New Program Day 20: Embracing Joy

Day 20: Embracing Joy

Every year at UCLA, there’s an event called Spring Sing. 5000 people pile into a stadium to watch students compete in different singing categories.

For three years, my friends and I had the task of writing the comedy pieces in between the acts. We wrote off-the-wall parody songs like, “Roommate from Hell,” “Three Finals in One Day,” and the ever-controversial, “Sorority Song.”

It was SO much fun.

After a sequence of unlikely events, we managed to turn this hobby into a job. Colleges actually started paying us to write and perform comedy songs at their events.

It seemed like a dream come true, but it wasn’t.

It had become a paid gig. And this thing I once loved and did freely had become infused with pressure, urgency, and expectations. After two years, I gave it up. The joy was gone.

The Drive for Change

We’ve discussed a lot of techniques over the past few weeks: somatic tracking, communicating messages of safety, embracing a stance of empowerment, etc.

As you began implementing these techniques, was there any joy behind the actions, or was it infused with pressure, urgency, and expectations?

There’s a bizarre paradox in trying to overcome our symptoms: The very act of trying to get away from something can activate our brains’ danger signals. So in trying to escape a pain-state, we’re often generating the very energy that causes pain.

Techniques can be helpful, but they matter less than the energy behind the techniques: Is there desperation behind your words? Is there an urgency behind your actions? Are there expectations for a desired outcome?

Or, is there an ease in your demeanor? Is there an enthusiasm to embrace positivity? Is there joy?

In short: Are you running away from something, or are you running toward something?

Joie de Vivre



The term “Joy” can mean different things to different people: It may make you think of pleasure, it may make you may think of happiness, it may make you think of an underwhelming Jennifer Lawrence movie (they can’t all be winners…)

But joy is an emotion. It’s a physical sensation that we feel in our bodies. For most people it feels good. For some it feels scary (as there can be a fear of it being taken away.)

But generally speaking, it’s a sensation that’s on the other end of the spectrum from desperation, pressure, and urgency. It’s the type of thing that we can gravitate toward, instead of away from.

This begs the question, is joy something that we can generate?

Actually, it is.

Joy Story

Guillaume Duchenne was a nineteenth century French neurologist. He discovered numerous diseases, invented electrotherapy, and conducted the first ever biopsy…but in his copious free time, he studied emotional expression.

Duchenne identified a distinct type of smile, one that didn’t just involve the muscles around the mouth, but the muscles around the eyes as well.

As an example, let’s look at Julia Roberts, owner of one of the world’s most famous smiles:

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She’s smiling in both pictures, but in the one on the right, both her mouth muscles and her eye muscles are engaged.

They’ve found that when people smile in this way, dopamine and serotonin are released in the brain. These neurotransmitters are associated with feeling good.

Obviously joy can lead to smiling, but smiling can actually lead to joy as well.

In a study at Berkley, researchers asked participants to smile with both their mouth and their eyes. They found that this “Duchenne smile” was so effective, 95% of the people who used it felt authentic joy.

This isn’t to say that you should walk around with a huge smile on your face all the time, but it can be a effective exercise to practice honing the emotion of joy.

Leaning in to Joy

Chronic pain is exhausting. When you have continuous back pain, or head pain, or stomach pain, everything takes more energy.

During the times when you don’t have pain or your pain is reduced, things are so much easier.

Realistically, it’s kind of silly to tell someone “don’t care about getting rid of your pain,” because how can you not want to get rid of something that’s so debilitating?

So I won’t suggest that you try not to get rid of your pain. Because you can’t not try.

But I want you to see if you can do something else. Check in to your body for a moment. Breathe in, and feel the physical sensation of the breath come in and out.

Take a moment, as you’re reading this sentence, and take another deep breath in and out…really see if you can feel the sensation of the breath as it comes in and out.

Now smile big, with both your mouth and your eyes.

Here, I’ll see if I can help you:

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And as you breathe in, smiling this big, Julia Roberts-smile, what do you feel inside your body? Attend to any sensations that arise…whatever they are.

And take a moment or two, before you continue reading, and just observe.

In that single moment, you weren’t attempting to get rid of your pain…you weren’t trying to escape, you were leaning in to a sensation, with curiosity and openness.

The many times when we find ourselves trying to get rid of our pain – pushing, struggling, pressuring – this is simply a natural drive for an organism that’s in a state of suffering. And it’s going to happen.

But it’s those other times – the ones where we gravitate toward joy, the ones where we enthusiastically embrace empowerment, the ones where we authentically aim to calm our primitive brains – these are the times where we’re truly take steps to alleviate our symptoms.

As Plum brilliantly put it in the Day 17 comments, “You overcome pain incidentally, on the way to creating a happier, healthier brain ecosystem.”

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ive been finding joy in getting over my fear of the pain and anxious thoughts! does this count haha

 

A perfect day to abandonedly post a link to the 'ah is this not happiness' thread....

http://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/ah-is-this-not-happiness.1947/ (Ah, is this not happiness..)

Alan, what do you have to say about loosing control of muscles when you can't stop laughing? Some people pee their pants, others have to sit down because their legs give way. Is there an evolutionary reason for this? Some kind of muscle-tension-release??

 

The wonders of the universe never cease...

