Choosing Joy

a thought to unfold…

We often talk about happiness and joy as if they’re one in the same, but they’re actually quite different.

Happiness is a reaction triggered by positive events, success, or material gain. But it comes and goes with changing situations, it’s a fleeting feeling.

Joy though, joy isn’t something that happens to us.

It’s something we choose.

It’s rooted in purpose, gratitude, connection.

And the thing about joy is that it can coexist with other emotions, even sadness and fear.

Choosing joy isn’t pretending everything is easy.

It’s believing there is always room for light.

inspiration is everywhere…

I came across this video interview with Abby Wambach the other day where she was talking about anxiety and joy.  She shared that when she’s fully experiencing joy and play, she doesn’t feel anxiety in her body at the same time—like not physically possible.

BUT she acknowledges the anxiety may still exist. She can see it. She knows it’s there. But she lets joy take the lead.

That isn’t avoidance. That’s presence.

Because when we’re truly here—in our breath, our strength, our rhythm, our movement, our play— joy has a way of sweeping us up.

That’s the practice. That’s the choice.

Happiness is often tied to what’s happening around us—
the circumstance, the outcome, the thing.

But joy is something deeper. Joy lives inside.

It’s the feeling of being connected. Of moving with purpose. Of being aligned with what matters.

And that means joy doesn’t disappear when other feelings exist.

It can live right alongside effort, alongside challenge, alongside heartbreak, alongside sorrow, alongside life.

When we’re here fully, joy can take over.

Not because everything else is gone, but because joy sweeps us up when we let it.

Joy isn’t something we wait for. It’s something we choose.

Again and again and again.

thoughts for practice…

Journal Prompts

Pick one or two that speak to you—or move through them all.

• Where in my life have I been waiting for joy instead of choosing it?

• What does joy feel like in my body when I allow it?

• What helps me feel playful, present, and free? How can I create more space for that?

• What would it look like to let joy take the lead today, without needing everything else to disappear?

Need a moment before you begin?

Close your eyes.
Notice your breath.
Notice your body.

Where does ease already exist?
Write from there.

Reflections for your practice

The next time you step onto your mat, ask:

Where can I invite more play into my practice today?

If we’re here to feel more, how can I let joy take the lead?

Am I willing to let ease exist alongside the effort?

What would happen if I stopped waiting and started choosing?

Every time we come to our mat is an invitation to feel more—an opportunity to use breath and body to fully drop in, so we can experience this life more fully.

Whatever shows up, belongs here, and that includes joy, too. Maybe this life—this practice—doesn’t have to feel so serious.

Because the thing about joy is this when we choose to let it in, it has the ability to sweep us up while still living alongside everything else we’re carrying.

take this with you…

Joy doesn’t just happen to us. It’s something we choose.

Through presence. Through play. Through allowing ourselves to be fully here.

Even on the shortest day of the year—the winter solstice—light still exists. And so, even in moments of darkness, joy can be found, too.

Every time you choose connection.
Every time you choose presence.
Every time you choose play —

You’re choosing joy.

And you get to choose it again.

And again.

And again.

—this reflection comes from a christmas week flow taught 12.21.2025—

Ps. Every volume has its own vibe—get the playlist here and let this one unfold.

Human Migration: A Return to Self

a thought to unfold…

Some birds travel thousands of miles, following the same path year after year. We call this migration heroic — instinctive, ancient, beautiful. But maybe we forget that we’re doing the very same thing inside ourselves. We return to the same truths, the same lessons, again and again. Not because we failed… but because we’re ready to go deeper.

inspiration is everywhere…

I’ve been reading a lot of Mark Nepo lately — he’s a brilliant writer, but for me, more than anything, it’s the way his mind works. It’s the lens in which he sees this world around us—he has this beautifully complex way of looking at the seemingly “simple” things in life but seeing something profound.

He was at the Omega Institute when I was there for my writing workshop with Lara Love Hardin, so obviously I scooped up a bunch of his work from the bookshop (love me some merch and bookshop moments). And what I love about his writing is that each chapter is its own doorway. You can open to any page and there’s a message waiting for you that didn’t know you needed.

The book I’m reading right now, Falling Down and Getting Up, is about inner resilience and strength. Which, if you know me, is basically my favorite topic in life. Partially by choice, but mostly because I had no choice. Life serves up some really heavy things and we must keep going somehow, while also honoring all that is.

As I was reading one of the chapters the other day he talked about this idea of human migration — the way we return to ourselves again and again and again. He talks about how we’re born with a sense of Oneness. Completely whole. Completely connected. And then life happens. We learn separation. Expectations get placed on us. We get distracted, pulled away, shaped by experiences, culture, fear, pressure. All the things. Slowly we forget the deep knowing we arrived with.

“Each of us is born with a complete sense of Oneness and an inherent knowing of all the connections in the living Universe. When we first arrive, there is nothing between us and all other forms of life. Then, as we develop the many things we need to live in a world full of diverse tugs and pulls, we develop an identity.

