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Discovering Embodied Gratitude

 

We’re talking about gratitude in my current 2021 Matrix Integration Exploration. There can be so much confusion and conceptualizing, when it comes to gratitude. And while there may be a time for “faking it until you make it,” there is also a time for slowing down to see what’s actually here.

In order to know what is actually here, instead of what we think is here, or imagine is here, or pretend is here, or want to be here, or think what “should” be here… or or or…   We have to slow down. Slowing down is not always easy, and, it is always life changing.

I shared this with my community of practice, this morning:

As with everything in this course, we invite ourselves to go deeper, and simpler, than the mental or conceptual plane. We invite ourselves to connect with the actual factual of right here, right now. Not how we think things should be, are supposed to be, but how things are, as they are.

So, in this moment, when I slow down I notice: I am grateful for the warm and spicy flavor in my mouth. I am grateful for warm breakfast. I am grateful for the passion that has connected with me this morning and is moving me from one thing to the next. I am grateful for the fuzzy slippers on my feet. I am grateful for being aware of the holding energies that are dancing through my belly and rib areas. I am grateful for the big release of a burp. I am grateful for holding space for the deep grief that is here, that has become my friend and companion. I could go on and on. I don’t have to like everything that I am grateful for. I am honoring it as it is. In the actual factual, here and now.  As simple and self-evident as it is. Like all the practices we connect with here… because they are so simple, they may also be hard. 

Oh, one more thing. Have you i told y’all the story of a time in my life when i was practicing gratitude, bc i wanted, more than anything, to die?

I knew I was “supposed” to be grateful for things, but i wasn’t. I wasn’t grateful for my daughter, or my thriving practice, or for my home. I mean, I was in moments, but it was not an embodied gratitude. I wanted to die, and I struggled every day to want to be alive.

One day I decided to start a simple gratitude practice. I was done with pretending and faking, so it had to be real: No unicorns and rainbow gratitude practice for me. No more bypassing.

I sat there with my pen and journal. Suddenly an embodied gratitude for my pen appeared. And then gratitude for the light that was shining upon my journal allowing me to see. And then, for my bed. In that moment I could feel the authentic gratitude for these very simple, mundane things. It was profound, in how simple it was. The actual factual gratitude of that moment.

That day my life changed.

I felt my brain, my nervous system and my life reorganize and realign, first hand. I have always been my own guinea pig for how I journey with clients, and that experience slowly but surely infiltrated into my journeying with people.

Gratitude as an experiential and embodied practice.  The 2022 Matrix Integration will be starting in February. It is life changing to know that we are safe to slow down, and be here now. Not always easy, and that’s why we learn together.

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