Stillness Speaks Book Previews

Richard Freeman Mary Taylor: What Is The Art Of Feeling Happy?

by Sanjiv Manifest | Mar 19, 2025

feeling happy: “… happiness isn’t something you do; it’s something you are … feeling happy is a form of art: because happiness isn’t a mental construction or even a specific feeling. It is a reflection of life … ” ~ Richard Freeman & Mary Taylor

Everyone wants to be happy … and yet it seems elusive to most, if not all.

Why? … and even more importantly … what is happiness?

If we explore multiple traditions we’ll likely find multiple answers … garbed in the particular traditions language .. potentially making it difficult to understand, let alone embrace.

At Stillness Speaks we are always exploring ways to demystify the essence of traditions and bring it into the “here and now” … or make it more accessible.

To this end, it was a delight to discover Richard Freeman and Mary Taylor (yoga teachers for decades) who have explored questions like: What is Happiness? How do you experience happiness? Why does it feel so good? and How do you share it? … in their recent book Feeling Happy: The Yoga of Body, Heart, and Mind … where, in the Introduction they say:

“… We’ve struggled with why there is so much suffering and, at times, have been confounded when a loved one says all they want is for you to be happy. How on earth do you do that?

We haven’t solved the puzzle of how to be blissed out all the time (which seems increasingly less appealing than it might have decades back), but we have gotten a toehold on what it means to be happy and alive and how cultivating happiness is equally beneficial for oneself and for others. The underlying premise of this book is that happiness isn’t something you do; it’s something you are. …”

So, today, we take a deep dive into feeling happy through the entire chapter The Art of Feeling Happy … which is “… a sort of summary chapter …” that highlights “… the practices and theory included in the book …” … that Richard & Mary hope will “… reveal a path out of suffering and the potential for a more peaceful and happier world …”

I found the “bullet points” or “contemplations” to be very relatable, practical, understandable, and easily incorporated into one’s everyday life … very highly recommended … as is the entire book. It eminently achieves their aspiration for the book!

This post is part of our ongoing Shambhala Publications series that offers substantive previews of selections from Shambhala Publications new and classic titles …

All italicized text here is adapted from Feeling Happy: The Yoga of Body, Heart, and Mind, © 2024 by Richard Freeman and Mary Taylor. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO.

You can purchase the book at Shambhala Publications or Amazon.

What Is The Art Of Feeling Happy?

Throughout this book, we’ve talked about happiness as pure, everlasting, and enduring. We’ve said it’s within reach but that it’s not always easy to find and that, even when you do find it, happiness can be difficult to hold on to. We’ve considered how and why so many of us suffer, and we have explored ways to help ourselves and others reduce that suffering. We’ve suggested practices for you to experiment with as means of experiencing how to tune in to your body and the present moment, with the idea that waking up to the here and now is the most direct path to finding a lasting sense of happiness.

We’ve spent a lot of time exploring what it means to be embodied—how to work with the breath, train the mind, and free the heart—and what all that has to do with the price of eggs. And we’ve come back time and again to the truth that we’ve all wound up here on this earth at this moment in time, and that though each of us is wonderfully unique, we are all intimately connected through a common essence and bonds of similar experience that cannot be broken within the shared embodied human experience.

An often-underrated part of that human experience is our capacity to appreciate and be deeply moved by art. Art is a way of expressing something that goes beyond words. Great artists convey an experience, an insight, or a vision they’ve had not only when their minds were engaged but when their minds were communicating in concert with their body and their heart and within the context of the world around them. Artists express things that are too complex to be captured solely by words—a sneeze, love, or the tragedy of war, for example. Your own experience of one of those things could be elicited by a painting, a piece of music, or skillfully crafted words, but you can only fully comprehend and assimilate it through a direct, integrated embodied experience. You can’t draw a fantastic picture of a sneeze if you’ve never sneezed, and you can’t express happiness if you’ve only seen photos of it on your social media feed. Art makes us feel different by reaching beyond mental constructs into the realm of awakened embodied experience, intuition, and the heart.

And this is why feeling happy is a form of art: because happiness isn’t a mental construction or even a specific feeling. It is a reflection of life and the uniquely human capacity to connect, to love, and to be loved. Happiness is who you are beyond your imagination, and it is the you that is experienced when your body, heart, and mind are joined in unison. It is a foundational part of being alive, yet it can slip through your fingers in the blink of an eye. And it has an enigmatic quality in that you can never accurately talk about feeling happy because words alone cannot describe its depth. Instead, they invariably reduce the experience to a two-dimensional concept. Yet paradoxically, because words are how we understand things, we must use them to share the experience so that, through the art of language, we feel beyond the words.

In this book, we have offered theory and practices that are drawn from personal experience and what we’ve learned from practicing yoga and working with students and scholars over the years. Our aim is to build a clear path of understanding what pure happiness is, how and why we suffer, and how to alleviate suffering for ourselves and for others. We include here a sort of summary chapter. The following “bullet points” (in modern terms) and “contemplations” (in Eastern philosophical terms) highlight the practices and theory included in the book. We offer all this to you in the hope that something in this book may reveal a path out of suffering and the potential for a more peaceful and happier world.

Contemplate and embody the nature of reality. We are all connected to each other and to all else, and everything changes. Recognizing this opens the door to feeling happy. Can you step through?
Trust. You will find your way through that door in your own time at just the right time. Trust yourself. Trust interconnectedness. Trust the process of change.
You are not alone, even though you may feel separate and isolated. Sounds, foods, emotions, air, ideas, and love can show you this. Ask yourself, where do these kinds of things stop and I begin?
Notice how good it feels when your mind becomes still. Ahh, such a relief! Cultivate that steady state.

