Gratitude Towards The Future (+10 Mins Silence)

In this session we practiced 'Gratitude Towards The Future', followed by 10 minutes of silence.

We begin with a gratitude breathing practice: 1: taking slow deep and sighing breaths, 2: Relax the muscles in the body. Drop the shoulders, release the belly, unclench the jaw. 3: Bring to mind (and body) the image of a person, pet, plant, or you are grateful for and allow the positive thoughts to manifest.

We then contemplated the question "What if I gave thanks in advance for the wonderful things that are going to happen?"

Gratitude is an antidote to anxiety, resentment, craving, anger, and jealously and bringing that into the future can further help regulation.

We are primed to focus on the negative, that is an adaptive response. But we can also balance that with future focused positivity. Good things are coming. Lets focus on that!

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the session, I'd like you to take a seat or lie down and get yourself comfortable, You can close down the eyes if you wish and just begin by slowing down the breath, In through the nose, Low to the belly, Slow, I'm just taking a moment to scan the body, Scan the mind and see how you're feeling in this moment, Today we're going to be practising a gratitude breathing practice, Gratitude is an interesting one, We are primed to focus upon the negative, It keeps us safe, But we also have the capacity to change what our focus is, So by focusing on things we are grateful for, We can help shift our inner state, So this practice combines slow calm breathing, Muscle relaxation and a gratitude practice, I like it because it hits the thoughts, The feelings and the bodily sensations, So we begin by taking a slow deep sighing breath and allowing our body to breathe back in, So we're not forcing the breath, Go something like this, You breathe in, When you're ready, Sighing on the way out, Waiting for the body to be ready to breathe in, Allowing the body to breathe in, Now you can do an audible sigh, But if that's a little bit silly, A bit uncomfortable or not socially appropriate, You can do that internally, So a silent sigh, But we're breathing in deeply in the belly, The chest to the throat, As we continue the slow calm deep sighing breath, Allowing our breath to return to breathe in when our body wants to, Not forced, Going at the pace of our body, Just a bit slower, We actively release the muscles, We're taking those slow deep sighing breaths, But also dropping the shoulders, Actively releasing the jaw, Letting the belly just be, Dropping any tension in the thighs, The internal muscles that you're holding on to, Just release them all, Taking another slow deep sighing breath, Just releasing all the muscles in the body and relaxing fully, Maintaining the slow deep sighing breath, Allowing your body to breathe in and repeat when it's ready, Actively releasing the muscles in the body, Going to add the gratitude, Picturing in your mind a person, Pet or plant that you are grateful for, And just noting down the feelings that arise with that person, Pet, Plant, Or also perhaps a place, What they bring to your life, How they make you feel, The feelings that they evoke by the fact that they are in your life, That they exist, And yes no one's perfect, Nothing's perfect, But anything that adds at least 51% good is moving up right, So we're taking the slow deep sighing breaths, Allowing the muscles of the body to relax, Picturing a person, Pet, Plant or place, Just feeling the positive feelings that arise, Let's sit in this space for a minute or so together, If you find yourself lost in thought or in distraction, Just return yourself back to the practice, It's okay, Take another slow deep sighing breath, Actively relax the muscles, Picture the person, Pet, Plant or place in your mind and feel the feelings that that evokes within you, The positivity, This simple practice is one that you can do just about anywhere, Maybe not with the audible sigh but you allow your body to breathe in, Long deep release, Sighing where appropriate, Actively relaxing the muscles in the body, Then bringing to mind something that you are grateful for, When combined this practice activates the parasympathetic nervous system, The part of you that is responsible for relaxing, For calming down, By slowing down the breath, You're helping the mind to slow, By actively relaxing the muscles, You're letting the mind know that you are safe, By picturing something in your mind that you are grateful for and actively fostering those gratitude feelings, You are impacting your thoughts and your feelings, So we're hitting all three aspects of the cognitive therapy triangle, Behaviors, Thoughts and feelings, They all impact one another, So if you are struggling in any path, You can impact one to impact all, This practice is doing all three, So taking another slow deep sighing breath, Releasing all the muscles in the body, And actively fostering gratitude, Do this for one more breath, Just allow your breathing to return to normal, Now I'd like to offer you a contemplation, What if we gave thanks in advance, For the wonderful things that are going to happen, What if we gave thanks in advance, For the wonderful things that are going to happen, What if we gave thanks in advance, For the wonderful things that are going to happen, That question almost is a gratitude practice into the future, It's very easy to focus upon the future negatives, The anxieties, But a gratitude practice in general brings us into the present, It's like look at our life now, But if we find ourselves slipping into anxiety, Into worry, That's natural, That's normal, And in effect it is evolutionary, Keeps us safe, And it can be on hyperdrive, So we can counter some forward or future based anxieties, But offering thanks in advance to the wonderful things that are going to happen, This next breath, The sun coming out, The smile on a friend or a family member, The plethora of other good things that will happen in the future, Yes, Bad stuff will happen too, It's easy to focus there, But so too will good things happen, What if we had a future focused gratitude practice, What would that do for us, So invite you to sit with that contemplation, Thank you for joining me in this session, I'll see you next time, But if you like, We can sit for 10 more minutes in silent contemplation of that question, Mindful meditation or with this gratitude breathing practice, Let's begin, So if you'd like to maintain the meditation you're more than welcome to do so, But for everyone else just gently returning back to their bodies, Back to the session, Back to the day, Today we practiced a form of gratitude that intertwined breathing, Muscle relaxation, Allowing the body to breathe in, Sighing on the way out, Actively releasing the muscles in the jaw, In the stomach, In the shoulders, In the legs, Everywhere and then picturing a person, Pet, Plant or place that we're grateful for, Really feeling those feelings, Then we ended with a contemplation of the question, What if we gave thanks in advance for the wonderful things that are going to happen, Combined these practices impact our thoughts, Our feelings and our behavior, Slowing down the breath, Indeed doing a practice like this one is you doing a deep act of self-care, You can be grateful for that fact you gave yourself these 20 minutes, It's very very easy to focus on the negative, It's evolutionarily beneficial to do so, But evolution doesn't care for happiness, But we are blessed to have the capacity to impact our inner states, Practices like this, Fostering gratitude, Slowing down the breath and seeing that the future whilst uncertain and certainly potentially painful will also have good things, That's a guarantee, You can go small, You can go big but good things will come, I think it's fair to balance your mind at least 50-50, Find yourself focusing on the negative, Take a slow calm breath, Relax the muscles in the body, Practice some gratitude for what you have and the things that will come, The things that you can see coming that are good and potentially a lot of things that you would never predict but it will happen, Eventually those things that you are predicting coming true in the future will become something you can be grateful for in the present, So thank you for joining me, I'll see you in the next session.