Cultivate Joy: Guided Meditation
This week’s episode is a 10-minute guided meditation to cultivate joy. To include an awareness of the good, delightful, and joyful aspects of our experience is an important practice for developing inner resilience. There is a lot going on in the world that is distressing and disturbing – and those issues do need our skillful attention. But, in order to respond with clarity and energy, it helps to balance our minds with deliberate practices like joy.
(The meditation itself starts at about 8:20, after a brief intro to the topic.)
Episode Details:
Interestingly enough, the topic of joy is one that often brings up resistance or skepticism. You may be doubting how a short meditation could help you cultivate joy – like, are you expected to feel joyful on command?
If you had similar thoughts come up when you saw this joy meditation, I can relate! But I can also tell you that embracing glimmers of joy (during ordinary days, and during difficult seasons of my life) has been one of the most powerful practices for my well-being and resilience.
The joy I’m talking about here is not really the exquisite, incredible, postcard-worthy peak experience, but more like a practice of consistently appreciating as much good as you can find in the present moment. It’s more about frequent small joys than big intense joys. And there’s a cumulative effect to recognizing joy more frequently – by opening to small delights and joys more often, we train ourselves to be more receptive to the positive.
Why cultivate joy?
To see the good and remember that wonderful things are possible…this gives us hope. Those moments of joy resource us. They are like little emotional resilience vitamins that help us stay stronger when challenges do arise.
Joy can help us regenerate our capacity to be there for others, and to hold a vision of a more beautiful world that’s worth working for.
In this meditation, we will invoke the memory of a joyful or pleasant experience, mindfully savoring it in the present moment. Then, we will use this joyful energy to increase inner resilience, so it can become a source of deeper wellbeing.
I hope this practice will bring a little lightness or possibility into your day!
Resources & Links from this episode:
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If you’d like to hear more about the benefits of positive states like joy, listen to Episode 32: Deeper Dive on Mudita (Joy & Gratitude) and Episode 58: Why Awe Is Good for Us.
- This Harvard Health article suggests increasing your joy with physical movement, meditation, and contributing to others’ well-being through activities like volunteering.
- Meditation teacher James Baraz is the author of Awakening Joy, and is a great resource if this topic resonates with you!
P.S. Did you know there is a Free Membership Tier of the Moved To Meditate Class Library? Learn more about the Class Library and sign up for your Free Library Card to access the five featured classes from the catalog each month.