Welcome Soul Traveller to this gratitude meditation.
So gratitude is an emotion that arises when we express appreciation.
It's important to pause,
Take a breath and create space for this wonderful emotion.
So I invite you now go ahead and fluff up your nest.
You can sit or lie down for this,
Making any adjustments necessary to ensure you're as comfortable as possible.
And as you settle in give your body permission to relax.
You may want to close your eyes,
Allow your limbs to rest heavily and your shoulders to drop,
Your jaw to soften and your hips to settle into support beneath you.
Now begin to connect with your breath.
Simply notice the natural rhythm of your breathing as you inhale and exhale.
As you observe you might feel an urge to change your breathing pattern.
Don't worry about that for now.
Simply maintain your awareness on each breath.
Now let's bring more air into the lungs.
Breathing more deeply now,
Drawing the air to the very bottom of your lungs and exhale very slowly,
Completely emptying the lungs.
And let's do that again.
Inhaling deeply,
Exhaling slowly,
Giving yourself a moment to really land where you find yourself in this moment.
And as you continue to deepen and lengthen those breaths,
Begin to bring gratitude into your awareness.
Now that might be easier said than done right?
How do I bring it into my awareness?
How do I know that I'm actually feeling gratitude?
How does it feel to be grateful?
So a little hack I'm gonna share with you to open your hearts and crack you open and to help you on your way.
And this is it for the newbies if they're new to this.
So for me what I do when I'm sitting and feeling into what I'm grateful for,
Is I bring to my mind's eye and into my awareness somebody or something like a pet or something else that I absolutely love and adore.
Something that brings tears to my eyes,
Something that really drops me into my feeling body and I get that moment of oh my god I really love you.
And it's almost like Bambi eyes wide caught in the headlights of this innocence.
But there's a big vast difference between knowing gratitude in our minds and feeling it in our hearts.
It's a small jump away really when you think about the little 30 centimeters or so from the head to the heart and how it takes such a huge amount of effort for us to drop right in.
So as you're breathing there begin to really bring gratitude into your awareness.
I know for me I often think about my gorgeous little chihuahua Chewy and you know my he's my little companion he's been with me for nine years.
I've known him from a pup and he's big beautiful current eyes looking up at me with just pure love and delight.
It's unconditional love and so often I tune into that beautiful image or sometimes I tune into the love that I feel for my partner,
My beautiful beloved and as my heart opens I call into my awareness the gift of gratitude and notice how does it feel to be grateful.
What is it like to express your appreciation and just take your time with this there's no hurry.
Like anything it takes practice and if you're new to this you need to practice,
Practice,
Practice.
So with the next inhale breathe in gratitude,
Breathe in that feeling of appreciation into your entire body.
Imagine it flowing through you and as you exhale breathe appreciation out into your surroundings letting it touch everything around you.
Gratitude in,
Gratitude out.
Bring it deep into your body and let it flow effortlessly from your heart.
I will leave you here for a moment to feel the awareness of gratitude,
Appreciation and allowing it to flow through your body and out into your surroundings.
So if your thoughts should wander gently bring them back to the breath.
Once again visualizing gratitude coming into your body with each inhale and flowing out of the body with each exhale.
Expressing gratitude for each breath as well.
Now let's deepen this experience by adding some pauses to the breath.
Let's find some stillness between the inhales and the exhales.
First simply notice the small pause that naturally occurs at the top of the breath after the inhale and the pause at the bottom of the breath after the exhale.
So after your next inhale hold the breath for a moment staying with the stillness and pause before exhaling feeling the fullness of the lungs.
I will count and guide you as you breathe extending the pause even further.
So let's begin.
So inhaling in pausing at the top,
Exhaling all the way emptying the lungs and pausing again at the bottom.
If it helps you can either follow your heartbeat or counting to three,
Four,
Five or six on each inhale or exhale.
Wherever you are with your breathing whether you're a deep breather,
Slow or slightly shallow we can go from there.
So let's go a bit deeper inhaling on the count of four and pausing at the top and exhaling again.
So inhaling two,
Three,
Four,
Pause and exhaling two,
Three,
Four and again inhaling two,
Three,
Four,
Pausing and exhaling two,
Three,
Four and pausing again at the bottom.
Continue to practice this breathing method finding gratitude for each breath and the stillness between them.
I'll leave you here for a little while.
And as you're breathing and carrying on that beautiful stillness practice I just want to share with you that throughout our busy lives we don't often get the chance to find stillness.
With a relaxed body and a calm mind it's easier to let gratitude in.
Simply breathe and experience this wonderful sensation of appreciation.
Feel it and express it.
Letting gratitude wrap around you like a warm blanket,
Comfortable,
Relaxed and grateful.
And it's when we share these moments of gratitude and let them ripple out into the world to touch others that we see a shift before us.
We see a change in the attitude of people within ourselves and by expressing gratitude on a daily basis we are literally transforming the fabric of our being.
We are shifting our perception of the way we see the world and others and we are opening ourselves up to the higher frequencies and realms of love and appreciation and welcoming it in our lives.
So that when we are grateful we receive more abundance,
More joy,
More happiness,
More love.
And we're in a position to then receive more of what we do want and less of what we don't want.
So now as you allow your breath to return to a more natural state.
So easier inhales,
Easier exhales.
Just noticing how you're feeling.
Noticing what this has done for you today and opening your eyes with your next inhale.
Returning to your surroundings,
Feeling wide awake now,
Energized and grateful for this practice.
As always it's an absolute honor and a privilege sitting with you today and wherever you are in the world.
Sending you many blessings and thanking you from the bottom of my heart for connecting in with me and this practice today and the others who have joined you on this meditation.
Have a beautiful day.