A horrid day yesterday (family bullshit) meant I was mid-way between a blue funk and a flat out bad mood when I woke this morning. For the first time in 5 months I decided to dance, hipbelts, pretty bracelets, sweet Egyptian classical music...it was heavenly.

I remembered all the reasons I adored belly dance before making the gargantuan error of going professional. Such madness. Every ounce of joy-juice flat-lined. It all went horribly wrong, I didn't dance for years and TMS beveled back into my life.

What a tough lesson in how not to do things. So I totally relate to that experience.

Joy.
Pleasure.
Hedonism.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

And regarding the smile experiment?
That last paragraph was a beauty for the girl who needed a lift (such an authentic smile). All the moves and the licks

Here's to being brilliant and joyful (though brilliance may be rare as sunshine. Some one has stolen Summer. It's more like Autumn here).

I'm now going to play Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" LOUD and drink wine. Here's to everyone making a goddam wild and glorious recovery and living an epically authentic, joyful life.

 

Hi Alan! This forum is fantastic and incredibly helpful. Thank you thank you a million times. I tried the breathing/smiling technique and wow! I felt the joy in my entire body. It was a tingling sensation, so positive and joy is something I haven't felt like that in a long long time. Bless you for helping all of us and for all that you do!

 

Absafuckinglutely!!

 

Awesome posts @Alan Gordon LCSW and @Forest

I know on days when I put some disco music on (okay, so I'm a child of the 70s) and dance in the shower, I definitely smile and I most certainly feel better for it. Only problem is, I can't keep playing disco music all day as people don't seem to like it when I walk down the street with my retro ghetto blaster blaring out Le Freak or Night Fever. Go figure

 

Child of the 70's here too. For my 40th birthday my lil'bro bought me an iPod loaded with music that he associated with me and our childhood. "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie" has a lot to answer for.

I have long maintained that music is humanity's gift to the universe and that music is the best healing balm of all so strut your funky stuff baby.

 

Joy runs deeper than happiness; joy can happen in spite of that.

Love today's segment. I need to practice the smiling technique. How did it make me feel? Very, very calm. I think, with practice, I might begin to feel fulfilled, more often. Thank you, Alan.

 

Oh yes @plum. Baccara. They were good times for growing up

Music is definitely a healing balm for me. I'm constantly on the lookout for music that makes me smile and feel positive, which is interesting considering what's been discussed today.

 

Innocent times in many ways. Think about it though...why do we let the bounties and beauties of life stop being so essential to our well-being?

When did life become so fecking serious? A spiritual teacher once said "seriousness is a disease of the ego" and that is so true. I'm done with being so serious and reliable. I need to shake things down.

Here's something else I'm done with, and I dedicate this mindtrap to the people-pleasers:

"I want you to love me for who I am (pretending to be)."

I swear I feel a decade younger.
Now, where's my iPod.

 

Also, single-celled organisms are hard-wired to feel pleasure. That's how vital to life it is. Deeper than happiness (with it's bittersweet ephermeral nature), joy and pleasure and bliss are our birthrights.

Hello @Plumcrazy
Welcome to the forum

 

I loved this series. Thank you so much. It's really been helping. It's so odd that I can read something but I didn't really comprehend the scanning for danger part until now. That's really been the missing link for me.

 

Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, today's lesson from Alan. Joy!

I'm a child of the '60's so I like dancing to Shiva Rea's Yoga Trance Dance DVD. It's like hippies on LSD dancing, where you just move your body however you damn well please. Joyful! even without the LSD.

 

At the cellular level...yes!

Thank you for the welcome, Plum. I think we share a favored color. I joined a year ago, but find myself needing some work, again. So here I am. Gleaning along the way.

 

I practiced today's technique and surprisingly after a couple of time.. i started lauging.. i actually burst out into a laugher.. a happy laughter and felt ticklish in my stomach from laughing.. I CAN SAY "LOL"

Shweta

 

One of my last yoga teachers always emphasized "Now, a smile on your face". I was shocked. What on earth does it have to do with doing yoga the right way?!!
I resisted it many times. I wanted to be serious about my practice. Until one day I tried. The physiology changed immediately!
Then I began following a few friends who share really funny jokes through whatsapp. A bliss of laughter each day! I also had a dream, one that in my terapis´s words, woud bring Freud out of his grave. It was so so crazy, that we couldn´t but laugh out loud, both of us, in therapy.
Again, I can describe that last year I discovered Biodanza. It is not developed in the States yet, since it was put together by a Chilean man. Amazing way of giving your body joy and pleasure with music ( and you don´t need to "know" how to dance)
So, yes, definitely. Laughing, smiling, even with no purpose but to just feel it.

 

Joy is one of my favorite words, and one of my favorite emotions.
And yes, I believe it is a choice. Even in the darkest spaces, in painful agonies, there is room for joy--thank God!
Music and dancing definitely bring me joy. My husband thinks it's strange that certain songs transport me to specific times in my life. I guess my life has a soundtrack.
A few years ago when Pharrell Williams's song "Happy" came out, I asked the kids in my middle school to stop by our library and dance to it. We had SUCH a blast! The fearful kids just looked through the windows, but the brave souls, and probably the most joy-filled ones, danced their hearts out.

 

That is one song that definitely gives you the Julie Roberts smile