Feel Better: Practice Thanksgiving Every Day
Thanksgiving is never over if you can hone your giving thanks practice. There are good reasons to give it a shot. Studies show that if you are practicing gratitude on the reg, you are a healthier, happier person…so let’s get started! It’s the first episode of season 5! Seasonal Stress Therapy: Where we will be keeping things short, simple and accessible even during the busiest time of the year!
In this episode we will learn:
~Why it’s important to practice gratitude every day
~Practicing gratitude for every breath
~ A Quick Thanksgiving Gratitude Meditation
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Quotes:
“Practicing gratitude is easy…you just have to do it!” -Cheri Augustine Flake, LCSW
The Host for this podcast:
Cheri Augustine Flake, LCSW
The Stress Therapist and Author
Twitter: @stresstherapy
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Cheri Augustine Flake (Author of Honey Do to Honey DONE!)
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A word from your host, Cheri Flake, LCSW:
Feeling good after our Stress Therapy session? Awesome. Check out the show notes to connect with me, The Stress Therapist on social media and you can always go to iLoveTherapy.com to find out about meditation retreats and yoga retreats and other offerings.
Transcript notes:
Speaker A: Hey, beautiful people. So Thanksgiving is over. Or is it? Studies are showing that if we give thanks each and every day, that we are better and happier. So I’m going to show you just how to do that today. And it’s the first episode of season five, seasonal Stress Therapy, where we’re going to be together through the whole hustle and bustle. But I’m going to really keep in mind that time restraint that you have during this time of year. It’s going to be awesome. So relax, settle in, and listen up, because your stress therapy session is about to begin right now. Hey, beautiful people. It’s time for some stress therapy. A podcast about how to meditate and get better at stress for people living in the real world. Finally, a place department. 25 plus years of experience of working as a psychotherapist in the mental health field. And now, your host, me, the stress therapist, Cheri Flake. Hey, beautiful people. So we know now that people that practice gratitude on a daily basis are in a better mood. They are happier and healthier. So this is major. This means that people who practice gratitude by writing in a journal each morning about what they’re grateful for or thanking the hands that prepared food or God for bringing it onto their plate each day for each meal or say a little prayer or some sort of thoughtful intention before they go about what kind of day that they had and that they were blessed to even have a day of living on this beautiful earth. Those people are happier. The only difference between you and them is that they are doing it and you might not be right. And so you got to get that behavior into your life. Just like meditation. Now, this is a new season. It’s seasonal stress therapy. And I understand that you have serious time restraints right now. You are super duper busy. So I’m going to keep the lessons really short during this entire season. And I’m going to shorten the meditations because it is more important that you show up. It is more important that you show up. 1 minute is better than zero minutes 100% of the time. Now, we know that the reason why this gratitude idea works is because if we’re focused on something, whatever it is, it gets bigger. We learned about this when we talked about complaining, right? If you’re complaining, it gets bigger, it gets worse. So if you are thinking about all of the lovely things in your beautiful day, or the great people that you met that day, or got to hang out with, or some beautiful sunset or a great song that you enjoyed listening to, or I recently went to a bunch of concerts all in one week. And it was so fun. And so that was where my gratitude was sitting for a while. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. Your favorite chapstick, your pillow under your head each night. Your dog’s beautiful face that I was admiring this morning. A regular yoga practice. Even if it’s five minutes long, it doesn’t matter what it is. It doesn’t have to be big, it doesn’t have to be, yeah, but there’s still no world peace or there’s still people that are starving and hungry. Yes, those things are massively important. It’s important that we think about them. But it’s also important to recognize progress that you’ve made and things that are lovely so we don’t get too focused on what’s going wrong and we remember the little things that are going right so they get bigger. So let’s meditate right now. A beautiful thanksgiving meditation. Take a moment now to find a comfortable sitting position. Allow yourself to sit up straight, alert, become. You can sit in a chair, you can sit on the floor. Just make yourself comfortable so you can forget about your body for a little bit. And as you make micro adjustments and find yourself comfortable, release all of your breath with two breaths out. Now take a long, slow, deep breath in your nose and release out of your mouth. All out, letting it go. And again, breathe in your nose. Breathe in, breathe in, breathe in. Hold it for just a second and then let it all go out of your mouth. And let’s do that one last time in your nose and then release out of your mouth. And just allow your breath to find its beautiful rhythm after you’ve emptied your lungs. And just notice your breath coming in and coming out through your nostrils, passing through your throat, coming into your lungs, into your heart center, maybe all the way even into your belly. You don’t have to change it, you can just notice it. This meditation is going to be really short. It’s just going to be a couple of minutes because I want you to be here. So we’re going to take a moment to have gratitude for this breath. This breath comes and goes, whether you think about it or not. It’s there while you’re unconscious every night, working beautifully. If you decide to exercise, your brain handles how it needs to breathe more and better and more efficiently. Your breath, it’s amazing. I mean, it’s a perfect cocktail that’s given to you by the lushness of the earth and what you expel back to the earth is used up again. This reciprocity is beautiful and so it should be relatively easy to be grateful for every breath. And so from now on, and as I leave you just for a couple of minutes, breathe in, think, breathe out you. Every breath in is think. Every breath out is you. This magical cocktail that’s been perfectly made just so your body can thrive. Thank you. You’re not even really breathing. You’re being breathed. It’s just happening. Thank you. Comes and goes and comes and goes without you having to think about it. Thank you. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes. Allow yourself the ending moments and benefits and good feels of having said thank you so many times wrapped around your beautiful breath. Manipulate your breath now and take a big sip of air. Really breathe it in your nose and just hold it for 1 second and then release out of your mouth. Allow yourself to feel cleansed and awakened. Breathing in your nose, feeling all the way up and then letting go out of your mouth. And then one last time, breathing in thank you. And then let it all go. And when you’re ready, you can open your beautiful eyes. Okay, so this is how it’s going to be. Can you dig it? We’re just going to have these little teensy tiny lessons and then we’re going to have these really mini meditations so you can stick with it the entire stress therapy holiday season. It’s going to be magical. Okay, so my dog is barking like a nut, so I gotta go. But speaking of magical, I do want to mention that I would love, love, love to have you come on a retreat with me. We have a New Year’s meditation retreat on the lovely Jekyll Island in January, of course. And then we have one at the end of the month with the lovely Cindy Dollar. She’s an Ayanga yoga instructor. She’s famous and everybody loves her. And you’ll totally see why when you meet her and you take her classes. The food is amazing, the people are amazing, the scenery is beautiful, and I just would love, love to have you. It’s a great way to jump start a new practice or to rejuvenate an older practice. Everybody is welcome. I can’t wait. Next week we’re going to do a couple of stress busters that are super fast tips. You’re not going to have to wait around for anything. It’s going to be right off the bat. Super fast stress tips and a super mini meditation during this holiday season. So you just have a lovely holiday. How y’all feeling after that stress therapy session? Good? Awesome. Check out the show notes to connect with me, the Stress therapist, on social media at the Stress Therapist on Instagram, and at Stress therapy on Twitter. You can always go to ilovetherapy.com to find out about meditation and yoga retreats.
