This year’s blackberries made me realize a whole chain of things to be grateful for. Gratitude is key in getting a Feldenkrais practice that sustains you.
It’s blackberry season here on The Pond.
Several days ago, I found myself walking up to the mailbox — a 1/4-mile jaunt on a gravel road, past 4 neighbors — just as countless blackberry bushes were beginning to turn from red to black.
I noticed them on my way out and wondered if I should turn around and get something from home to carry some in, but at heart I’m a sloth, and decided not to add more steps to my trip, so I just continued on to pick up the mail.
I found a catalog, a flier and something from Blue Shield that I didn’t want to pay attention to… and I was on my way back home, past the blackberries again. I find there’s something irresisitible about delicate berries growing among painful thorns. I decided that it was worth opening the envelope from Blue Shield… I stuck the contents into the catalog, made a little container out of the envelope and began picking.
It suddenly dawned on me what a chain of gratitude there was around that little envelope loaded with berries–first of course, for the blackberries themselves. Then for the neighbors who encourage us to pick them. Then for the beautiful day I had for picking, for Blue Shield because they sent me the envelope, for our mail carrier who put it into our box and even the Postal Service that keeps delivering, despite everything! Then I realized that I wouldn’t have been out walking, if I hadn’t felt an overwhelming amount of stress that could be assuaged only with being outside, and I realized I was grateful for that, too.
I’ve pondered this a lot lately. Gratitude is often hard to come by when you feel like you don’t have enough… enough clients, classes, subscribers, ideas, gas, money, love, food, recognition… whatever hits you in the place where you feel the lack. Maybe whatever draws you here to what I write about.
Here’s the problem — if you can’t feel grateful for what you have, and find the beauty in the little things that happen in the course of your day, how will your gratitude muscles get in shape? And how will the Universe know to drop those great things off at your place if you don’t ever send out the message that you’re here, already grateful, ready to receive them?
Feeling gratitude for what is can lift you out of the feeling of lack, into abundance. When you come from having rather than lacking, the entire world looks different. You feel different. You treat people differently. You don’t appear desperate to the prospective clients you’re talking to and you have space inside yourself to make ‘fit’ more important than your bank account.
Just as awareness builds in our Feldenkrais Method® classes, gratitude also grows when we remember to notice it. So right now, find one thing you’re grateful for. Just take a few moments to look at the bigger picture of that, and see what else is connected with it, that you are also grateful for because of its connection.
What space opens for something new, when you allow your heart to expand? What would be different, if you remembered to do this every day? What would it take, to find 3 things every evening to give thanks for? And who would you be, if you did it?
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“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
