Sourcing joy from the inside

Two maps that show us the way

Early morning sun over Takapuna beach, on Auckland’s East Coast

My most profound experience of joy arrived completely unexpected.

It didn’t happen in one of life’s celebratory moments, like a birthday or a wedding. It didn’t show up while dancing or singing – two activities that tend to light me up. It didn’t happen when I received good news, fell in love, or gained a thousand subscribers on Substack. And it didn’t involve any mood-altering substances.

It happened lying on the floor of a Girl Guide Hall, stone-cold sober, in the middle of a five-day meditation training. It happened in my mid-40s, as I grappled with chronic health issues, the beginnings of perimenopause, deep grief, and questions about my life path.

Let me give you a little context.

We are taught to see happiness as the holy grail of human existence and it’s not uncommon for people to arrive at therapy with the goal ‘I want to be happier’.

But happiness, as we tend to think of it in the Westernised world, is a slippery target.

It’s not a destination we can arrive at and reside in ever after, as the fairy tales of our youth would have us believe. It’s not a place we automatically reach when we have all our ducks lined up and have ticked off whatever is on our life’s checklist (like career goals, partnerships, kids, a house).

And research has shown that even life events like winning the lottery, do not result in a long-term boost to happiness¹.

Rather, what we tend to think of as happiness is often more akin to pleasure, those fleeting dopamine hits that give us a momentary lift, but quickly leave us craving more. These moments exist in amongst all the other myriad feeling states we travel through – sadness, anger, guilt, excitement, and so on. Feeling states come and go, rising and falling like waves on the ocean.

But these fleeting moments of pleasure, sourced from the external world, are not all that is accessible.

There are other paths to joy, which can be infinitely more useful to pursue.

A nervous system perspective

From the perspective of our physiology, to access joy or contentment, we first need to be able to access safety.

This includes safety in the external world – food in our fridge, a roof over our heads, care, and connection with others.

And it also includes safety in the internal world – a calm and balanced nervous system.

If our nervous system is residing in a fight/flight state (the sympathetic branch of the nervous system), our body is primed for fear and anger. From an evolutionary perspective, joy is a secondary goal, far less imperative than the goal of survival. Our resources will be directed towards survival.

Similarly, if our nervous system is in a shutdown/disconnected state (the dorsal vagal branch of the nervous system), our inner world leans towards hopelessness and defeat, regardless of our circumstances. In this state, we tend to numb our emotions (a survival instinct when things are too overwhelming). When we’re numb and checked out, joy is also unavailable.

The only nervous system state where joy is truly accessible is the calm, connected ventral vagal state. When we access this, we experience safety and well-being, and our internal system has space and capacity to access joy and connection. Our limbic brain recognises enough safety to allow us to focus on joy.

Since many people are not accessing the ventral vagal state very often, joy can feel like a frustratingly elusive enigma. As we strive harder and harder to achieve the things we believe will bring us joy, we can be driving our nervous systems further and further in the opposite direction.

Rather than seeking joy per se, a more useful aim is to seek ways to access calm, groundedness, and connection to the world around us. When we find our way into this state, joy often spontaneously arises.

Which leads me to another helpful lens for thinking about joy…

A yogic perspective

The teachings of yoga differentiate between caused and uncaused joy. Caused joy relates to those fleeting moments of pleasure from an external stimulus – anything from a conversation, to a comedy show, a sunset, or a bar of chocolate.

Uncaused joy is recognised in the yogic teachings and other spiritual disciplines as our underlying essential nature.

Our essential nature becomes overlaid with layers of tensions, wounds, hurts, and life experiences that obscure the pure unfiltered essence of who we are – a little like how a cloudy day obscures the backdrop of a clear blue sky.

As we work to release layers of accumulated experience – as we work though the koshas in the yogic language– we eventually uncover more and more of our true nature, which is a state of spacious, easeful, expansive, peace.

In this state, we don’t discover joy, or experience joy, we simply are joy itself. And this state is accessible regardless of our external circumstances. It’s available alongside grief, pain, illness, and any other life circumstances. It’s the backdrop of sky behind all the weather systems that are passing through.

I believe these perspectives are pointing towards the same thing – that when we release the layers of experiential fear and pain, as we heal past wounds and hurts, there is a simple restful, peaceful state that can reveal itself. The work of therapy, and many spiritual practices, is to uncover this.

It’s not easy in our overly activated, stressed-out, traumatised world to find our way back to this state of being, but it is possible.

Which brings me back to that Girl Guide Hall.

I was in the midst a five-day immersion into the practice of iRest yoga nidra². I was simultaneously grappling with a low point in life. Yet through days of repeated practice, settling the nervous system, and working through the layers of body, breath, mind, and emotion, I found myself accessing a place that is hard to put into words. The vibration of joy seemed to fill my whole being and extend out beyond the boundary of my skin. Laughter and tears arose simultaneously. There was a deep sense of peace, possibility, and well-being. Although I was only there for a few minutes, the effect has been profound, and the memory of it has shifted my perception of what’s possible. This was not the kind of high that is followed by a low, or leaves you craving for more. It was enough to let me know there is truth in these teachings, that there is a deep well of joy that can be tapped into irrespective of external circumstances.

Yoga and meditation practices, including yoga nidra, have been the doorway for me. It’s not a place where I get to live full-time, but through these practices, I’ve had access to beautiful moments of expansive joy.

It can be hard to think about accessing joy when it seems as though the world is on fire all around us (literally and metaphorically). But I believe our joy is one of the greatest gifts we can bring to the collective. When we’re lit up from within, we bring that energy to our connections, to our work, and to the world. Joyful people do not start wars, judge, or persecute others. Our world needs more balanced, regulated people with access to the energy of joy.

Thank you for reading. I hope there is something helpful here and would love to hear your own experiences of accessing joy. Have you experienced that distinction between caused and uncaused joy? And what helps you to access your innate joy and contentment?

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1. Brickman, P., Coates, D., & Janoff-Bulman, R. (1978). Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(8), 917–927. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.36.8.917

2. iRest is a contemporary model of the traditional practice of yoga nidra, developed and researched by Richard Miller, a seasoned yogi and clinical psychologist. For more information visit the iRest Institute.