Australian Yoga Journal — July 2017

38

july 2017

yogajournal.com.au

PHOTO: CHRISTOPH KADUR/ISTOCKPH

OTO.COM

How to find happiness, even in your darkest hour.

By Richard Miller, PhD

joy in

LIKE THE ABILITY TO learn a language or

love another human being, the ability to

feel joy is something we’re all born with.

And perhaps surprisingly, we can feel

joy independent of whatever else we’re

experiencing, even amidst intense

physical or psychological pain and

suffering, according to psychology

research. That said, many of us still

believe that joy isn’t innate—that it only

comes with possessing a specific item or

achieving a particular outcome. So we

keep searching for joy through objects,

relationships, and experiences, which

prevents us from realising that this

essential emotion is already within us,

patiently waiting to be experienced.

Unfortunately, when you resist or

deny feelings of joy, your life and

relationships can lose their meaning and

value. For instance, when you feel you’re

not living life fully, or when you’re

feeling bitter or jealous about that which

others have and you don’t, these feelings

can overshadow your ability to feel your

innate joy. This happened to me in my

early 2os, when I fell into a depression

upon moving to a new city. I failed to

find employment and felt isolated and

alone. I lost touch with my intrinsic

sense of joy as I floundered in feelings

of confusion and grief, and slid into a

downward spiral, losing all sense of

purpose.

That’s when I discovered that

meditation could unearth my innate,

unchanging joy, no matter what my

circumstances. In the midst of my

depression, I found my way into a

course on yoga. At the end of the

first class, during meditation, joy

unexpectedly flooded my body. I

suddenly felt reconnected to myself and

the universe, and regained my sense of

purpose and meaning. I walked home

that evening feeling renewed, with a

burning desire to understand what had

just happened to me.

Since then, I’ve come to see, through

both my personal practice of meditation

and reading countless research studies

on neuroscience, how meditation can

help us experience joy at any time. You

see, meditation deactivates your brain’s

default network, which otherwise keeps

you stuck in patterns of negative

emotions and obsessive thoughts, and it

activates your brain’s executive,

attention, and defocusing networks,

which help you open to joy and also new

possibilities of insight.

Joy is good medicine

Since ancient times, joy has been

recognised as a powerful medicine.

For instance, in Ancient Greece,

hospitals were built near amphitheaters

so patients could easily attend comedies

prescribed to promote healing. One of

the most well-known cases of joy as

good medicine occurred when the writer

and peace activist Norman Cousins,

Let