Dear Revolution Community,
Joe Hudson said, “Joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions, and she won’t come into your house if her children are not welcome.”
If we say we want joy but we don’t want grief, anger, confusion, or uncertainty, then joy doesn’t really settle in. She waits at the door.
What we resist persists.
As life moves forward, if we truly desire joy, there is a necessary acceptance of all that rises and falls within us. Otherwise, we may get stuck in some previous version of ourselves. We freeze and cling there. We identify there.
Sometimes change may feel overwhelming because we don’t know who we will be when we get there. So before we allow a real, all abiding joy within us, we may plateau out of fear of what that change could look like.
As the saying goes, better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.
But what yoga teaches is a spacious allowing of all that resides within you, a recognition that being human isn’t static and a trust that you will become whomever you need to be to thrive in the new life arriving for you each day.
Our bodies don’t stay the same.
Our minds don’t stay the same.
Our attachments shift.
Our desires shift.
Our goals, even our purpose can change in the blink of an eye.
And yet, because of perceived pressure around the image we’ve built of ourselves, we sometimes try to force ourselves to remain who we were. And for that to be possible we require the people around us to also remain the same.
Unfortunately that won’t provide us the personhood that our highest timeline requires for thriving, for joy.
The yogis would say this clinging is one root of suffering.
Relief comes through bravery.
The bravery to release older versions of ourselves and the willingness to release others from the older versions we may still be holding them in.
It’s a two-way street.
If I want the freedom to step into the version of myself that life is inviting forward, I must also allow you to evolve. I must allow you to change. I must allow you to surprise me and I must allow you to go.
The Gita says:
“As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from childhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change.” (Gita 2.13)
Yoga practice gives us that sobriety. Not dullness, but steadiness. Equanimity. The ability to witness change without being shattered by it.
Through job transitions.
Through relationship endings.
Through deaths and rebirths.
Through moves, identity shifts, awakenings.
We learn to let the whole family of emotions come in. We sit with them. We breathe with them. We don’t exile them.
And when we do that joy comes back. Not as a fleeting high, but as something grounded and real.
So this month, I invite you back to your mat.
Rededicate yourself to inner steadiness.
Come feel what is actually there. Come allow what is rising. Come practice being spacious enough for all of it.
We have so many opportunities this month in our group classes, in our workshops, in the ways we gather together at Revolution Yoga.
Bring the whole family with you.
Joy will find her way in.
Peace and Love,
Amanda and the good folks at Revolution Yoga
Originally shared in our March 2026 newsletter.