resonated deeply with me. I’ll share a few of my favorite elements.

First, Lenoir distinguishes joy from pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is always connected to an outside element and short-lived. Last weekend, I enjoyed a great dinner with friends. We ate delicious home-made food, danced, and talked and laughed. That’s it. It was pleasurable in the moment. Now it’s gone. The author explains that happiness is a state of being, not an emotion. We build our happiness by finding balance. It’s kind of a work in progress, “an intellectual construction,” says Lenoir. Joy is different. It’s a deep and intense emotion that touches our heart, body and mind. Joy surpasses us. It can be stimulated by the outside and, most importantly, also by ourselves. According to Lenoir, we can experience joy at all times even during the grieving and suffering we encounter in our lives.

Being present is one of the doorways to joy. Being attentive to what we experience, whether it’s a walk in nature, playing with kids, listening to a friend. Early the other morning, I was facing the window of my yoga room while doing a series of sun salutations when I became aware of the sunset -amazingly red, pink and yellow, before my eyes. Suddenly, I became fully present to the flow of my sun salutations and was filled with a heightened vitality as I made that conscious connection between myself and the beauty of nature.

I reconnected with my Italian heritage, last June, in a trip to Northern Italy. When I was there, I deposited something that belonged to my family and that I needed to let go of. Months later, I found it was the suffering my mom and her siblings had endured as kids growing up in Cassino, in Southern Italy.

The book also introduces us to the 17th century Dutch philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, who was the champion of joy and gave the emotion the most thought. This thinker came to the conclusion that each time you grow in the direction of your true self is when you experience joy. Additionally, each time you move away from what stops you of being your true self--leave a job that’s not fit for you, a toxic relationship, conflict, etc.--you move closer to joy.

The “joie de vivre” also comes from connecting with others. Once you do the introspection work to know your deeper self and your true needs, Lenoir says, the right people will come to you and you can then experience and enjoy the connection with others, in a way that’s good for you.

Finally, Lenoir tells us to let go and go with the flow. Has a difficulty come up in your personal life or social environment that you can’t change? Let go and say yes to life by accepting the situation for what it is, and organically move into what life drives you to do. Marching in the Women’s March on January 21st, in Atlanta, in unity with hundreds of cities around the world was the prime recent example of cultivating joy in the midst of adversity for me.

At Atlanta's March on Jan. 21. One of things I love about the U.S. is the incredible diversity I've found here. My friends are American, Bosnian, Columbia, Croatian, Danish, French, Peruvian, Serbian, South African, Swiss, Uruguayan, and more.

How about you? How are you creating your own personal joy?