Tag: joy

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Yoga Therapy Prescription—Learn What Brings You Joy and Do Lots of It!

If you want to live a long, healthy life, consider doing things that bring you joy. They are the same things that bring you closer to your true self. And what brings you to your true self is the path to your well being and health.

I spent this Memorial Day weekend doing something I love–contra dance! As a French native, I have a hard time explaining what contradance is. I had never experienced anything like contra before my friend Stephanie introduced me to it last autumn at LEAF Festival’s “contradance hall” in Asheville, NC. Mind you, many of my American friends didn’t know what contra was either. I’m told it’s a subculture.

Contra is an old style of American dance where you dance with a partner in two lines—partners face each other on each side—while a caller leads everybody in a series of moves. And then, there’s the music. Contra is danced to Celtic, Southern Appalachian, jazz and blues played by live bands. Thanks to the slaves who brought rhythm from Africa, contra is full of it. During the dancing the lines of people morph into patterns–from the sky, a contra dance looks like a kaleidoscope of humans.

In contradance, I swirl, swing, circle, trade places, make eye contact, and even flip sometimes. I’m in love with it. The other day, I was told that contra is powerful, that it’s love. That speaks to me. What I also know is that contra has made me re-connect with a passion of mine—dancing—that I had given up since I was a teenager. I would never have thought that dance would come back in my life, years later, especially not in this shape and form. Life always finds new ways to surprise me.

Giving the right food to my soul

What’s contra got to do with yoga therapy? Well, everything. You see, contra brings me joy. And when I feel joy, I know I’m giving the right food to my soul. And when I nourish my soul, I’m doing one of the most powerful things I can do to heal—on whatever level I need to heal.

Whether you’re on a healing journey or just in need of more aliveness, I recommend you look closely into what brings you long, lasting joy–into what feeds your soul. Nourishing your soul brings you closer to who you are deeply. The 17th century Dutch philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, who was the champion of joy and gave the emotion the most thought, came to the conclusion that each time you grow in the direction of your true self is when you experience joy.

Letting go of old beliefs

This movement towards your true self, towards joy, may mean letting go of old beliefs. That’s what it’s meant for me. I was brought up in a family where the value of “hard work” was first and foremost with little room left for playing and enjoying life. I’ve re-evaluated the place I’ve given to “hard work,” and re-orchestrated my life so that joy has gradually become the center. You gotta do what you gotta do.

I’ll also always remember a doctor and nutritionist I met in 2004 in Paris. I had just been diagnosed with my first breast cancer. He gave me tips on how to feed my body with healthy nutrition which I still use to this day. He also mentioned this guy who had been diagnosed with an incurable cancer and who had decided to go ahead and live his dream—spend the rest of his life on a sail boat, traveling around the world. The guy ended up being cured and living many more moons. My doctor finished our conversation saying, “if there’s something you’ve always wanted to do, do it. It can make a huge difference.”

I couldn’t help spending most of Leaf Festival, close to Asheville, NC, mid-May, in their contra dance hall. On the evening of Sat. May 12, we were up to 250 dancers to move non stop for hours. Photo: Patrick Olin.
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The Power of Joy

KarenJanetSarahAndI-Cropped

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?