Hello sweet one.
Thank you so much for being here with me.
Today I'm going to walk you through a practice that has been very transformational in my own life.
When I first started on my spiritual journey,
Even though I didn't know that that's what it was yet,
I had a hard time connecting to the process of truly feeling deep gratitude.
I knew that it was something I should be doing,
That everybody told me was a great first place to start,
But it was hard to authentically connect to gratitude.
So I developed a practice for my own life which I used every evening before going to sleep for about a year.
This is the practice I'm going to share with you today.
I learned over that time that in order to connect deeply with gratitude,
It helped me to first move through a practice of forgiveness.
If I was able to forgive,
Move past bitterness or resentments,
Then I could find spaciousness for real gratitude to come in.
When I tried to just pile gratitude on top of all of my difficult feelings,
It felt forced and like it didn't truly live in my body or my mind.
So in this practice today,
I will first ask you to lay down and get comfortable.
Then after you're comfortable,
I'll walk you through a practice of moving through your day today and releasing and forgiving all that you can find that you need to forgive.
Then I will have you move through your day a second time,
This time giving gratitude for everything that you can find in your day.
This practice is best used in the evening so that you can do a review of the day that you just went through.
But of course,
Use this however feels best for you.
If you want to do it midway through your day or just whenever you find time,
That's absolutely alright.
If you do it first thing in the morning,
Perhaps you can do a review for the previous day.
I'm going to use the language as if you are doing it in the evening,
But feel free to adjust for whatever fits for your situation.
So without further ado,
Let's begin the meditation.
Begin now with centering into yourself,
Moving into your body and your space wherever you are so that you can get as comfortable as possible.
If that means adjusting your position,
Dimming lights,
Taking some stretches,
Or anything else that brings you into this moment,
Take a few moments here finding some breath and moving through that practice.
Whenever you feel like you are settled into your body,
Allow yourself to deepen as you would into any meditation practice,
Beginning with deepening some breaths,
Inhaling and exhaling through the nose.
As you find fit throughout this meditation,
If there's anything big that comes up in your emotional awareness,
Feel free to exhale that through the mouth with a sigh.
Perhaps doing a couple rounds of inhaling through the nose and exhaling with a sigh now in order to release any stagnant energy and air that is stuck in the body.
Then moving down into deepening the breath into the abdomen,
Into the stomach,
And sensing how your flow of breath feels today.
Moving into softness in the body,
Start to notice if there is any tension stored anywhere in your physical body,
Your shoulders,
Your face,
Your jaw,
And begin to let that soften as much as possible.
These parts of you,
These parts will most likely continue to soften throughout this meditation,
So don't work too hard,
Just allow it to find ease as it naturally does.
And now,
Allowing the awareness,
Your mind's eye and your mental awareness,
To begin to become more spacious,
Softening into your internal space,
And taking a few deep breaths here,
I'm going to invite you into the first round of moving through your day review.
In this round,
I'd like you to start at the very beginning of your day today,
From the first moment you opened your eyes,
And begin to notice the things throughout your day that started to bring you disharmony,
Ill feelings,
Frustrations,
Anger,
Resentment,
Or any emotion that didn't feel good to experience.
And as you move through the day,
And you find those pieces,
Pause on the snapshot of that moment,
Taking a deep breath in and an exhale out,
Say to yourself,
I forgive you,
Or I forgive this moment,
Or I forgive this person,
Whatever it is that needs forgiving.
Do your best to connect with truly forgiving that piece.
If you need to just say the words,
And the feeling isn't there right away,
That's okay.
This practice will grow in the amount that you can truly connect to it the more that you do it.
So beginning from the moment you open your eyes,
Finding the first thing,
Maybe it was first thing in the morning,
Maybe it was a little while after awakening,
Perhaps it was the coffee pot not turning on in time,
Your alarm clock not going off,
The reflection in the mirror that you didn't like this morning.
Whatever it was,
Find that first thing,
Take a deep breath in,
Deep breath out,
Repeating internally or externally to yourself,
I forgive you.
And begin to watch the movie of your day playing in your mind's eye.
And each time that you get caught on an emotion that was negative in some way,
Or they gave you a feeling that wasn't good,
Take a moment,
Pause,
And give it forgiveness.
I'm going to allow you to move through this practice on your own for a few minutes with some music in the background.
Whenever you get distracted,
Just come back to the practice and pick up where you left off.
I will be here at the end of this replay to move into the second one.
So go ahead and find all of your forgiveness now,
And I will let you know when to move out of this process.
Begin to move toward the end of your day in your replay in your mind's eye if you're not there already.
Maybe pressing the fast forward button,
Or if you're already finished,
Just allow yourself to take a few deep breaths and experience what it feels like to have the intention of forgiving.
Notice how your body feels after this practice has been completed.
What were the pieces that surprised you?
Was there something that you needed to forgive that you weren't expecting?
Maybe you needed to forgive yourself more than you needed to forgive the world around you,
Or vice versa.
Begin to notice these patterns of what arises as needing forgiveness the most.
And now we are going to move into the second run-through of your day.
So once again,
I'm going to ask you to go back to your moment of waking this morning.
The first moment that you opened your eyes.
And I want you to run through this replay and watch this movie with a lens of gratitude.
You may not have been consciously aware of the beautiful things occurring throughout your day today,
But this is an opportunity to go back in time and give gratitude for all of the small moments and all of the lessons that popped up throughout your day.
Sometimes you will be forgiving and being grateful for the same things.
Sometimes your gratitude will be connected to completely different things.
Notice what pieces you're grateful for in hindsight,
Starting to connect with whatever it is that the first thing you can find gratitude for was.
Maybe it was the fact that you woke up and were alive for another day.
Maybe the sun streaming in your curtains,
Or the breath in your lungs,
Perhaps the smell of coffee or a nutritious breakfast.
Whatever it is for you,
Start to connect with that first thing and internally say thank you.
Moving through this replay of your day,
Once again I will leave you with music to move through the process and I will let you know when to come into completion.
Finding your last few pieces of gratitude for this day,
Bringing yourself closer to your current present time,
And taking a few deep breaths,
Inhaling deeply with gratitude and exhaling deeply to soften into your body more.
What came up for you in this round of moving through your day?
What was alive and awake in your gratitudes?
Were you more grateful for yourself or for the world around you?
For small moments or big moments?
Notice the patterns that occur here.
Notice if there was any overlap with the moments of forgiveness.
Taking a couple of rounds of breath to settle yourself back in your body to wrap up this meditation for today.
And see how you feel in your heart,
In your emotions,
And in your physical body today,
In this moment.
This practice is one that grows as you move through it more and more.
So I encourage you to come back to this meditation practice.
Try this again tomorrow,
And the next day,
And the next day,
And notice what begins to shift for you.
For me,
There were shifts when I did the meditation,
And there were also shifts as I was walking through the day.
I started to notice things that I was grateful for when they were occurring,
And I started to forgive things as they happened in my life.
With continued practice,
This can become a natural part of your life and your thought process.
I hope that this cleared the slate of your mind and your emotions today.
I wish you all the best as you move into your evening or your night,
And I hope to see you here again tomorrow to continue this practice.
Thank you,
And good night.
