Gratitude is such a remarkable thing. As humans, we can both feel and express gratitude. As you know, from your practices this month, we can experience a trickle-down effect from gratitude: a warming, widening in our heart spaces, a softening in our jaws, an opening of our hands. With all of this goodness that gratitude is, why then, do we forget to practice it? As we move into the upcoming month, I wanted to peek into this idea in hopes that we can identify the blocks to gratitude so our practice can stay alive.
Tara Brach, a Buddhist psychologist, has a theory on this. She posits that we are busy humans, thinking always about where we’ve been or where we are going but rarely what is happening right here, right now. We move out of presence and, as a result, lose sight of what is truly incredible in our lives.
Another block, she writes, has to do with financial wealth. Research tells us that oxytocin is released with prosocial behaviors. With this release of oxytocin, we feel a sense of warmth and a desire to do more for others and feel gratitude ourselves. Conversely, when we busy ourselves with making more money and actually having more money, we become less prosocial-decreasing our sense of interconnectedness, eliminating gratitude. (*Note: making money or having it isn’t ‘bad.’ It’s more about getting into a grind that isolates us from others and disconnecting from those that we perceive to have ‘less.’)
Another block to gratitude is that there is something wrong with the pleasure or joy that you feel. When we experience a slice of joy, and immediately, the guard in our minds lets us know that we should never feel good about eating that piece of cake, or enjoying a night out with our partner when the children are at home-we are cut off from gratitude. Instead, we punish ourselves so that whatever it was that brought us joy or pleasure, can and should no longer happen.
What blocks you from your gratitude? Is it one of the things I mentioned or something different? How do you know when you are cut off from gratitude? What does it feel like in your body to be separate from what you know to be good in your life?
Take time to be with these thoughts. Journal quietly, noticing your body and what arises emotionally &/or physically. What images or thoughts come into your mind as you contemplate being blocked from gratitude?
Now, see if you can identify what you feel like when you are in gratitude. Is there a sense of warmth? A feeling of spaciousness in the heart space? Are there images of giving? Of being in relationship with others authentically?
This week, continue to notice how you can be open to the experience of gratitude. What action can you take today to support an openness to gratitude in your life?
Be sure to check out the Yoga Nidra offering on the groups page for December!
