Gratitude

When everything is going smoothly in our life, we often forget to acknowledge, or we fail to notice our good fortune. It's only when confronted by difficulty that we remember to feel grateful. So I'm sure this is something that we all experience in our life. We experience on a very small kind of micro level, inside our own mind, probably most days, but then there are larger events that happen. And often, it takes those larger events, often difficult events, often challenging events, it takes those to happen to really appreciate what we have in our life. And then you've probably noticed that over time, it's almost as though we wanna capture that feeling, because when we do feel that deep sense of appreciation, of gratefulness, there is something about it that just sort of connects us to life, to the world around us. We don't feel so sort of separate. But then of course, as the days go by, typically, that starts to wear off a little bit. So it's only really in training the mind, in training in appreciation, training in gratefulness, that we can start to extend those periods of time, where we create the space for them to arise, and then in resting in that space, we can start to gain a sense of familiarity in it. The more familiarity we have, the easier it is to come back to, and the more of it we experience in our life. So once you're sitting comfortably, you're gonna begin with the eyes open, and a nice, big, deep breath, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. As you breathe in, noticing as the air enters the body and fills the lungs, the chest expanding, and as you breathe out, just noticing as the muscles in the body relax and soften. And close the eyes, if you haven't done already, and just feeling the weight of the body, that contact of the body against the seat, or the floor beneath you. The weight of the arms, the legs, the hands, and the feet. And just taking a moment to notice all the different sounds around you. Just allowing the sounds to come and go. And then as you bring the attention back to the body, noticing how the body feels right now, noticing the movement of breath in the body, that rising and falling sensation. Noticing not only the rhythm, but also the area where you feel that movement the most. Just resting the mind on that sensation. And then letting go of that attention, just bringing the focus back to the feeling of weight and the contact in the body. Just starting to notice the different sounds, once again, around you, and you can open your eyes when you're ready....