How To Find Joy Without Running Away Deep Into The Wilderness, Never To Be Seen Again
Do you ever just want to put your head in your hands or throw your arms in the air in despair? Or writhe around on the ground wailing and sobbing, pounding the earth with your fists, so overcome with your big feelings?
We do!
In fact, there are very few humans who don’t. Each of us in our own ways are triggered by different things, this skin crawling frustration, rage or grief is a beast that lives within us all. It’s the face of fragility - that part of ourselves that gets awakened when something goes against the way we feel the world should be or the way people should treat others or think or speak or act.
We’ve never lived in such polarised times on a global scale (well, perhaps we have but now we see it all unfold, blow by blow, meme by meme). On repeat.
A question we are often asking ourselves is - how do people do this human thing without yoga? How do they cope? How do they make sense of things? How do they still manage to crack up laughing, give big open-hearted squishy hugs or tell others how fabulous they are, and simultaneously take action to help minimise harm?
And the answer is that very often, they don’t.
They become radicalised. Or addicted. Disconnected, angry, isolated or worse. They find somewhere to feel like they’ve got control again or a sense of belonging with other people who are also disenfranchenised because life is way harder than it should be. Why? Because most people are grinding in a system that does very little, if anything, to benefit them.
So how do we as a species find joy in it all, without taking the easy road of ignorance?
Here is one beautiful answer to that question - alchemising suffering into art. A trait that is utterly, distinctly human. Today I released the second episode in my new podcast series Lissie Presents…HOW HUMAN. It is the most extraordinary conversation, one that gives me goosebumps over and over again. It traverses deafness, heroin addiction, disordered eating, so much pain yet Hannah Darling, the star of this story, transforms everything through this poetic lens that’s just stunning.
I am very proud of this episode and this new series, it feels like some of the most important work I’ve done. Particularly at this point in time where defining humanity is getting trickier. I would love you to listen and let me know what you think.
For me, the capacity to be in joy at the hardest times of my life began when I became a Yoga Teacher back in 2012. My reason for doing a Yoga Teacher Training was because I was tired of trying to squeeze my wellbeing in as an aside. I wanted my physical and mental health to be my number one priority. To saturate in it. To make it my living, breathing reality everyday. I needed to.
But what I got, what WE got, was much more than we bargained for.
In 2010 we opened The Yoga Shack. Our beautiful treehouse yoga school (who remembers that place fondly??) in the Byron Shire that we ran for 11 years. We were in the midst of the most challenging time of our lives, filled with soul-decimating events. Our yoga school created a sanctuary, our yoga community formed a forcefield and our yoga practice gave us strength and a clarity to find ways forward, over and over again. It gave us a way everyday to readjust our inner landscapes to meet what life was throwing at us and still show up for the people that depended on us.
At the end of 2021, in the face of all logic, we decided to explore yoga in action much more deeply - to see if we could apply the gross and the more subtle aspects of yoga to land (hello The Prana Project!) - to a very degraded piece of land and see if we could bring more prana to it through planting and ceremony, through connection and community and in turn, could this model of application, not just theory, of the philosophy of yoga to place - could that also improve human mental health?
The reality is a resounding yes. Not just our students but ours.
In a world that gives so many reasons to kick and scream and so many excuses for shitty behaviour, yoga, like creativity, is not just shining the light on a safer, kinder, steadier pathway for those around you but for yourself too.
Is it effortless? Shit, no. It’s choosing not to sit on the couch devouring icecream and netflix 24/7. It’s waking up and moving instead of carrying all that muck from the day before around with you all day today. It is constantly stroking your own mind with love and saying, ‘I see you little fella but come on, let’s do this life. Let’s do it well.’
If there is one thing we’ve learned profoundly by this stage in our lives, it’s:
Sometimes bad things turn good and good things turn bad.
The most important thing is deciding who you want to be moment to moment to moment. What actions you choose to take. Learning to see the suffering, then with a soft smile and a big breath in, rolling up your sleeves and helping to alleviate the suffering. Starting with yourself.
Sending all the love
Lissie and Shane