Happiness Safari - Journey Through Positive Emotions
With Reshma Aziz KhanHappiness Safari is a journey through five emotions that make life feel good — gratitude, joy, awe, serenity, and love. These are drawn from psychologist Barbara Fredrickson's research on the ten forms of positive emotion, from her book "Positivity." Each session opens with a short teaching segment exploring what positive psychology research actually says about that emotion — why it matters, how it works in the body and mind, and what the science shows about cultivating more of it — before moving into a guided meditation built specifically to practice what you just learned. Along the way, we also look at where these practices come from outside the research literature — including Islamic traditions of gratitude, Swahili and East African concepts of contentment and togetherness, the Buddhist origins of loving-kindness meditation, the Ubuntu/utu philosophy of Southern and East Africa, and the Asian contemplative roots of modern mindfulness — because these emotions were being practiced deliberately long before anyone studied them in a lab. Think of each stop as a piece of terrain on a safari: we study the landscape first, then walk through it together. By the end, you'll have five research-backed, globally rooted tools for wellbeing, not just five relaxing tracks.
Explore the science of gratitude, joy, awe, serenity & love—each session pairs real research with a guided practice.
About this course
Happiness Safari is a journey through five emotions that make life feel good — gratitude, joy, awe, serenity, and love. These are drawn from psychologist Barbara Fredrickson's research on the ten forms of positive emotion, from her book "Positivity." Each session opens with a short teaching segment exploring what positive psychology research actually says about that emotion — why it matters, how it works in the body and mind, and what the science shows about cultivating more of it — before moving into a guided meditation built specifically to practice what you just learned. Along the way, we also look at where these practices come from outside the research literature — including Islamic traditions of gratitude, Swahili and East African concepts of contentment and togetherness, the Buddhist origins of loving-kindness meditation, the Ubuntu/utu philosophy of Southern and East Africa, and the Asian contemplative roots of modern mindfulness — because these emotions were being practiced deliberately long before anyone studied them in a lab. Think of each stop as a piece of terrain on a safari: we study the landscape first, then walk through it together. By the end, you'll have five research-backed, globally rooted tools for wellbeing, not just five relaxing tracks.
Meet your Teacher
Reshma Aziz Khan is Kenyan of Indian origin. She grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, in a safari family, and spent much of her time in the African savannah wilderness and on safari journeys. She has worked around the world as an accredited and certified global leadership coach, facilitator, moderator and human-connector , and in all this, she leans into curating spaces of positive conversation and positive team effectiveness. She just published a book, 'The Facilitation Safari' , which looks at how to curate transformative gatherings from the lens of going on a safari in the wild. Being Kenyan shapes how she teaches this course. Alongside the research, Happiness Safari draws on lessons from Reshma's own travels across East Africa — including friendships and stories carried home from the Kenyan coast — and from her own family and Ismaili Muslim faith traditions, including practices of gratitude and togetherness she was raised with long before she ever studied the psychology behind them. Reshma also teaches Positive Leadership with the UN-sanctioned UPEACE Centre for Executive Education, where she focuses on Positive Psychology and positive emotions — particularly leaning into the positive emotion work of Barbara Fredrickson, some of which is featured in this course. Reshma has been writing a gratitude journal for close to fifteen years and brings that practice into this course as well. She is also currently researching the connection between nature and happiness — biophilia — and is considering writing a book about happiness based on lessons from her life on safari.