The Flow State - Beauty in the Broken
- Erin Clair
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Dear Community,
If you spend any time seriously thinking about happiness, you will eventually run into the same uncomfortable wall: life is genuinely, undeniably hard. Cancer exists. War exists. Poverty, grief, violence: all of it is relentlessly real. Talking cheerfully about happiness in the shadow of all that can feel not just naive, but almost offensive.
So what do we do with that tension?
There are many serious thinkers who wrestle with this question. My next guest on Happy You Asked, Dr. Eranda Jayawickreme, has built a research career around it by studying post-traumatic growth: the phenomenon by which people don't just survive trauma, but are in some ways transformed and strengthened by it. (Tune in Sunday, June 7 to hear that conversation.) Yogic, psychological, and religious traditions have their own answers, most of them pointing toward the same place: the present moment. Find contentment here, in this breath, and the cruelties of life become more navigable.
That wisdom is real. It's also, for me personally, rather difficult to access on its own.
What actually gets me there is music. When I pair movement and music, something shifts and the lesson stops being an idea I understand intellectually and becomes something I feel in my body. It becomes something that sticks.
Hozier's song "All Things End" is a perfect example. The title sounds bleak. And on the surface, sitting with the reality that everything ends—your plans, your relationships, your life—does seem like a strange path to happiness. But Hozier isn't wallowing. He's doing something subtler and more honest: he's asking us to look directly at impermanence and then keep going anyway. Our plans are built on sand. Everything we intend, everything we build, will eventually dissolve. That is not a tragedy unique to the unlucky. That is the shared condition of being human.
What matters, as he frames it, is that knowing this shouldn't stop us from beginning again. We are supposed to begin again and again, regardless. That is not the sad part. That is, in fact, the beautiful part.
I find this idea both genuinely compelling and a little hard to fully trust. So I did what I do when I need to understand something in my bones: I built a yoga flow around it. I'm teaching that flow tonight at 6:30pm at Forca in Russellville, Arkansas. I'll record the class and release the video tonight on my platform, so if you're far away and want to think through these questions alongside me, you're welcome to join from wherever you are.
New Podcast Episodes
40. Selin A. Malkoc: You Can't Schedule Your Happiness
With me in this episode is Dr. Selin A. Malkoc, who is the FCOB Distinguished Professor of Marketing and Psychology at The Ohio State University. She has spent her career asking a deceptively simple question: why are we so bad at making choices that maximizes our productivity, happiness, and well-being? Dr. Malkoc has long been fascinated by how differently people across cultures think about time, and how those differences shape the choices we make and the lives we end up living.
Also tune into the newest episode of the podcast Just Jared, where I and a panel of guests discuss the weight of caregiving on the modern workforce.
Upcoming Classes
Wednesday, June 3 @6:30pm CDT: Hozier Yoga at Forca (Russellville, AR)
Wednesday, June 3 @9:00pm CDT: Hozier Yoga Online Video Release (watch here)
Saturday, June 6 @4:00pm EDT: Michael Jackson Inside Flow Power Yoga at The Inferno (Fitchburg, MA)
Sunday, June 7 @10:30am EDT: Michael Jackson Inside Flow Power Yoga at Waverley Oaks Athletic Club (Waltham, MA)
With gratitude,
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