Workshop Details

True happiness is not about acquiring anything, but rather opening to the natural joy and aliveness right inside of you. Awakening Joy is based on a popular ten-month course taken by thousands since 2003, and designed to develop our natural capacities for wellbeing and happiness.
Learn basic principles and experiential exercises drawn from Buddhist philosophy, and other supportive practices which are presented in a user-friendly way. Explore techniques for developing gratitude, learning to love yourself, opening up to the hard stuff as a path to joy, and finding joy in the happiness of others. Perhaps you can’t imagine yourself skipping through a meadow with childlike exuberance. Don’t worry. Truly happy people are not happy all the time. They feel sad and angry and have the whole range of human emotions. Joy is a general feeling of aliveness and wellbeing that is characterized by engagement with life, meeting its ups and downs with authenticity and perspective. It can look very different from person to person, from a quiet sense of contentment to bubbly enthusiasm. Identifying how joy expresses itself uniquely through you is one of the discoveries that awaits.
Please note: You do not have to be a “joyful person” to benefit from this workshop, though you might have fun anyway.
Recommended reading: Baraz and Alexander, Awakening Joy: 10 Steps That Will Put You on the Road to Real Happiness; Foster and Hicks, How We Choose to Be Happy.