Feeling Gratitude Is Different From Giving Thanks
Gratitude. A word often heard in the yoga community. Feeling Gratitude is different from giving thanks. It feels like an experience. But the interesting thing about gratitude is that it is a skill. To allow oneself to feel grateful for something isn’t always a natural reaction. It is easy to feel it in certain occurrences. For example, last-minute a mother finds a sitter so she can go to work, and she feels grateful. What is really monumental is finding gratitude in the less obvious moments. Being grateful for opportunities that passed us, for roads not traveled, for moments that feel like a failure, for days that seem uneventful. That might sound exhausting, difficult. You might ask “how can I continue to surround myself with positivity in the face of challenges?” And you would be right. It is hard. Many psychologists have written and spoken on the negativity bias- the notion…
Radical Gratitude – Can Gratitude Practice Be Redefined?
Well, I suppose it’s time for an obligatory post on gratitude. Until quite recently, I had put the word on a long list entitled “Words that sound pretty but that are overused in the spiritual community to the point where I shudder at the mention of them.” When I attended classes concluding with an invitation to “feel gratitude” (which, surprisingly, is most classes), I internally rolled my eyes very far back. You see, I had always thought of gratitude in the context of “gratitude journals” and affirmations. Examples: When the mind is contracted, generating a world lacking in “enough,” redirect to different, better thoughts. Repeat ten times: “I am exceedingly grateful for the abundance overflowing in my life.” Write down 3 fabulous things occurring right now. If you feel like shit, feel something better – gratitude for your family, gratitude for your breath, etc. These techniques are all very nice…
Yoga Will Ruin Your Life – For Sure
Just something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately… My teacher, MC Sweet, shared something with us that her teacher Richard says. Yoga will Ruin your Life (Um, what!?) Pretty much it goes like this- in yoga you start to learn to pay attention to your body, honor yourself, and find gratefulness for where you are and where you can go. Because it is nearly impossible to segment things and isolate lessons from one area of life from another, we start to see things outside the studio in a different way. We start to question the foods we use to nourish our bodies. We start to wake up early to get some yoga in (or at least we start to think about how awesome it would be to do that). We start to question the work we do for a living or the reasons we stick to work we…