Yoga and the Art of Happiness

By Susan Ni Rahilly

Happiness seems such a small thing when you have it, but when it’s gone you realize how big it really is. -Gorky

The Yoga approach to happiness is holistic and involves the emotional art of healing the mind in order to bring change to the body, mind and emotions. Happiness with Yoga is a healing process.

The Art of Happiness teaches you how to look deep within yourself, usually in contemplation, to find peace and satisfaction. Sukha, inner contentment, is the deepest form of satisfaction. Experiencing your own bliss is the most profound peace. Our Yoga practice, our Sadhana, supports the process by continually restoring balance in the mind body system at all levels of our being whilst Meditation and Pranayama, breathing practices, bring awareness of how tyranical our thoughts and emotions can be.

This is probably a good place to have a refresher on the subtle bodies of Yoga, where we experience ourselves at various levels of existence, the Koshas, or the 5 sheaths of existence: Annamaya kosha, the physical or flesh body (also known as the pain body); Manomaya kosha, the body of the mind and emotions, the lower mental body (also known as the mundane mind); Pranamaya kosha, the vital body of the breath or prana; Vijnanamaya kosha, the psychic, higher mental body or the body of the intellect, inspiration and wisdom; and Anandamaya kosha, the bliss body, Universal Consciousness.

The Art of Happiness with Yoga involves trying to understand the nature of bliss, the deep inner peace that is the characteristic of Anandamaya kosha , the fifth level of being. This healing art embodies, actually physically being experienced in the body, the realization that happiness comes from within and is not dependent on material possessions or actual physical enjoyment.

So many of us have, for so long in our evolution as humankind, associated happiness with achievement of our desires, wants and expectations – and expecting the experience of elated excitement, almost jubilant and ecstatic, and permanent self-satisfaction. And of course the disappointment that follows the discovery that none of these feelings last, brings on a negative downer: we get bitter, disillusioned and tired. We just wear our emotions out in the long run.

OM Times Magazine » syndicated