Let your breath soften and settle deep into the core of your body. Use the natural intelligence of your breath to cultivate spaciousness of heart and clear stability within your mind and body.
When you notice tension in your body, send breath there to help soften and support.
Cultivate a sense of openness and luminosity in the core of your heart. That’s where you will find others and they will find you.
Cultivate friendships and connections.
Cultivate love and kindness.
Can you steady your mind in a windstorm? Find stillness beneath change.
Look deeply into the eyes of another to find the common ground you share. You are both human. You both want and deserve to feel happy. You both were born, will laugh and cry, love and be loved. And then you’ll die, but while you’re here there is a precious opportunity to be real, truthful, joyful, and helpful to all those others who, like you, are here too.
Make the effort to reach out to others with an open heart and a clear mind. Don’t wait for others to reach out first.
Stand still with bare feet on cool grass for ten rounds of breath. You can move your toes or flex your feet, but don’t walk. Pay attention to the sensations, feelings, and thoughts that arise. Then let them go.
Be generous, and accept the generosity of others. Share gratitude.
Laugh. Don’t take yourself, or any of this, too seriously.

Show up. In the moment. What’s better than that?!?
Holding on too tightly stifles change. It suffocates life.
Be part of life rather than separate from it. It feels much better!
Pay attention to communications from your body, heart, and mind. You’ve been given a remarkable “sensing machine” to help you through life. Why not get to know it and use it to help bring happiness into this world?
What’s your story? Is it really you? Or is it limiting and fracturing you? Does your story cut you off from, compare you to, or separate you from others? How does your story make you feel in body, heart, and mind?
Share what you have and want with others—don’t keep it for yourself alone.
Experience others deeply, as if they were you—observing, listening, connecting, and accepting. When they are joyful, that is part of you. When they are suffering, you can feel that as well. The suffering is not them, nor is it you. Turn toward that suffering, and offer your presence in return.
Listen from your heart. Speak truth from your heart as you feel the words in your bones.
Be generous from your heart. Drink in the generosity and goodness of others through their words and actions.
Set your intentions carefully so they reflect the essence of who, deep in the core of your body, you know yourself to be. Then live in alignment with your intentions.
Notice if you experience friction in thoughts or actions. Is your motivation in alignment with your intention, or have they become severed by egoic confusion?
Don’t give up. Be kind and forgive. Be strong and clear, extending the truth and being fueled by the goodness that lies beneath surface chaos.
Presence, love, compassion, and happiness are not transactional. Don’t treat them as such.
Don’t be afraid to pause for one round of breath. Inhale, gap, exhale, gap. For your body, heart, and mind, pausing to breathe with awareness can be like a reset button on your computer.
When you objectify yourself or others, you suffer and they suffer. You do harm to others and to yourself.
When you notice the sun rising, a smell wafting through the air, or the sound of music, watch patterns of change—the light shifting, the smell going from intense to less so, notes and rhythm.

Whatever captures your mind and imagination, observe its pattern of being. Without changes there would be none of this.
Practice holding paradoxical ideas and situations with care and a robust sense of curiosity. Don’t be thrown off by confusion or fear.
If you see yourself as better than, worse than, opposed to, or opposed by, you will experience a sense of separateness and isolation. You will suffer. Look closely: you’re not separate, so why are you suffering?
When you’re absorbed by your story of who you think you are and where you think you’re going, you can’t find your way to the here and now.
Meditation helps you train your mind. Training your mind leads to clarity. Clear thinking sees through illusions that stop you from feeling happy.
Find your way to the present moment as often as you can. You won’t be able to be there all the time, and that’s okay. Show up, and then show up again.
Ask for help when you need it. Offer support when you can.
Happiness, compassion, and clarity are contagious. What a great place this would be if they were the next pandemic.
Let go of grudges and look again.

Be real, truthful, caring, and playful out of respect for yourself and others.
Tune in, don’t tune out—especially to your embodied state.
Own your mistakes and the harm you may have caused to others. Apologize if it’s helpful; keep it to yourself if it does more harm or if you are apologizing only so you’ll feel better.
Get out in nature.
Walk slowly through a gentle rain.
Consider what is important to you in life, and set an intention that reflects that and your values. This way you have a polestar to guide you when you are confused or feeling lost.
Become familiar with your habitual ways of responding, listening, perceiving, evaluating, and so forth. When you notice you are responding habitually, pause and consider whether the actions you are taking or words you are speaking are of service.
Moving in conjunction with your breath can help still and clarify your mind.
Soften your jaw and your tongue. Release tension from your palate, and smile.
Notice wave patterns in life. Emotions, thoughts, and sensations move in waves. No matter how lasting they may seem, they do not define you. They are not you.

Regulate your emotional state by adjusting your body’s shape or by switching the flow of the breath in your nostrils.
Visualizations can be a powerful way of gaining insight.
Loving-kindness feels great to offer freely and to receive fully.
The quality and intensity of your gaze can change everything.
The unexpected becomes an obstacle when you resist.
When you don’t get what you want, look closely at what you got.
Drop breath deep into the body. Feel your feet on the floor, supported from below, and your connection to others through the earth we all stand upon.
Try taking your blinders off. You can always put them back on.
Ask “why?” to learn more, not because you want something different.
Offer goodness freely from your heart, and set it free. Don’t expect anything in return. Let go of attachment to outcome.
Stay connected without holding on too tightly.
Practice. Be patient and let the mind settle.
If you don’t know what to do, be nice.

May you be safe.
May you be well.
May you find your way and be fulfilled.
May you be happy.
And may you be filled with compassion.

Stay tuned for … more from other luminaries in this Shambhala Publications series …

All italicized text here is adapted from Feeling Happy: The Yoga of Body, Heart, and Mind, © 2024 by Richard Freeman and Mary Taylor. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO.

You can purchase the book at Shambhala Publications or Amazon.