Embrace Gratitude: Unlocking Your Innate Healing Abilities – NaPodPoMo

In today’s episode of Self Powered Healing, I’m going to talk about gratitude and how expressing gratitude can be healing. This episode is published on Thursday, November 28th of 2024, which is Thanksgiving Day in the United States.

According to Dr. David Hamilton, the author of “How Your Mind Can Heal Your Body,” gratitude is simply the art of saying a deep thank you to life for what you have. Further, it’s actually appreciating it on a meaningful emotional level that you can really feel throughout your body and being.

Gratitude is good for your heart. It counteracts stress. Ultimately, it’s beneficial to your cardiovascular system. Stress, whether it’s mental or emotional, can increase the levels of stress hormones and free radicals, and ultimately inflammation.

All of those, the stress hormones, the free radicals, and the inflammation can lead to cardiovascular disease. A regular practice of gratitude can lead to improved cardiovascular health.

Dr. Robert Emmons is the world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude. I didn’t even know there was one, but there is. He is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, and is the founding editor in chief of the Journal of Positive Psychology. His studies found that, people who practice gratitude consistently report a host of benefits.

Social benefits include being more helpful, generous, and compassionate, more forgiving, more outgoing, and feeling less lonely and isolated.

Psychologically, They have higher levels of positive emotions, they’re more alert, alive, and awake. They have more joy and pleasure, more optimism, and happiness.

Physically, people who practice gratitude consistently have a stronger immune system, fewer body aches and pains. lower blood pressure, they exercise more and take better care of their health, and they sleep longer and feel more refreshed upon waking.

Gratitude allows us to celebrate the present. It magnifies positive emotions. Gratitude blocks toxic negative emotions such as envy, resentment, and regret. Those emotions can destroy our happiness. Grateful people are more stress resistant and grateful people also have a higher sense of self worth.

I found an article by Robert Emmons that gives the 10 ways to become grateful. I’m going to highlight just a couple of them.

First one is to keep a gratitude journal, to establish a daily practice, to remind yourself of the gifts, grace, benefits, and good things you enjoy. When I first tried to do this, I struggled with it because I didn’t want to repeat the same thing, but I believe that misses the point. It’s okay to be grateful for your spouse or your family or your cat every day. You might find that you’re grateful for a different reason on each day.

Another technique he suggests is to remember the bad. You can be grateful in your current state by reminding yourself of the hard times that you once experienced and that you’ve overcome.

He also suggests that you use visual reminders to practice the gratefulness. The two primary obstacles to gratefulness are forgetting to do so and a lack of mindful awareness. Visual reminders can serve as a cue to trigger thoughts of gratitude. Sometimes the best visual reminders are other people.

Another one he has is to go through the motions. If you go through the grateful motions, the emotion of gratitude should be triggered. Grateful motions include smiling, saying thank you, and writing letters of gratitude.

What am I grateful for today?

I’m actually grateful for this NaPodPoMo experience, and especially for Jennifer Navaretti for creating this opportunity.
I’m grateful for everyone who has listened and encouraged me throughout this month.
I’m grateful for my hubby for putting up with all the craziness that NaPodPoMo has brought into our home.
And I’m grateful for my friends and family.

What are you grateful for?

Thanks for listening today. You can visit SelfPoweredHealing.com/november2024 to find all the episodes for NaPodPoMo. Leave a comment too, if you like. Thank you to all that have been a part of this 30 day challenge. Beginning in December, I’ll be returning to my less intense schedule, publishing three episodes each month, at least. I also will have more healing stories coming up.

Stay tuned.

By the way, Self Powered Healing is still looking for interviews with people who want to share a story of healing. Do you have a healing story? I would love to hear about it and see if maybe you could share it on our show. So if you’re interested in sharing, then visit selfpoweredhealing.com/share to schedule a chat.  

You aren’t committing at this point. You’re just having a chat with me to see what’s going on. It will be confidential unless or until you decide you want to share. And if you get there and there’s not a convenient time for you, send me a message because we’ll always find a time.  

And remember this always,  