There is no word in English to describe the emotion of being happy for someone else’s happiness. We have envy but not the opposite. We borrow the German word ‘schadenfreude’, which means taking pleasure in others’ misfortune. Awful (and sharply on the rise since the 1980s according to Google’s book search). When you consider that language and thoughts are inextricably linked, this gap in our language becomes tragic.

Mudita is a Sanskrit and Pali word. It means ‘vicarious joy’, that is joy for someone else’s joy. In this post, I hope to convince you to help me bring mudita into our vocabulary.

English has more words than any other language. Estimates vary but it’s at least 170,000 and possibly well over a million. While we don’t have a word for mudita, we do have one for ‘resembling an ostrich’ (struthious), one for ‘the legal right to cut turf or peat for fuel on common ground’ (turbary), and another for ‘the plug by which the rectum of a bear is closed during hibernation’ (tappen).

I’m not saying those words aren’t needed (I’m sure there are scientists who have devoted their entire careers to the study of tappen — brave people indeed), but it’s odd that we don’t have a word for mudita.

MUDITA CAN BRING MORE JOY TO YOU AND THOSE AROUND YOU

Research shows that word choices don’t only reflect your emotional state — they influence it too. Thinking and especially talking about positive things makes you happier. Through neuroplasticity, (the brain’s ability to strengthen connections and form new ones) using pathways of joy and happiness strengthens them.

Plus, your happiness impacts the happiness of people close to you. Incredibly, this has been shown to extend out three degrees of separation — to the friends of one’s friends’ friends (in addition to being mind-blowing, this also presents an opportunity for careful apostrophe use). Here’s a quick sketch to show the effect.

The research shows that if a person (e.g., you) is happy, then it increases the chances that everyone in this diagram becomes happy. The study showed causation, not just correlation. To keep the picture manageable, I assumed you only have 3 friends. You probably have more than that, and the effect multiplies exponentially. If you have 10 friends and they each have 10, and so on, you can reach 1,000 people with your happiness. That’s a big deal. It’s also a lot of responsibility: if you have 1,000 Facebook friends, and you post a humble brag that makes them feel less happy about their own lives, that negativity could spread through them outwards to many thousands of people.

Mudita was taught by The Buddha. He said,“I declare that the heart’s release by sympathetic joy has the sphere of infinite consciousness for its excellence.”

Here’s my suggestion: ask your friend what is making them happy at the moment, and tell them “I have mudita for you.” Explain it to them and see what they think. I encourage you to experience and discuss mudita, and through this let joy multiply within us and ripple out as we spread it among our friends, families, and communities.

I promised you joy and longevity. Being more happy and less stressed leads to better health and longer lives (this seems obvious and it’s also backed by research), so adding mudita to your vocabulary really could extend your life. Especially if you help your friends to add it too!

It’s coming to the end of mental health awareness week and, in the studio, in the gentle conversations that often take place after a class, I hear so many stories of why people come to love yoga.
The most often told story is of the transformation that yoga has brought not just physically but to people’s sleep and ability to just ‘do’ life:

“My partner just looks at me now and says go to yoga knowing I’ll be a different person when I come back”.

Amongst my yoga teacher friends, we often share how yoga has been the thing that has helped us through tough times. When you come to your mat, you are welcomed, there is no judgement nor expectation and, if you want to spend your whole practice in child’s pose that is enough because you are more than enough. I leave you with these words. Read them regularly!

Yoga helps mental health. It really does! I really value the sensation of personal freedom and spaciousness that I feel after practicing yoga. My cells somehow seem larger, bursting with energy and more vibrant. I feel a spaciousness in my joints. There seems to be space in-between the vertebrae where the bones used to be crunched up and hunched over. My body feels free to move, to take up space, to breathe deeply. And that very visceral, physical feeling of freedom changes how I think. I feel free and for me that means mentally healthy.

My worries seem to slip away. I’m able to get into the ‘zone’. I feel less anxious about big decisions and focus on making better decisions. I feel happier, wiser, saner.

The Game Changer

Physical movement of any kind makes us feel great. On one level, yoga is just a very effective way of making the body move in every different direction, strengthening and lengthening all at once. The joy of moving is one thing but when combined with very deep, conscious breathing, it’s a complete game-changer! Yoga is a work-in challenging the mind and body in ways that no other ‘fitness’ regime can touch. It allows us to get fit in body and mind. The breath, allows us to feel what we are feeling and to pause before we react.

