Experience Gratitude As Feeling And Sensation

This guided practice accompanies the book, The Gratitude Prescription. It is designed to help you move from grateful thoughts into the embodied feeling of gratitude in the body and heart.
Find a comfortable space, sit back and enjoy this short meditation. It is one of a series of 9 from the same book. Enjoy.

Transcript

Gratitude as feeling and sensation.

Gratitude is more powerful when we expand our awareness beyond thinking with our whole body,

Awareness,

Emotions and sense perceptions.

Thinking can lead us to a deeper felt sense of gratefulness and of aliveness.

This exercise will help you experience both.

I invite you to pause for a moment and follow this guided exploration with a gentle curiosity.

Be willing to discover something new.

There are no right nor wrong answers.

Begin by closing your eyes and taking a few long deep breaths.

Become aware of the breath and sensations in the body.

How is it known that you are alive?

How is it known that you are?

If thought replies because I am thinking,

Ask how is it known that there is thinking?

Is there a subtler sense than breathing,

Feeling or thinking?

Is it possible to locate aliveness?

Perhaps aliveness is all these things,

Breathing,

Feeling,

Thinking together.

Or might it be in between these components of experience?

Or could it be surrounding these components of experience?

Can you locate a sense of the body as a whole?

Can you simply be aware of a single finger,

Say your left little finger or left little toe?

Is it possible to feel how it is to be a cell in that finger or toe?

Do you notice degrees of aliveness?

Simply sit and continue to explore and notice the feeling of aliveness in your body.

Allow a feeling of appreciation for all of these aspects of your experience.

Allow yourself to feel appreciation for the simple fact and experience of being alive right now.

Consider where does this gratitude,

This appreciation show up most noticeably?

Where in the body do you feel gratitude?