2025-01-23
10 分钟Pause for a moment if you can, and think about a time where you really felt joy.
Maybe it was reuniting with a friend, a dinner party,
a lazy Saturday afternoon, or achieving a milestone.
Hold that thought, because today we're going to practice feeling joy,
strengthening that feeling and the memory of that feeling.
There are different explanations of what joy is.
The American Psychological association defines it as a feeling of extreme gladness,
delight, or exaltation of the spirit.
For me, joy is the feeling of delight we experience when we're free from our mundane life,
the transactional concerns of our daily living.
It's a feeling of lightness and abundance and freedom.
Just as we have learned that focusing on the negative can overtax our bodies and minds by increasing hormones like cortisol,
we know that joy has the opposite effect.
It can activate the parasympathetic autonomic nervous system,
making us feel more peaceful and calm and connected and creative.
So let's practice joy for the next eight minutes,
guiding our happiness break today is Spring Washam,
a meditation teacher and author of the forthcoming book the Spirit of Harriet Tubman,
Awakening from the Underground.
Now here is Spring Washam.