Now there’s a self and an object. Now there’s inside and outside. Now there’s weather. Now there’s gravity. Now we hold something and drop it. There are a million distinctions and distractions. With each one, we’re challenged to trust or distrust the spirit we arrive with or the world we are born into. The Wholeness of Life starts to feel fragmented as we go about our human journey of discovering and learning and embodying our way into that Oneness all over again.”

— Mark Nepo

The journey of being human is this migration back to ourselves. Back to that original wholeness. And it doesn’t happen once— there is no start line there is no finish line — it happens over and over. A return. And every time through is a deepening.

Nepo says that in a world that condemns repetition as failure, we’re meant to stay open to learning it all again. That returning is not going backward. It’s going deeper. We’re not circling. We’re spiraling inward to a clearer understanding of who we are.

Truth be told, I’m a total bird nerd, so I have been thinking a lot about this idea of migration, both bird and human since reading that chapter. Last week, as I built out my yoga class and playlist, aligning songs with some of these thoughts and learnings, I started to notice something.

So often, whether it’s in song or life, we associate birds with freedom — flying away, soaring off, chasing the horizon, setting yourself free. Whether it’s Free Bird, Fly Away, I’m Like a Bird, I mean the list goes on and on. It’s all about the flight and freedom. But we rarely talk about the return. The migration. The truth is, though, most birds only survive because they return. The return is the freedom. The migration back is what makes the journey. And then its repeated over and over again. For generations. And without the return, there is no freedom, in fact, there is no bird at all.

The same is true for us. Maybe coming back to ourselves time and time again — to something familiar, something we thought we already knew — isn’t a failure or a regression at all . Maybe it’s the quiet, heroic work of deepening. Of remembering. Of coming back to who we are.

Yoga is such a beautiful practice of this. We return to the same shapes again and again—warrior 1, downward dog, breath in, breath out, whatever it is. Same breath, same body, same poses. And yet every single time, it’s completely different. The body is different. The heart is different. The mind is different. Our lives are different. Every time we show up on our mats—or our life—it’s different. We’re seeing it from a new angle, a new understanding. So we are most certainly not just circling or going backwards, we’re deepening, my friends. Over and over again.

“So, in a world that condemns repetition as failure, stay open to learning it all again. When we circle, we are just beginning to go deeper. And when we resist, we are often knocked down in order to look more closely at what we ran by. Some birds fly thousands of miles in migration, over and over, year after year. We find this astounding and beautiful. We find their long, determined pump of wings alone in the far reaches of the sky, quietly heroic. And we, as spirits in bodies in time on Earth, have our own human migration, between love and suffering, year after year. This, too, is quietly heroic. All so we can wake up to what is true, one more time, and utter, ‘Ah, it’s as I’ve always known, each thing is irreplaceable.’

The journey of being human is relearning piece by piece all that we were born with.”

— Mark Nepo

thoughts for practice…

Journal Prompts

Pick one or two that speak to you—or move through them all.

• Where in my life am I being invited to return, rather than move on?

• What truth, lesson, or feeling is resurfacing—what might these themes of my life be asking me to see more clearly this time? Where can I go deeper?

• What parts of myself have I drifted away from, and what would it feel like to come home to them?

• When have I mistaken “going back” for failure, and what might deepen if I soften that belief?

• How am I different from the last time I stood in this place — emotionally, spiritually, energetically?

• What feels familiar right now…but not the same? What new understanding is forming beneath the surface? How can I listen and notice?

• If I honored my returns instead of judging them, how might that shift the way I move through this season of my life, or my life altogether?

Need a moment before you begin?

Close your eyes.
Feel your breath.

Imagine your inhale gathering all the scattered pieces of you…
and your exhale guiding them gently home.

We so often think of the exhale as release —
a letting go, a clearing out.
But what if, just for today,
your exhale was part of the return?

Write from that place of coming home.

Reflections for your practice

The next time you step onto your mat, ask:

Can I meet each pose, each breath, as a return—familiar, yet entirely new?

Where does this shape feel different than the last time I was here? What can I learn from this difference?

Am i willing to revisit the poses I resist and the ones I love — not to fix them, but to understand them more deeply?

Can I let each breath be a migration inward — a coming home, one inhale, one exhale at a tie?

What happens if I stop chasing progress and start trusting the spiral —the way the every return brings me a layer deeper?

Yoga is a living metaphor for the return. For life. The human migration.

You are never the same person twice —
every breath, every movement is a new beginning disguised as repetition.

We start in stillness.
We end in stillness.
One is a letting go.
The other is a rebirth.

Let your mat be the place you practice the art of returning —
to breath, to presence, to yourself.

Not to go backward,
but to go deeper.

take this with you…

In a world that tells us not to look back, remember this: returning is not going backward. Returning is how we go deeper. Like the birds who travel thousands of miles only to find their way home again, our own migrations — between love and loss, forgetting and remembering — are quietly heroic. Each return brings us closer to what is true. And closer to the self we never actually lost at all. 

—this reflection comes from a classes taught 12.4-8.2025—

Ps. Every volume has its own vibe—press play and let this one unfold.