The Gift of Gratitude in Connection
Recently I spent time with a longtime special friend of mine who is unconditional in her care for me and my well being. I noticed after spending an inspiring afternoon with her full of flowing ideas and creativity, how grateful I felt afterwards, full of lightness and love.
Connections can truly inspire our inner beingness, and help us to effectively turn towards what is arising and difficult, releasing the intense hold these strong emotional states can have on us.
This experience inspired me to share more about The Grateful Flow...
What do we do with so called “negative” emotions that rise up in us at any moment in our day, or even at night? Can we step back, take a deep breath, pause and soften to small “things”, moments and/or people we can be grateful for?
It has been proven that by writing down 5 things that you are grateful for can boost your happiness up to 25%, in any given moment. It’s impossible to be in a state of gratitude and in a state of misery at the same time - that is a motivating thought. This is definitely worth applying if it can be so simple to take small steps to help ourselves.
This also demands us to choose - to choose something different to staying connected to this state of overwhelm, depression, sadness, fear, anger….whatever challenging emotion is arising in the moment.
Where does gratitude reside in the body?
For me, the heart space. For you? I notice that by breathing into the heart space with gratitude, it intensifies this feeling. Breathe in gratitude for myself or whatever I am pausing into, and breathe out gratitude for all beings.
Starting right now...
Bring your hands together in Anjali mudra, and connect with someone you love. Be still. Be vigilant. Simply Be together. Appreciating the rise and fall not only of your breath, but also the breath of the other standing beside you.
Can we translate this Grateful flow into our yoga practice?
This month I would like to invite you to join me in gratitude infused heart-centred practices, where we not only focus on the heart centre, but also on the Hara (lower abdomen), so as to drop down from the head into the connection between the heart and then deeper to the root.
In our Thursday evening Yin & Restore practices, we will use a focused breath practice in our long holding poses to soften and pause, so as to increase the coalescence of energy or prana in specific sites in the body. As we do this, we will use the placement of our hands to increase our awareness of these areas. Whenever you rest your hands on your abdomen and heart centre, it is an opportunity to bring your attention down and in. Shifting from a more head-centred preoccupation to a more intuitive-centered relaxation.
In the Flow Practices (Early bird, Tuesday evening, Friday morning) we will immerse the theme of Gratitude in Connection into the flow experience.
Join me on the yoga mat to experience how you can translate this into an embodied feeling state.
