Published September 30, 2026 04:04AM
I have the word “joy” tattooed on my neck. I chose joy because somewhere along the way, I began to understand joy not as something I need to chase, earn, or wait for life to give me. I began to experience it as something I return to. Like love. Like peace. Something already existing underneath all the noise, fear, expectations, and stories I carry about who I am supposed to be.
For a long time, I thought joy belonged to the moments when life was going well. Before my accident, which caused me to be paralyzed from the chest down, it was easy to imagine happiness as something connected to my circumstances: what my body could do, where I could go, what I could accomplish. Then my body changed completely. There was grief. There was pain. There was a life I had known that was suddenly gone.
Yet over time, something surprised me. Grief did not take away my capacity for joy. Yoga helped me discover that both emotions could live inside me at the same time. I could miss the body I once had and still feel gratitude for the body I have that is still breathing. I could feel pain and still laugh. I could mourn one part of my life while falling deeply in love with another. We are made of multitudes. The heart is spacious enough to hold more than one truth.
There is a beautiful word in yogic philosophy, ananda, which is often translated as bliss or deep joy. I don’t experience this as constant happiness or as an instruction to smile through suffering. For me, it points toward something quieter—a place beneath the changing circumstances of our lives that remains whole. Yoga does not ask me to escape sadness in order to reach that place. It asks me to become present enough to notice that sadness is not the only thing here.
This is one of the gifts of self-awareness. When I bring attention to my breath, when I inhabit my body with curiosity instead of judgment, my experience of myself becomes larger. I notice the pain, but I also notice warmth. I notice grief, but maybe somewhere beside it there is also tenderness. I notice fear, and beneath it there might still be love. Sometimes joy appears as laughter. Sometimes it is much smaller: sunlight on my face, the feeling of breathing, another person beside me, the simple realization that I am still here.
Yoga has taught me that joy does not require the absence of suffering. In fact, some of the deepest joy I have known arrived after I stopped demanding that life be different that what it was. Not because everything suddenly became easy. Because presence allowed me to meet the fullness of my experience. Nothing needed to be pushed away. Grief could sit beside joy. Pain could sit beside love. Both could belong.
Maybe this is the dance of life. Not a life without sorrow, but a life spacious enough for everything. Again and again, yoga brings me back to that space. Back to my body. Back to awareness. Back to love. And underneath so much of what I thought I had lost, I keep finding it there—the joy that was never asking me to become someone else before I was allowed to feel it.
20-Minute Yoga to Remind You of Your Joy
We’re going to have an adaptive and accessible yoga practice in a chair. We’re going to locate the spirit of joy, and we’re going to add some mindful movements into it. You only will need a chair for this practice, and I would love for you to adapt it to your beautiful self. If any part of the practice is not available to you, I would love for you to visualize it. You don’t need to move. That’s also yoga.
Centering
Once you find a comfortable place in your chair, I invite you to maybe place the palms of your hands on your tights and soften your shoulders. If it’s comfortable for you, you can go ahead and close your eyes or have a soft gaze.
One thing that I would like to ask you is to try to raise the corners of your mouth a tiny bit, and we’re going to introspectively and compassionately search for the seed of joy, but as you switch off the volume of distractions, you start feeling the sensations that is present in your body at this moment. Maybe you can visualize the light in your heart center, your chest, radiating outward and growing as we breathe in and breathe out. Joy is part of us. It is our natural state. And we’re made of multitudes of emotions. Even if you experience grief, you can also experience joy. Parts of you experience joy and parts of you experience grief. They can coexist in the same body, but it’s why you feel joy at this moment.
Soften your shoulders. Soften behind your eyes. Bring yourself back to center now. Back to midline. We’re going to add some mindful movements now to our practice.
Mountain Pose
So sit up straight and tall here in Mountain Pose or Tadasana. You can come back to this space anytime and do the practice without moving.
So ground yourself through your sitting bones. Raise your sternum, your heart center, and extend your spine a tiny bit. You can press your feet against the ground.
Sun Breaths
I would like to invite you to do 5 Sun Breaths. We’re going to trace the shape of the sun with our arms, and I would love for us to synchronize the breath with the movement if possible. Every time we bring the arms down, we’re going to purse our lips together and have a long and soft exhalation, like you are blowing through a straw or blowing like a birthday cake with 75 candles on it. Really slowly. This slow exhalation will eventually downregulate our nervous systems, which creates a better state to search for joy inside of us.
So come back to Mountain Pose. Release your arms at your sides. Here we go, at your own pace. Inhale, slowly raise your arms any amount and gaze at your palms. Exhale, long and soft through the mouth and release your arms.
