Practice with Joy & Intention

If you are on my email lists you may have noticed my logo tagline states, "Practice with Joy & Intention." Today, let's address just what joy and intention truly mean in a yoga practice. These concepts go hand and hand. Intention and joy are tightly intertwined. So, let's discuss intention first.

Setting the intention can bring you understanding of your inner peace, mastering self-awareness, and illuminate clear-mindedness.

Intention

Intention in yoga goes beyond the physical postures (asanas). Setting an intention can help you to go deeper into the poses by focusing your mind on your intention. Setting your intention is as simple as focusing on the breath. Focusing on the breath is a clear intention that allows you to send your breath to the part of the body that you want to strengthen, omit pain, or help your concentration. Setting intention goes beyond yoga class and brings the intention out to real life off the mat.

Intention means staying the course when the headwinds are strong as you continue to move forward with your life's purpose. In yoga, setting an intention helps you to cultivate new perspectives and can bring you deeper peace and broader awareness of your life situation.

Sankalpa: A Statement of Intention

I've written here previously about sankalpa as part of a yoga nidra deep meditation practice. In brief, sankalpa is translated as a statement of intention. That is, sankalpa uses words to help you to define the intention. In returning to our example of breath, the statement of intention would be, "I am sending my breath to my aching knee so that I heal." The intention statement, sankalpa, helps you to make your intention actionable.

Joy

What about the joy part, you may ask. With intention, joy more easily blossoms. Joy is a feeling, turning the feelings into words help us to express joy. Joy is something positive that feels really good inside yourself. Exploring your personal joy with intention can lead to healing both inside and out. Returning to the breath example as joy, I send my breath to my healing knee and find joy in this action.

“If you carry joy in your heart, you can heal any moment.” —Carlos Santana

Joy is temporary. It is a feeling that is experienced in the moment, in the present. That is why intention and joy go hand-in-hand. Intention is resolute and serves as a foundation for joy. Thus intention supports your joyful emotions and makes them a little more active in your life. (Kempton, 2021).

Joy comes from within. It is an emotion that is generated from inside your being. It is innate, that is, it is always there. It is there, even if you don't feel it at present. Yet, joy is often influenced by outside forces and so we more easily look outside ourselves for joy. For example, when someone gives you a gift that you love. You will probably experience your gratitude as joy. That is the external force turned to an internal emotion. These external forces are short-lived and so the joy leaves us quite quickly.

For a less-fleeting feeling of joy, we celebrate the good things within ourselves. Gifting yourself with something such as taking a nap and waking refreshed is an example of joy from within. You are rested and new perspectives may emerge for you. This self-care brings joy.

It is very possible to feel this joy no matter how the outside world is functioning (or not functioning). When we establish an intention we can wrap joy into that intention. Intention provides stability and contentment (the yogic philosophy of santosha). With inner stability, joy more easily arises within ourselves. (Metamorphose, 2017).

Joy is a powerful tool for inner strength and stability. Finding joy in the small things in life, can make the big overwhelming things more joyful too. There is much inner joy to be found when we share and/or help others (Metamorphose, 2017). Since joy is an innate characteristics of humans, there is much joy when we celebrate ourselves. For example, joy can be found when you go deeper into a pose that you never thought you could do. Another example, is finding and celebrating the satisfaction you may feel when you let go of worry and substitute it with joy. Find the joy in your ability to focus and breathe.

Maybe you are grateful for your ability to hold good posture, accept your body for what it is, or your ability to find peacefulness. Whatever your ability (or even disability) this provides you feelings of contentment and inner joy. dormant, but it is there within you. As a human being were born with this emotion. Needless to say, you are quite capable of feeling joy inside yourself, you just need the tools to find it.

Manifesting your inner joy set in an intention can bring you peace and contentment as you practice yoga and go about your daily life.

Resources & Further Readings

Kempton, S. (2021). Find the happiness within you. Yoga Journal. Retrieved from https://www.yogajournal.com/yoga-101/philosophy/joy-story/

Metamorphose Yoga (2017). How to Experience Joy: The Yoga Perspective