Gratitude

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Neuroscience

Gratitude
by Peggy La Cerra, Ph.D

Our neural network memory record is being created by midbrain circuitries – most notably, the basal ganglia. These circuitries also sequence our thoughts and behaviors, and keep track of our energetic losses and gains as they are recorded in our memory networks over time. When this system calculates that we’ve been on a ‘losing streak’, it re-calibrates our entire behavioral intelligence system in an effort to either solve our problem, or change our life path; unfortunately, however, the effects feel unpleasant. The re-calibration process initially manifests as anxiety -- a state that keeps us awake and thinking about solutions to our problem. But if that doesn’t work, it generates a depression -- a state in which we feel unmotivated and unhappy. Like anxiety, depression is an ‘adaptive response’; it is designed by nature to keep us from expending energy on an energetically unrewarding path. We can preclude the possibility of going into a state of anxiety or depression by engaging in a daily gratitude practice, an experience that automatically adds ‘positive energetic return’ to our brain’s ongoing tally of energetic losses and gains.

Rabbi Rami's Reflections

Gratitude
by Rabbi Rami Shapiro

Gratitude is one of the most satisfying spiritual practices I know. I receive so many gifts and blessings in my life, how can I not feel gratitude?

Tell me something that is not a gift in your life. For example, are the thoughts you think and the emotions you feel “yours,” or do they simply arise in you as a gift? And the words you use, did you make them or were they a gift from antiquity and the teachers that taught them to you? You didn’t make your body, or the earth, or the heavens—these too are gifts. So, when you think about it, is there anything that is not a gift?

OK, maybe everything is a gift, but certainly not a blessing. You’re not suggesting I feel gratitude for the terrible things that happen to me, are you?

Well, I’m not, but Job is. When his wife urged him to curse God for the horrors Job was experiencing—the death of his children, the loss of his wealth and health—Job said, “Should we not accept the bad from God as well as the good?” (Job 2:9)

What do you mean the “bad from God?” Why would God send bad things?

God sends all things, for all things are God. This is what God reveals to us in Isaiah: “Behold I fashion light, I fashion darkness; I create good, I create evil, I the Ineffable One do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7). Can you be grateful for the pain and suffering that comes your way, or only for the good and joy?

So everything is a gift of God from God?

Yes. And because God is infinite, creation is infinite possibility, the bad as well as the good. Nothing is aimed at you, but you are not protected from anything either. It is all a gift, even if one you would rather toss than unwrap.

Like those ties I get on Father’s Day.

Like that.

But it must take a unique kind of person to feel gratitude to suffering as well as joy, for illness as well as health.

No, not unique, simply aware. In the past we have spoken of attention. When you attend to reality you discover that all things flow from God, in God, as God. With attention comes awareness and with awareness comes gratitude. If you want to feel grateful, pay attention and cultivate this awareness.

Best Practices

Boost and/or Share Your Gratitude

One classic gratitude study by psychologist Robert Emmons and his colleagues at the University of California, Davis, examined the effect of counting your blessings regularly.

He recruited three groups. One kept gratitude journals. One recorded daily hassles. The third wrote down neutral events. Dr. Emmons found that the gratitude group exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic about the upcoming week than the other groups. A second study found that the gratitude group enjoyed higher levels of alertness and energy compared with the others.

Want to try it? Just follow these simple instructions: “There are many things in our lives, both large and small, that we might be grateful about. Think back over the past week and write down up to 5 things in your life that you are grateful or thankful for.” (Dr. Emmons actually found that those who wrote in their gratitude journals daily got more benefits than those who did so weekly.)

Recommended Articles

The Joy of Thanks,
by Robert A. Emmons

People who knew the extraordinarily prolific and influential writer G. K. Chesterton consistently described him as "exuberant" and "exhilarated" by life. What was his secret? He delighted in the ordinary and was surprised and awed by existence -- his own and all else's. In a letter to his fiancée he wrote, "I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do. The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me: the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of steel, the unutterable muddiness of mud." Continue with article

Test Your Gratitude
So for the past two years, I (Robert Emmons) have been working with Southern Methodist University's Michael E. McCullough and Jo-Ann Tsang to develop an accurate measure of gratitude and to find out how people's gratitude scores relate to their own health and well-being. This research was conducted in part via an extensive questionnaire on SpiritualityHealth.com, as well as with groups of university students. Take the Gratitude test

How Gratitude for Life Beats Fat
By Louise Palmer

It took losing 50 pounds for Brad Hirschfield to even realize that he was overweight, or so he jokes. The joke is, in fact, on point: Hirschfield, 38, is a teacher and Orthodox rabbi who was taught that pursuing a life of the mind and the spirit meant everything -- except pursuing health, sexuality, or body consciousness. So he let his body go.
Continue with the article

	Practice Gratitude Spirituality & Health Practices: Practice Gratitude Daily. Famous Quotes on Gratitude. Time: 2:13
	Gratitude Music: Send Some Rain. Time: 4:24
	Gratitude Is... A poem about Gratitude. Time: 4:09
	Daily Gratitude! Meditative: Relax and feel Gratitude through a soothing voice and natural images Time: 3:45
	Perfect Reason to Feel Grateful for What You Have Why we should feel Grateful? Time: 4:11
	The Gratitude Dance! Light Hearted and Fun - Do the Dance, Live a Little. Time: 3:24

Practice Gratitude

Gratitude Is...

Daily Gratitude!

Perfect Reason to Feel Grateful for What You Have

The Gratitude Dance!