When I think about what I'm grateful for, the first place my heart and mind go to is my sisterhood. This precious community, the women of Fred and Far. I'm profoundly grateful for each and every one of you. Your stories. Your commitments. Your pasts. Your presents. Your futures - which we now get to witness and celebrate. Thank you for sharing yourselves so authentically, courageously, brilliantly, and abundantly, my self love sisterhood.
And so on Thanksgiving, I offer you a Gratitude Meditation that will hopefully serve as a useful tool as you close out this year, and start the new one. This meditation is designed to engage all of your senses so that you can engage in the world with gratitude each and every day.
FRED AND FAR GRATITUDE MEDITATION
Step One: Get Comfortable and Start Breathing
Sit or lay in a quiet, pleasant space. This can be your bed, your garden, or anywhere in between. Start by breathing in for five seconds, holding for three, and breathing out for ten. Keep repeating this until you feel all your muscles start to relax and your breath gets into a flow. If music helps you meditate, by all means put it on. There's no right or wrong meditation music. Pick whatever causes your skin to prick up and your soul to open.
Step Two: Feel Gratitude from Head to Toe
Start at the top of your head, and work your way down, feeling gratitude every step of the way. Start with ten unique spots. Gratitude for your hair, your eyes, your mouth, your brain, your neck, your chest, and beyond. Pause at each spot, and express gratitude in your mind for every piece of you. As you pause, imagine a warm light landing on you in that spot, this warmth represents the spark of gratitude you are igniting. Pay special attention to the parts of yourself you routinely condemn or hide or hate.
Step Three: Let Your Gratitude Radiate In
Once you've expressed gratitude for your physical body, do the same thing, but focus your attention inward. Focus on five qualities about yourself to reflect upon and be grateful for. Your persistence, your love, your work ethic, your sense of humor... Consider adding something you perhaps think is a flaw, like your fear or anxiety. Be grateful for that part, too. The parts of ourselves we consider to be flaws, are still a part of us. And as such they deserve our love and gratitude. Focus on loving yourself and experiencing gratitude holistically - no buts about it. Don't forget to use your warm ray of gratitude as you shift between different focus points.
Step Four: Let Your Gratitude Radiate Out
Once you've expressed gratitude for yourself inside and out, shift your ray of gratitude to the people and things in your life, from the deeply personal, like loved ones, to the mundane, like the roads we drive on each day. Try to flow through at least ten external things.
Step Five: Fill Yourself and the World With Your Light
Throughout the process so far, your ray of gratitude has gotten stronger and stronger. Now that your ray of gratitude is supercharged, imagine it filling you up each time you breathe in, and then imagine it illuminating the world each time you breathe out. Your gratitude nourishes you, and also nourishes the world.