Scientific research backs up my personal recommendation and your personal experience.  Here are five ways in which yoga can help your mental health.

1. Yoga Makes You Happier

In 2005, German researchers asked a group of ‘emotionally distressed’ women to undertake three hours of yoga a week for three months. Researchers saw a 50% improvement in depression, 30% in anxiety and 65% improvement in overall wellbeing.

The therapeutic effects of yoga have also been proven with psychiatric patients, sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder, and women experiencing the menopause or postmenopausal symptoms.

Emotional well-being is, of course, of utmost importance to our physical and mental health.

In another study, measures of positive and negative affect, mindfulness, perceived stress, and arousal states were taken in 24 people with an existing weekly yoga practice. Some of whom maintained their weekly practice whilst others started a five-times-per-week practice across a fortnight.

The morning daily practice group (five times weekly) showed significant beneficial changes in each of the measures including an increased ability to cope with stress. These findings, thus highlight the benefits of a daily yoga practice and might also prompt us to roll out our mats a little more regularly.

2. Yoga Helps You Sleep Better

Sleep is key to maintaining good mental health and affects our ability to use language effectively, our focus, our understanding and our hearing. It is the quality and not quantity of our sleep that matter and it’s a fact, yoga can help. Even if you don’t really have a sleep ‘problem’, the deep breathing, physical exercise and mindfulness associated with a yoga practice help calm the nervous system and improve your zzzzs.

3. Yoga Helps Reduce Stress

Research makes a link between yoga and the modulation of stress response systems such as a raised heart rate, high blood pressure and shallow breathing.

Everything about yoga, from the slow, steady breathing to the inversions, can help lower the amount of cortisol in your brain. Cortisol is the hormone that appears when you’re stressed; activating the brain amygdala, also known as the fear centre. Regular practice of yoga can cause cortisol levels to drop. As well as dropping cortisol levels, the practice of yoga can increase and decrease areas of the brain and releases beneficial chemicals. One of these areas is the hippocampus, which helps us to deal with stress and anxiety. The hippocampus in yogis increases compared to other groups in the study.

Boston University studied 34 individuals over 12-weeks, half of which spent one hour three times a week walking, while the other did yoga for the same amount of time. The researchers monitored levels of the chemical associated with decreasing anxiety and improving moods, known as gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). The level of GABA rose in the yogis by 27 percent. The walkers’ results were much less significant. Also, dopamine and serotonin, chemicals that help us feel more relaxed and ready to handle stressful situations, rose significantly. No wonder yoga has a reputation for giving you a natural high.

4. Beyond Physical Exercise

Do you feel focussed after yoga? This is because yoga helps increase the size of certain parts of your brain, such as the superior parietal cortex, which helps you concentrate your attention on specific things! This is great news for us multi-taskers who always have a million things to do and projects on the go.

The evidence suggests that yoga interventions appear to be equal to and/or superior to exercise in most outcome measures for people with various health conditions. This is because of the emphasis on breath regulation, mindfulness during practice, and the importance given to maintenance of postures. These key elements are those that most differentiate yoga practices from physical exercises.

5. #BeBodyKind

Almost 1 in 3 adults feel so stressed by issues relating to their body image or appearance that they feel overwhelmed or unable to cope.  Low body esteem can result in isolation and pressure to meet other people’s ideals. Truthfully, how do you think and feel about your body?  Yoga is massively helpful in thinking about our bodies in more positive ways and with kindness.

Yoga allows us to accept ourselves for who we are.  By becoming more present we allow a more compassionate response to our bodies and our perceived limitations. Besides which, yoga also helps us to build a greater understanding about developing our strength physically and mentally. As we do so we can  begin to loosen our grip on unrealistic ideals and appreciate our bodies. Research has shown that the more comfortable we are in our own skin, the greater our general well-being with the result that we are less likely to indulge in destructive behaviour.

The theme for Mental Health Awareness week is Body Image which invites us to explore how we think and feel about our bodies.

I’d love to know how you feel yoga helps you keep body and mind connected and balanced.