When I took my yoga teacher training they asked us a trick question.  What is the one thing that everybody wants?  We bantered around many ideas:  peace, flexibility, security, love.  No one came up with the answer they were looking for: happiness.

But happiness always felt fleeting to me and even all of  my yoga practices didn’t seem to seal it into my heart.  I felt happy sometimes, but just as often, incredibly sad.  I felt the grief of the world heavy on my heart, and at times I even felt guilty if I was happy in the face of so much suffering.

I began to read the wonderful Jungian analyst and writer, Robert A. Johnson, and I came upon a passage that clarified my confusion.

“…‘happiness’ was defined as ‘a happening of chance, luck, fortune.’  The word ‘joy,’ on the other hand, was defined as ‘an exultation of the spirit, gladness, delight, the beatitude of heaven or paradise.’  That’s quite a difference!  Happiness is always short-lived.  We are constantly chasing after this experience; we think that we should be happy – after all, isn’t the pursuit of happiness guaranteed to us in the Bill of Rights?  But happiness comes at the whim of fortune.  No happiness can be kept permanently.”   - -Robert A. Johnson, Ecstasy

This felt to me like a revelation.  I didn’t want to be running after an elusive experience.  I knew it was only luck that I had been born into such relatively easeful circumstances: a middle-class white woman in North America.  I could just as easily have been born into poverty in a hundred different countries, or in a country where women are sometimes condemned to death just for being a woman.  How could luck or chance be something to cultivate, or indeed, even desire?  I wanted something longer lasting, something that I could apply to my life no matter what was going on.  Even in the face of hardship, grief, or loss, I wanted my spirit to see the truth of the universe, the beauty that truly infuses everything.

Everyone is so serious these days, running after this transient idea of happiness.  It seems to me that people come to yoga classes yearning for the very thing my trainers told us we wanted: happiness.   Students are trying to find it by struggling to do the perfect downward dog, or the perfect intricate scorpion pose.   We are devoted to our practice.  We show up on the mat, day after day, year after year.  Practicing through injury, fatigue, overly busy lives.  We sweat, contort, fiercely pray.  But where is the joy?

I have never been to a yoga class and learned a joyful asana.  Sometimes a teacher will say, “Smile in that pose.  Why does everyone look so miserable?’

At this, everyone will laugh, and then immediately go back to the practice, faces fixed with focused concentration.

Just as you will never do Hanuman asana (splits pose) without a serious dedication to the form, in order to have joy, you must practice joy.

Here are my tips on how to bring joy to your yoga practice.  Do try this at home, and pay attention: it just might make you feel great! On the mat and off.

Doodle-asana:  Take some water based art crayons (Caren D’ache water color pencils are great) or basic costume make-up.  Put on your yoga clothes, preferably a short sleeve shirt.  Draw on your arms: hearts, Om’s, snakes and butterflies.  Write little notes to yourself on the back of your hands: ‘you’re so cute,’ ‘I love me.’  Notice how many times you smile while doing downward facing dog.

Kid-asana:  See if you can borrow your neighbor’s five year old daughter, or your co-worker’s eight year old little boy.  Put on some music and dance around the living room with them.  Show them a couple of easy asanas (kids love downward dog and tree pose).  Then ask them to invent a pose and give it a name.  Next, you invent a pose and give it a name.  Tell them that this is how the original asanas were discovered, from yogis in deep meditation watching their internal world, and watching their external world, the perfect world of animals, trees and bugs.  Be as outlandish as possible.  Think octopus pose, and wiggle all your fingers.  Or hippopotamus pose, and squirt water out your mouth (this one is best practiced outside).  See if there isn’t some deep and abiding wisdom, as well as some useful poses, amongst this fun gamble.  Remember these to include in your next solo practice.

Fun-versions:  You’ve been practicing handstand for years now.  You can do it against the wall pretty well.  You’ve even managed to do it in the middle of the room, when you have that awesome two person spot where they balance your legs between their outstretched and linked arms.  Now:  forget all that.  Go back to the time when you used to do inversions all the time and never think twice about it.  That’s right, take that kid energy you learned in the last asana and remember when you were young.  Now start doing cartwheels again.  All over the living room.  Or all over the back yard.  See if you can do them with both your dominant hand forward, and then your non-dominant hand forward.  Remember how easy it is?  And all this time you were pretending that inversions were hard.  You’ve been doing them your whole life!  Take time in between for giggling fits.

Joyful Naps:  This is a variation on Shivasana.  After a practice where you’ve incorporated at least one of the above, lie down on your mat.  Close your eyes.  Get comfortable.  Take a few deep breaths and allow your body to completely relax.  Now imagine the earth spinning beneath you.  Imagine yourself lying on the curve of the globe.   Now take your hand and very lightly, with a feather touch, run your hand over your opposite arm.  Then switch hands and arms.  Next, with this same feather touch, run your hand over your face and neck.  It should feel almost ticklish.  This very light touch is the best lymph massage there is.  This feather light touch helps to open the lymphatic valves and allow the lymphatic fluid to flow effortlessly, helping detoxification in a very gentle way.  This touch also enlivens the nerve endings at the same time as calming down the  nervous system.  After this, lay here and let the smiles and tingling of your skin sink deep into your being.  Stay here as long as you like.   Before you get up from this pose, take your middle finger and tap it several times in the middle of your brow, at your third eye center.  This is a technique to lock in a particular feeling into your body memory.  Remember this technique whenever you have a wonderful, uplifting, glorious experience.  Tap it in.  Remember this wonderful feeling.  The feeling of joy.