“Surprise is the secret of joy” - G.K. Chesterton

Positive emotions are powerful.

It’s not just that they feel good.

They help us build resilience, creativity and social connection.

No study of movement is complete without a study of emotion. Movement itself is a kind of emotion - an outward movement. Emotions are the seed that shapes our attitude: how we interact with the world, what we perceive and how others perceive us.

My task with the Joy Study has been to share principles of designing positive emotion. To do this, I initially went deep into the science of predictive processing, a cutting edge look at the mechanics of behaviour. This field focuses on how action and perception are related to uncertainty.

Joy is a product of reducing uncertainty at high frequencies. Imagine a ball bouncing effortlessly down a hill and you get the idea. Compare that to being stuck on a busy platform, and missing your train.

That’s the very basic idea: it’s the flow of information that makes us feel joy. There are many ways we can explore that further. What else brings flow?

Being playful. Being relaxed. Being present.

How do we design these states? What practices can we undertake to bring more play, relaxation and presence? To answer this question, the most recent Joy Study is looking at principles of neural design: what brain networks support and interrupt the flow of information, and how can we apply these principles?

The Study will also look at Samatha style meditation; which emphasises the positive feedback loop between calm and concentration. Within this focus, we will go through Rob Burbea’s loving kindness retreat, amongst others.

Through a broader study of the theological perspective on joy, I have come to the conclusion that Flow in and of itself is not enough. For a more grounded flavour of joy, we also need some sense of limitation. Theologically, this is found in God and in service to others.

This perspective, shared by Kierkegaard, gives us the space to look at Joy as a kind of Bounded Uncertainty; a structure that resembles what it means to play a game. There is uncertainty, but there is also a sense of limitation. “Trust that the plane will land”.

Studying goal setting, the meeting of needs and the experience of confidence are therefore also important parts of studying joy and positive emotion.