Thankful For: Healing Through Giving Thanks

“The energy of a loving thought is enormously more powerful than that of a negative one.”
David R. Hawkins, Power vs. Force

Thank you for spending your time with me and reading my blog.

Giving thanks can heal your life.  Practicing gratitude at this time of year, or any other, is a healing act that extends far beyond the words and deep into the positive power that comes with it.

This week and our often chaotic times, seem to be asking for more such healing powers. The events of Las Vegas leave us in a state of shock.  Lies are the new current social tender.  There is a marked depravity in crimes.  There are more shootings in public places, targeting the innocent. A seed is being cultivated that hints at a lack of individual or collective responsibility toward one another.

What does science say?  A few loving and thankful thoughts or words can cancel out all negative thoughts by their sheer power.  If you were to be subjected to an MRI scan while listening to the word “No” repeatedly, it would initiate chemical changes in the brain relating to stress.  By contrast, while lying in the same scanner and listening to the word “Thank you or love,” the brain would be flooded with feel good chemicals.

According to Robert Emmons, the world’s leading authority on gratitude, when we are grateful we experience two phases:

1) The affirmation of goodness and the goodness of life.
2) We then recognize the source of this goodness as being outside of ourselves. When we recognize, it is really a process of being more mindful therefore to be thankful means to be thoughtful.  “Thinking and thanking go together.”

The energy of goodness also transmits through water.  The human body is 75% water.  Any thought you think, good or bad, is perceived so.  Dr. Masaru Emoto discovered how to capture this idea of transmitting thought energy in water.  His thousands of pictures of frozen water crystals who what positive thoughts like “I am thankful or love” will create beautiful, asymmetrically perfect and beautifully coloured crystals, while negative thoughts like “I will kill you,” change crystals into ugly asymmetric shapes and dirty colours.

You can try this experiment at home by labelling everything in your fridge with the words love and thank you. I even label my water bottle.

During my most challenging times of loss, all things seem hopeless. I wanted to be angry at the world, and for a time I was.  As I looked inside at what was really going on, my thoughts led me to believe that no one could have been given so many opportunities to find gratitude than I. This may sound crazy, but even through Braden’s death, Bob’s death, death of the family business, death of my own business and death of the life I had known, I could still find things to be grateful for.  I wrote these things daily in my Gratitude Journal, and still do.

Here’s how being thankful improves your health.

Grateful people:

Have an increased sense of well being by as much as 25%.
Have better relationships.
Experience less loneliness and isolation.
Are less depressed or anxious.
Experience less repeated bouts of anxiety or depression.
Achieve more and are more goal oriented.
More resilient to trauma (psychological immunity
Exercise more and are in general, more fit.
Become more active, validated by journalling their thanks.
Sleep better and wake feeling more refreshed
Are less apt to smoke, do drugs or abuse alcohol.
Take better care of their health
Are more likely to engage in health promoting behaviours.
Have measurably lower blood pressure; at least 10-15% lower.
Have healthier lipid panels, higher HDL and lower LDL.

Practical steps for practicing gratitude:

Focus on what you are grateful for through journalling.
Look for the joy in all things.
Recognize the good and take it in.
Give goodness back – share what you have.
Make the choice to be grateful.
See every moment is an opportunity for expressing gratitude.

This Thanksgiving, let your heart appreciate what is.  Say thank you to the smallest and greatest things in your life.  Drink water from a glass labelled LOVE and see what happens.

I wish you a beautiful and abundant Thanksgiving.
I am ever grateful to each of you for you.
Love and thanks,
Tosca

PS. I would be grateful if you would post your gratitude actions and comments below. Thank you.
“Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh