Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you,
and to give thanks continuously.
And because all things have contributed to your advancement,
you should include all things in your gratitude.
―
The great people of great wisdom throughout history have always talked about the importance of gratitude in our life, all the scriptures of the past teach us to always carry gratitude in our hearts. Now the new science is also teaching us about the role the emotion of gratitude plays in the health and function of our bodies.
The author, “Wallace D. Wattles” in his great classic book, “The Science of Getting Rich” went so far to say that “The whole process of mental adjustment and atonement can be summed up in one word, gratitude.”
So, in this article, let’s try to understand what is gratitude, the energy gratitude brings into our lives, the role it plays in healing, and how to practice gratitude.
What is gratitude?
Gratitude in simple terms can be defined as- the act of appreciating and acknowledging something favorable done to us. The other way it can be defined as- the appreciative emotion that we feel and express when something favorable is done to us or for us.
In our daily experiences, we genuinely say thank you to someone when they do something nice for us or they bring to us something that we needed.
Understand this– there is a field of energy that exists within and all around us, and all the material forms that we can observe are vibrations in this field of energy. There are infinite possibilities that exist in the field as potentials in the form of vibrational frequencies.
Reality is not fundamentally made up of matter or things rather it is made up of a field of energy, and physical reality are excitations or vibrations in the field.
Now, you must have heard about the law of attraction which says that two or more expression of energy that vibrates at the same frequency attracts each other through a force of attraction.
Every physical thing we can see has its specific frequency or rates of vibration, our thoughts, feelings, and moods also have their specific rates of vibration.
Now, understand this- when it comes to the evolution of other forms of life they will live in their environment in the same way until their environment changes so much that they have to either adapt & evolve, or perish. So, all animal forms of life live happily with whatever nature has provided them.
However, when it comes to human beings, we are the only form of life that has the ability to create its own environment through the use of our creative intellectual faculties, which are Perception, Will, Imagination, Intuition, memory, and reason, and evolve as a self-conscious intelligent being.
Now, your thoughts or your goal in your mind is the frequency in the field that you want to experience, but having thoughts of that frequency in your mind cannot bring the expression of that frequency in your physical experience.
The thoughts you think send your intention, goal, or purpose to the universal intelligence of the field, the emotions you feel when putting your intention in the field bring the experience to you.
For example- If you are creating an image or goal in your mind of a joyful event that you want to experience, but at the same time feeling that it’s not gonna happen for you, in that case, you are not creating or attracting that experience rather you are creating or attracting circumstances and conditions that would prove to you that you can never have that experience in your life.
This is why repetition is so important, you have to keep creating in your mind your goal or vision over and over again every day until your body feels the emotion of that experience. Once you have the goal in the mind and the feeling of its fulfillment in your body, then your goal image will begin to unfold itself in your life.
The Energy Gratitude Brings in our Life
Now, come back to the gratitude, when you are imagining the experience you want to have and then you give thanks for that experience as you are actually experiencing it; what you are actually doing is that you are creating the energy or emotion of gratitude in your brain and body because your body doesn’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined. The signature of this gratitude is that you have already experienced the event.
In that case, you have a clear vision of what you want, and an elevated emotion of gratitude associated with your vision. Your vision will send your intentional energy in the field, and your gratitude will bring it back to you in the form of events, circumstances, and opportunities that will lead you to experience the fulfillment of your vision.
Remember this– it’s a process, you have to be involved in it on a daily basis, to create the energy of gratitude in your body by visualizing the fulfillment of your vision every day. Each day you would get a few drops of gratitude in your body, and if you keep doing it for long enough then it will become natural for you to feel the gratitude almost all the time. Once that happens, everything will begin to fall in its proper place for you to experience the fulfillment of your vision.
Don’t try to figure it all out because you would never really know how it’s going to happen, your job is to give your best every day, do all that you can do that day to move forward in the direction of your goal, and be grateful for every day of your life.
The Role Gratitude Plays in the health and function of our body
In order to understand the role of gratitude in the health and function of your body, first, you have to understand how your body’s innate system works. So, not to get technical, let’s keep it simple, I would say that your body basically works in two modes.
In order to understand these two modes of the function of your body, think of this – Imagine There is a deer grazing in a field, it is totally relaxed in the field, then it saw a tiger coming towards it, all of a sudden it gets alarmed and it uses all of its energy to run and hide from the tiger, and if it survives and moves out of danger, then within 15 to 20 minutes, it will return back to its normal relaxed state.
Now, when the deer was grazing, it was in a relaxed mode, in this mode, the prime function of the body’s innate intelligence is to repair and regenerate the body’s vital functions. However, the moment it saw the tiger, its survival mode gets activated, and in this case, the prime function of its innate intelligence is to survive from the danger, so it uses all its energy to run from the tiger.
When it comes to human beings, your body’s innate intelligence also works in these two modes, however, your body and its innate intelligence doesn’t know the difference between what’s happening in your real world, and what you are imagining in your mind.
Now, when you are sleeping, your body’s innate intelligence work on repairing and regenerating the body. so, when you are having a normal day and something happen that made you angry, the moment you get angry you triggered the survival mode of the body, and it wants to fight, and if you start fighting, verbally or physically, you are using all of your bodies energy resources into fighting and your body doesn’t have any energy for growth and repair, but when after an hour you get relaxed, your body returns back to repairing modes.
That’s normal, all forms of life are designed to get triggered with some short-term stress response and once the event is over they return back to normal repairing and healing mode of the body.
But! When you wake up and think about your problems, your body doesn’t know it’s just thoughts, it takes it as an alarm and switch to survival mode, and produce the same chemistry in the body as it has seen a tiger. If you keep thinking about your problems throughout your day, your body constantly stays in survival mode, in this case, the body doesn’t get the proper repairment and growth it needs in a relaxed mode, so the body starts to become sick.
So, remember this, any thoughts that you think that make you angry, sad, bitter, etc. are making you sick slowly-slowly every day.
Now, when you feel gratitude, for something that’s really happened in your life, or for something that you are imagining, the innate intelligence gets the signal that everything is okay in your environment and favorable things are happening to you. When the innate intelligence of your body receives this signal from you, it works in the creative and repairing mode.
When you imagine that you have received the healing that you want, and you feel gratitude in your heart as if the body is already healed, in this case, you are sending signals to the innate intelligence that the body is heald, once it receives this signals it begins to work on healing the body.
But then you get on with your day and things happen throughout the day which causes you to feel different emotions (mostly negative emotions), and you don’t even remember when did you lose the feeling of gratitude.
The moment you lose that feeling, the innate intelligence stop working on the idea of healing and goes back to work with its routine emotional states, which are primarily based on the subconscious programs that you have installed through the different experiences of your life story.
So, you have to keep creating the feeling of gratitude for whatever you want as if you have already received it, every day over and over again until this gratitude becomes a routine emotional state for your body, then the innate intelligence of the body will cure and heal every atom of the body.
How to Practice Gratitude
Gratitude is an emotional state where you feel appreciation for the good that came into your life.
Practicing gratitude is no different than practicing anything else.
For example– when a kid starts learning to ride a bicycle, he starts with having no neuro synaptic connection in his brain for riding a bicycle, then the person who is teaching him to ride give him some instruction about how to begin, he takes those instructions and begins to apply the instruction, he would fall many times, he would crash sometimes into things, but as he keeps practicing it, keep riding it, eventually his brain would build enough neuro synaptic connection in his brain for riding a bicycle, and then he would be able to ride a bicycle without giving it any conscious attention.
Same way, once a person decides to learn to play a sport, he would go through the same process, first learning about what he wants to do, then beginning to play with his conscious efforts, he makes so many mistakes in the first couple of month, but as he keeps practicing it every day, he then starts to become good at it and he doesn’t have to put much conscious efforts anymore because now playing it becomes a subconscious program. So, after enough consistent practice, a player can play his game really well without even paying much conscious attention to the game.
Now, Practicing gratitude works in the same way, you have to begin with no or very little gratitude, but as you would practice it every day, you will begin to feel more grateful every day, and if you keep practicing feeling gratitude, gratitude will become a natural emotional state for you.
For any person who lives in a natural state of gratitude, incredible and unexpected things keep happening to them.
There are many ways to practice gratitude, some people keep a gratitude general where every day they write certain things for which they are grateful.
Some people carry in their pockets a symbol that represents gratitude, and every time they touch it they feel genuine gratitude for their life and everything they have got.
Some practice gratitude by sharing their blessings with the less fortunate ones.
The practice I use is this-
First of all, I sit my body down before going to sleep, I get relaxed by practicing slow breathing techniques.
After that I give thanks for all the things that are in my life that made me a better human being, then I rewind in my my mind all the events that took place today, and then I see how did I do today, then I begin feeling gratitude for everything one by one that happened today which helped me to grow a little bit more, then I visualize how I would be spending my day the next day, and I practice feeling gratitude for the things that I Intend to do the next day.
Finally, I begin to visualize the fulfillment of my long-term goal, and then I give thanks in advance and surrender my creation to the universal consciousness of the field to bring it into my experience in a way that is just right for me.
Now, these are just a few ways to practice gratitude, you can practice any one of them or you can make your own, but remember, it’s not about the thoughts or words of gratitude rather it’s about the feeling of gratitude in the body.
So, if you are writing the things you are grateful, but not feeling the gratitude in your heart, then this practice won’t help you.
One more thing you have to understand is that, if you are reacting to your environment and going through a negative emotional reaction, then your first job is to relax your body because if you don’t lower the volume of that emotion in your body, your body won’t accept any thought other than that are equals to your emotional state. In that case, you may write the words of gratitude, or say the words of gratitude but those words or thoughts of gratitude would have no effect on your body and life.
In order to relax your body, there are many practices for it, what I personally like and use is the practice taught by Dr. Joe Dispenza, in which he asks you to place your attention on different parts of your body and to feel the space each part occupy in space.
Starting from the top of the head then slowly moving towards the lower part of the body, as your attention moves very slowly from one part to another, your body starts to become relaxed and before you reach to the bottom of your feet your body would be totally relaxed.
Once your body is relaxed, then it would accept the thoughts of gratitude and would begin to feel the gratitude. As you practice gratitude every day, your body would begin to feel more gratitude every day, and eventually, it would memorize the emotional state of gratitude.
The natural side effect of it would be that once your body memorizes the emotional state of gratitude then no problem or challenge would seem, to you, impossible to overcome.
Be grateful for all the good little things in your life, and it can do wonders for you.
Thank you very much for your time
– PARVEZ ALAM