Welcome,
Find a comfortable seat and let your journal be nearby.
Take a slow breath in,
Fill in the lungs and then let it out.
Close your eyes for a moment,
Let the world soften around you,
Let your shoulders drop,
Feel your feet on the ground and feel the breath move through the body,
Wherever you feel it.
This time is just for you,
No pressure,
No performance,
Only the invitation to connect,
To listen to your heart and to open what joy might be waiting there.
And now breathe into the space,
The heart space,
Right into the centre of the chest.
Connect with the breath at this point and notice sensation here,
Openness or tightness,
Warmth,
Stillness,
The gentle expansion and contraction of the breath,
And just notice,
Let whatever is here be enough.
There is a quiet joy that lives inside us,
It isn't loud and it isn't urgent,
It's just a hum,
A kind of soft light waiting to be remembered.
And journaling is a powerful practice to enable us to turn toward it.
So when you're ready,
Gently open your eyes,
Pick up your pen and let's begin.
What is something,
However small,
That brought you a sense of joy or beauty recently?
A moment,
A gesture,
A colour,
Someone's face.
Let yourself write freely now for a minute,
And connect with your breath as you do,
And don't edit,
Just feel it as you write it.
And the next prompt,
Where in your life does joy feel just out of reach,
Can you meet it with softness,
With compassion?
What would joy look like here,
If it was welcome,
If it was to pay a visit?
Again let the answers flow through the pen,
Onto the page,
Straight from the heart.
And the third question,
What kind of joy is here now?
You may think there is no joy,
You may feel numb,
But if you look closely,
You can find it in a thought,
A memory,
A feeling in the body.
Where is the joy right now?
And write from the body,
Connecting with your hand,
With your arm as it moves.
Perhaps as you write this,
A joy emerges,
Or deepens or intensifies,
If so,
Allow that to happen,
And write about that.
And the final prompt,
If you were to open your door,
To more joy,
And to open that door more often,
What might that look like?
In your daily life,
In your choices,
Perhaps in slowing down,
In how you speak to yourself,
What would you do differently?
And now pause,
Put your pen down,
Close your eyes again,
Breathe softly,
Feeling the breath,
Feeling the quiet that comes after the writing.
Not everything needs to be resolved,
Sometimes it's enough to just touch the edge of joy,
To remember it's still there,
Even if we forget it almost all of the time.
And place a hand on your heart,
And say,
In this world,
May I find true happiness,
And let this be your closing gesture,
A quiet promise to yourself,
To stay open to joy.
To keep listening,
To let joy come softly,
And to know that it's already here.
