This is a gratitude meditation for when you've got attitude.
Count your blessings,
Stay positive,
Good vibes only.
Pop culture puts a lot of emphasis on gratitude.
But it can be really hard to be grateful when we're filled with anger,
Frustration,
Hopelessness,
Or grief.
Instead of trying to force gratitude,
Which often doesn't work,
This meditation allows the experience of not being grateful,
Of being pissed off,
Sad,
Lost,
Or in despair,
Before finding the space to grateful.
So how do we do this?
What does it mean to make space for a feeling?
Psychologist and biophysicist Dr.
Peter Levine studied how animals release trauma.
After they've been under threat,
Animals recover by allowing their bodies to shake.
Because emotions live in our bodies.
As much as they might feel like ephemeral things,
We cannot grasp or understand.
Our emotions are actually physical and chemical manifestations of our thoughts,
Which our bodies are trying to process.
If you want to experience gratitude,
But are feeling blocked,
Ask yourself,
What's eclipsing my gratitude?
What is stopping me from feeling more grateful?
Try to keep the answers to feelings,
Like I'm feeling frustrated or angry or sad,
Rather than focusing on stories,
Like I'm mad at my sister and she won't return any of my texts,
And she's being passive aggressive,
And it might help to write your answers down or say them out loud.
I'm feeling lonely.
I'm anxious and afraid.
I just feel hopeless.
Go ahead and write a few things down,
And I'll start some calming music in the background.
Once you feel you've listed out the range of difficult emotions you're feeling,
Choose one and explore your body to see where you're experiencing it or holding it.
Emotions often dwell in our chests or our throat,
Our stomach,
The back of the neck,
Our jaw.
We might feel a tightening or a fluttering in the area,
Or like there's a brick or a rock sitting there.
The idea is not to blast through the feeling,
But simply notice and experience it,
The way we would look at a work of art in a gallery.
Resistance can come up at this point.
I don't want to feel this.
It's uncomfortable.
Yeah.
Resistance is normal here,
Especially if this is new to you.
And if that's happening for you,
Validate the resistance as an emotion,
Too,
And start there.
Where does that resistance live in your body?
Where do you feel not wanting to feel?
Observe your emotion and its accompanying sensations,
As you would look at a piece of art in a museum,
With curiosity,
But not trying to change it.
Does the emotion feel like it has a texture or a color?
If the temptation to jump into the story comes up,
I just need to tell my sister she's wrong.
That's okay.
Notice it and gently put it aside,
Returning to the experience,
The energy of what's going on.
Pema Chodron has great advice on experiencing our emotions.
Stay.
She advises us to ask ourselves to stay the way we would with a puppy.
Except now,
We're asking ourselves to stay with the emotion,
If only for a few moments.
We're doing it kindly.
We're not shouting,
Stay,
At the puppy,
Who would probably react,
By cowering and doing the opposite of our request.
We're being gentle.
Stay.
We might take a few deep breaths,
Breathing into the area of our body where we're having this experience.
And as you go through this exercise,
You might notice the emotion moving or changing consistency,
Or vanishing.
This is the beauty of meditation.
We see that everything we experience is temporary,
And that our bodies are actually designed to process emotions.
Just sit with that for a minute.
Once you've stayed with your more difficult emotions,
For as long as you feel called to,
You might notice if a tiny space opens up for some gratitude to come in,
Which might simply be,
I'm grateful to have the time to sit quietly.
And that's it.
Or you might notice the beauty of the light where you're sitting,
Or gratitude for your health,
Or being safe right now.
Gradually,
You might notice there is room for a little bit of lightness,
And sometimes a bit more.
You might find that the longer you stay gently with your emotions,
The more space there is for gratitude to seep in.
It might not happen the first time you do this meditation,
Or the fifth.
Sometimes we are overflowing with other emotions that need to be seen,
Heard,
And accepted,
Before we can get anywhere near gratitude.
But if you practice regularly,
You might notice that you get to more and more of a sense of spaciousness.
Space enough for the difficult emotions,
And for the gratitude.
The difficult emotions might still be present.
It's not an easy thing to be alive today and not feel anxiety,
Grief,
Or anger.
But you might notice a widening of your circle,
Which also includes gratitude.
And the more you practice this,
The genuine experience of gratitude,
Rather than forcing it on yourself,
The more easy it becomes the next time,
And the next,
And the next.