If you’d like, press both feet on the ground for a sense of grounding. Give your arms a little shake and notice how you feel after some gentle arm, shoulder, and neck movement.
Neck & Shoulder Stretch
Bring yourself back to Mountain Pose. We’re going to keep working with the neck and shoulders. Take your left hand and hold your chair frame, just to get better balance. Come into Mountain Pose, sitting up straight and tall. Raise your right arm as far as is comfortable and gaze at the palm of the hand. Inhale here through the nose.
Exhale long and soft and bring this arm as far back as you can, with the palm facing toward the back wall. Gaze over your left shoulder, exhaling through the mouth very gently. Beautiful. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale as you come back to center.
Give your right arm a little shake, noticing how it feels. Hold your chair frame now with your right hand, and we’re going to do the same thing with your other arm.
Neck Stretches
Bring yourself back to center, raise your sternum, and get into Mountain Pose one more time. Soften your shoulders. To invite more joy to our lives, we can raise the corners of our mouth a tiny bit. Then lower your right ear toward your right shoulder, feeling the stretch along the left side of your neck.
Then gently bring your chin toward your chest and bring your left ear toward the left shoulder. Keep your smile on your face and draw another smile. Don’t forget to breathe. Let’s try that one more time. Maybe you try a 360-degree neck roll, very gentle and consciously.
And then come back to center. Beautiful. As you release, take time to notice how you feel after some conscious neck rolls. Notice the dance of joy.
Shoulder Rolls
Talking about dancing, let’s draw the sun with our arms and shoulders with some shoulder rolls. Reposition yourself in the chair to find some grounding and a safe place where you can raise your arms. I’m paralyzed from the chest down, so I always need you to find my center of gravity, so please find yours. Then sit up straight and tall in Mountain Pose and give your arms a little shake.
Inhale and raise your arms any amount. Exhale as you slowly lower your arms to reach straight out from your shoulders, palms facing down, and hold here. Soften your shoulders. We’re gonna kiss our shoulders now with our hands, bending our elbows and bringing our fingertips to the tops of our shoulders.
At your own pace, roll the shoulders 3 times forward and 3 times backward. So you’re trying to draw a circle with your elbows. You can draw a tiny sun or a huge one. Let’s try to synchronize the breath and the movement. Maybe you hold a cheeky smile, raising the corners of your mouth. Be curious about what your body is asking of you at this moment. And then release.
Seated Twist
We’re going to open the spine, starting with a gentle twist. Come into anjali mudra with your palms together. Once you get here, place your hands between your legs. Ground yourself through your sitting bones and find some length in your spine. Take your left hand and bring it as far as is comfortable for you toward the left, toward the wall behind you. Gaze toward the palm of your hand if it is available to you. Soften your shoulders. Hold it here for a couple breaths. Beautiful. Bring your body back to center and twist toward the other direction.
Seated Spinal Flexion & Extension
Bring your hands together again between the thighs. Sit up straight and tall one more time and flex your spine by leaning forward as much as is comfortable for you, bringing the chin toward the chest in a version of Cat Pose. Have a long exhalation here through the mouth.
Now broaden through your chest and bring your shoulder blades toward each other as you lift yourself, extending your spine in a version of Cow Pose.
Maybe you get into a flow here. Exhale, Cat. Inhale, Cow. Extending and flexing your spine at your own pace. Exhale. Inhale.
Eventually come back to center. As you release, give a little shake.
Seated Side Bends
Sit up straight and tall, and we’re going to do some side bends or lateral flexion. Start by bringing your left hand outside your right knee. Inhale as you raise your right arm any amount, and get into a gentle lateral flexion here, working with your balance.
If raising your arms is not available, you can ground your hands on your hips and take a very gentle side bend. Stay here as you exhale. Lovely.
Now take the other side.
Closing
Try to find that comfortable place in your seat one last time. Close your eyes if it’s comfortable or have a soft gaze. Let’s dive inward one more time to find that light, that joy. Be curious about it. Be curious about how it feels, about the sensation of joy. If you feel like it, you can think about something that brings you joy. It can be anything. In my case, yesterday it started raining here, and I really like the smell, the essence of wet soil, so I had a glimmer yesterday, a moment of joy, smelling it, contemplating it. Now, I am bringing myself back to that place, to that sensation. And I would love if we can do the same thing. Let’s spend a minute right there. Joy is part of you. Joy is within you.
Open your eyes. Ground yourself one last time. Inhale, raise your arms, any amount. Exhale, long and soft, as you bring yourself back to anjali mudra one more time. From this place of gratefulness, I close this practice. And I am very thankful and joyful to have you practicing with me today. Thank you so much.
