#11 - Shameless Joy and Healing

Healing Connections

In this episode, Liana and Max dive into the critical role joy played in their healing journeys. Liana talks about discovering "ordinary" joy after being inspired by Rick Hanson's work on rewiring the "survival" brain. She talks about making conscious choices in shifting from a heavily dominant negative focus to including and growing positive and pleasant experiences. She talks about untangling joy from shame and some of the burdens of that pairing. Max talks about the importance of giving yourself permission to be joyful and how his own limiting beliefs about joy were an initial obstacle to him having more of it in his life. Together they talk about the positive communal qualities of joy, its ability to grow when shared, and even shared a short social meditation practice where they noted out loud how they were experiencing the present moment through the eyes of joy as a mind state. They wrap it up with sharing of the alchemy of the supportive healing community as a place where joy grows when shared while sorrow lessens.
Notes:
The social meditation practice demonstrated in this episode was originally created by Vince Fakhoury Horn from Buddhist Geeks and is called Zen noting.
Resources:
Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence
by Rick Hanson PhD

Chapters

1. Prioritizing survival over positive mind states (00:04:30)

2. H.E.A.L. as a tool to increase your tolerance for good (00:05:41)

3. Importance of including pleasant experiences (00:09:30)

4. Shameless joy (00:15:55)

5. Invitation to question beliefs about joy (00:22:05)

6. Neuroplasticity and choosing what direction to grow (00:30:37)