A few days ago, I participated in an Insight Timer live session with teacher Dr Patty Hlava (@AwakenPeace), all about joy, and that inspired me to write this article for you.
Regardless of our background, current circumstances, past experiences and health levels, we all have at one point (or more, hopefully) in our life, experienced joy. That's for sure.
But what is joy? How does it feel like?
According to dictionary.com, joy is "the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying".
So what is the difference between joy and happiness?
There are many explanations you can find online and in books, but to me, joy is more exuberant, more colourful than happiness, which I feel as more contentment and more a stable and durable state. I see joy as moments of bright light, flashes of colours, like your toddler walking his first steps with a big smile on his face and aiming for your arms while feeling so proud of himself.
While happiness feels to me as a constant lightness, openness and groundedness, joy feels more like little sparks popping here and there, more intense and more special. Obviously, these can mean and feel totally different to you, after all we are all unique human beings with different perceptions and ways of feeling what is going on around us and inside us. It is all good.
Dr Patty Hlava from @AwakenPeace Healing, on the Insight Timer app, led this live session on Tuesday 15th December 2020 (a replay may be available at some point in the future but, currently, is not available). Her guided meditation/ visualisation was so insightful, powerful and an open door to feeling joy.
Some of the highlights for me were the following:
Thinking about a joyful moment you have experienced in your past (remote or recent), visualising, reminiscing as if you were back there and focusing on how you feel.
Keeping that feeling in and gathering more by opening your hands, receiving more joy energy from the Universe, and bringing it in to your heart space, keeping going while you open up your hands/arms more and more each round.
I am quite an introvert at heart and only with very close friends and family will I be demonstrative; so as I was opening up to receive joy from the Universe, at one point in the meditation/visualisation, I actually caught myself having my arms wide open. My instinct had told me to let go of the restrictions and boundaries I put on myself, and just be literally open to receive what the Universe had for me. I know that it will sound for many people rather airy-fairy, and that's totally OK. It does not in any way diminish the experience for me. But it just shows that, instinctively, we all yearn for this feeling of joy, open up when it is there for us and that a lot of it is meant for each and every one of us - we just need to trust and open up to receive it without resistance, fear or mistrust.
If you're into guided meditation, on Insight Timer, I really like "Joy" by teacher Shelly McSween-White, MS - it is 1 hour and 20 minutes long so you go really deep. If this is too long for you or you are a beginner, I also recommend Lo Madigan's "5-Minute Meditation for Cultivating Joy" (the whole audio is less than 7 minutes) or Sono Lumin/Jonas Malvik's "Joy - Increase Vibrational Frequency" if you prefer music (only 9 minutes long).
From a vibrational point of view, joy is a positive, uplifting emotion of a high vibration and frequency. It is 540 Hz and is expansive, meaning that the more joy you feel, the more you get.
If you're into Chakras, it is the frequency closest to the Sacral Chakra (under the navel - 417 Hz) which corresponds to creativity and pleasure.
Practising gratitude regularly (ideally on a daily basis) can also help you connect with joy and raise your vibration to start your day. Smiling is also a great way to connect - more with happiness in my view, but it is still one step forward.
With so many ways, and more, to connect to and explore joy - try and observe your relationship with this emotion. Can you fully connect to joy? What events, people, experiences help you connect to joy? I invite you to explore with this emotion, visualise, meditate and journal so that you have an imprint of joy for when you need it the most.
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