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Joy As Resistance

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by Amy Bullard

I’ve drawn a tarot card from my Smith-Waite Deck, and a card from my Mantra Oracle deck. Intuitively, I see these two cards as advice for how we can experience joy. 

Why is joy an essential component in our journey to liberation? For that question, I’ll draw upon yogic philosophy.

Joy

How would you describe the feeling of joy? Can you remember a situation where you felt joyful? What was that situation? Can you remember how you felt in your body?

For me, joy is seeing the world for the magic that it is, finding happiness in the mundane and beauty in the day to day. The magic of tiny ants building their magnificent underground tunnels, the birds’ song entering my ears at dawn, and being alive, breathing, laying on the grass in the Summertime among the worms. 

Joy is the sweet, tingly sensation in my tummy, the gentle softening in my shoulders and jaw. Joy creates more space in my heart, more space in my lungs to breathe deep. Joy shows me the gift of being alive.

Joy is about noticing in each and every moment, in everything, everyone and nothing. It is in this practice of noticing joy that concerns our path toward collective liberation.

Yoga

Yoga has changed my life. I now notice magic in the day to day. I greet beauty with a gentle bow. I slow down and feel joy in my body for an extra moment. Yoga is more than movement, although as a philosophy, the fact it has a body practice embedded is what continues to draw me in. Yoga is the holistic framework I use to work toward collective liberation. I believe that because of yoga’s approach to liberation, magic, and beauty, it was outlawed in India by British colonisers for the fear of it being too powerful. Many yogis continued to practice underground as a resistance to the colonial occupation.

There are many models in yoga philosophy that strive to explain our existence, one being the Pancha Maya Kosha Model. Instead of viewing the mind and body as separate entities, yoga understands our existence as five layers each having a direct effect on the other. The layer that concerns our exploration of joy as resistance is the Anandamaya Kosha, the Bliss Body. The five layers are:

Yoga philosophy states that we all have access to the bliss body. Bliss, joy and liberation are already a part of our being. Through the practice of yoga we create more access to our bliss body, experiencing the utmost joy and liberation. 

This is not what the people in power want. 

The people pulling the puppet strings of oppression do not want us to learn that we can all access liberation. They don’t want us to know that collective liberation is possible and that it’s within our reach. The people in power wish to keep us relying on the material world, telling us that we will only find joy by following in the footsteps of the artificial capitalist dream. Practicing a spirituality that holds a fundamental belief that we don’t need any of the material world to experience joy is radical and it’s anti-capitalist. We decolonise our bodies, our layers of existence, every moment we let ourselves find joy, even when – or especially when – we are experiencing the harshest forms of violence. 

I understand that this is all easier said than done. I had a spiritual collapse just over five years ago and during this time of deep depression I didn’t think I’d ever be happy again. Through dedication to spiritual practice alongside reading black feminist theory and imaginings and connecting with activists, I began to see my wellbeing, joy and rest as resistance to colonisation. 

I realised that experiencing joy, right now, in this present moment, is the work. 

The Hermit

As I shuffle my deck of cards, I ask myself, why is joy important for our resistance against oppression? How can we cultivate more joy? And out pops The Hermit.

The Hermit holds a lantern so that they can only see just in front of them and no further, the same in each direction. The Hermit acts from a place of presence. They cannot transport themselves to the past or far into the future.

When I am joyful I feel wildly present, and being in this space gives me precious time to experience the world as the magical place it is. The Hermit greets us with warmth and comfort – shining their lantern to illuminate the present moment.

The Hermit’s here to remind us to allow our entire existence to experience joy. The Hermit invites us to indulge in the feeling of joy as an antidote, as resistance, to the systems of oppression, to withdraw from the world’s violent made-up rules and align ourselves with our dreams for liberation.

Mantra: Ma

I shuffle my Mantra Oracle deck and we divinely receive the mantra Ma.

The text on the card states: Open Up to Receiving. Ma is a Sanskrit word and translated by Yogapedia as the following:

 “rebirth, regeneration and consciously experiencing the joy of the Infinite”

The advice from the Hermit and the mantra, Ma, is to lovingly find our way to the present moment and seek joy in that presence. 

A practice to close

I invite you to chant Ma, maybe six times, you can choose to chant aloud or silently in your mind – both ways have the same energetic benefit. 

I invite you to find joy in the smallest of moments and know that this is an act of resistance that takes us closer to liberation.

Amy Tara Bullard (she/her) is a decolonial yoga guide & activist based in York. She lives with her partner and rodent children: three degus and three guinea pigs. She loves practising yoga, writing, reading books, hanging out in nature, practicing tarot & being wrapped up in community.

She works through two organisations: The Teapot Collective and Story of the Changing. She is passionate about radical governance, designing organisations so that they are sustainable, facilitating workshops for organisations and communities and being creative about how we can get to a world where empire is obsolete.

She writes weekly on her Substack, Teacups, that includes collective tarot reading and yoga philosophy. Teacups is for folks who care deeply about the injustices of the world and may also consider themselves an activist. At Teapot: A Home for Healing she runs online accessible yoga classes (chair & mat based yoga and meditation classes), you can check out their booking page to find out more. They also run an online monthly creative and embodied practice group for people with mixed ethnicities – Mixed Up Healing.

Instagram: theteapotcollective_

Instagram: storyofthechanging