Gratitude EnerCHI and its rewards

This Thanksgiving started out bittersweet.   My parents are in Montreal dealing with medical issues, my LittleMan ZekoMeow just passed away and some of my nieces were away for the holydays.   Yet, we were 12 strong for Thanksgiving this year - 3 children, 3 dogs, and 8 adults.   We celebrated by being together and eating a lavish meal and by playing the A-Z Gratitude Game.  This is when we call out things and people that we are grateful for in our lives as we go through the whole alphabet.   

As I sat there with one niece on my lap and another by my side and my LoverBoy across from me and my SoulMama and my great Auntie Sylvia and even our family dogs (thank you GingerMama and Kaida and Keltie) - an unexpected thought welled up from my heart:  I am so blessed to be here right now.  Suddenly, I felt lucky to have the time to be with my family, to listen and share and laugh and create moments and memories. 

I felt even more grateful for the delicious weather we are experiencing which allowed us to sit on the back patio and be with the trees and green foliage.  Grateful for playing madlibs with my nieces and nephew, grateful for the hot water and soap as I was cleaning up dishes, grateful for the abundance and variety of food at our table this year, grateful for our family as the kids grow up and interact more with the adults, grateful to be walking the dogs in a family pack.  

Gratitude is a powerful transformative practice that creates all sorts of abundance and happiness in your world.  It also shifts your energy in subtle, and OMazing ways.  Psychologists Robert Emmons of U.C. Davis and Michael McCullough of the University of Miami have found that practicing gratitude can actually improve our emotional and physical well-being. Their ongoing Research Project on Gratitude and Thankfulness has found that people who keep weekly gratitude journals had fewer physical symptoms, exercised more, had a better outlook on life and were more likely to reach their goals. People with neuromuscular disease who practiced daily gratitude "had more high-energy positive moods," felt more connected to others, and felt more positive about life in comparison to a control group.

"Practicing gratitude helps people extract the most out of life," Emmons says. "People can also experience an overall shift to a more benevolent view of the world. I think it's kind of a spiritual shift for some people because it makes them more aware of life as a gift."

Gratitude creates changes at the emotional and mental levels, and also changes your body at a cellular level.  

Here are 3 reasons gratitude shifts energy and the OMazing perspective of AbunDANCE it creates:

1. Shifts your focus to the present moment. Even though the actions, or experience, you might feel grateful for occurred in the past the energy of gratitude is present moment focused. Gratitude shifts your state of being, as you focus on the infinite flow of goodness pouring through you. The present moment is where everything IS! It connects you to what’s true, to the dynamic aliveness of right now… the best place to BE!

2. Creates a new orientation.  Gratitude raises the altitude of our lives. The positive focus and easy flow of energy become the new YOU. You experience incredible resilience in being able to navigate the stumbling blocks of everyday living. Gratitude propels you out of anything that no longer resonates with you and creates a new story of your joy and pleasure.

3. Establishes an indelible partnership with Source. There is nothing that will make your connection to the Source of Life more real, than experiencing gratitude. Your focus on gratitude expands your bandwidth of feeling, sensing and knowing.  There is nothing better than to experience gratitude in your body being and know that you ARE connected to this abundant and loving universe.

Gratitude opens the gates of tenderness - and lets our heart feel even deeper.  I make a conscious effort to practice gratitude daily in some small way. When I do, I feel much more connected with the flow of life, instead of isolated and alone in my own struggles and fears.

Here are 3 ways to stay in an attitude of gratitude and build this greatFULL muscle:

1. Practice even when you don't feel like it. 

"One of the mistakes people often make in our culture is thinking you have to feel grateful to practice gratitude," says psychologist Miriam Greenspan, author of Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair. "You can practice anytime—when you feel sorrow, great anxiety over a parent's imminent death, if you have a disabled child. Whatever one can muster at these points as a prayer of gratitude—okay, I'm still breathing, or I have friends who care about me—tips the experience from being immersed unmindfully in one's suffering to moving into the present moment with a more holistic perspective. We see that there is suffering, but there is also this gratitude, and we can hold them together."

2. Make thank-you your mantra. 

Every moment offers an opportunity for thanks, says Nancy Hathaway, senior dharma teacher at the Kwan Um Zen School and a family mindfulness consultant in Blue Hill, Maine. She uses "thank-you" as a mantra to return to the present moment. "On the first day of spring, I was raking the gravel off the grass. It was hard, and I was starting to complain to myself," Hathaway says. "When I caught myself thinking, I switched over to 'thank you.' I remembered I really wanted to rake, and I wanted springtime. Gratitude practice for me is about letting go of thinking and welcoming in the present moment."

3. Imagine what life would be like WITHOUT a certain blessing in your life.

This is a great reflective exercise if you’re the type of person who tends to take things and people for granted. My mom and I practice this when she just can't find anything to be grateful for.  We imagine not having hands or eyes or the use of our feet.  We start appreciating what we take for granted.  This could be a person, where we live, the weather, a gift or talent we hav, the members of our family that are still alive today, the fresh air we breathe, the water we bathe in or even the electricity that allows me to type this column today.

Gratitude reminds us that we are all One - spiritual beings having a human experience on this Heaven on Earth right here right now.