J-O-Y

As we enter the final week of Mental Health Awareness Month, I invite you to access, create, and embrace joy. Joy can be absolutely anything that brings you a sense of pleasure, happiness, calm, and at times euphoria! Joy is something that we can conjure internally within ourselves through our thoughts of gratitude, pleasant memories, particular meditations, and visualizations. External factors such as spending time with others, listening to music, a favorite flavor, and intentional movement, like dance, can help in cultivating a sense of joy. Joy can be spontaneous or we can be intentional about when we experience joy by structuring it into our day. Being intentional about joy can be as simple as sharing a joyful experience with someone safe, as the retelling can be just as emotionally charged. Joy is with us every where and every day. How are you choosing to tap into joy to begin experiencing some of the benefits below?

Joy can help to:

• improve mood

• promote ease

• decrease stress

• increase distress tolerance

• increase overall wellness