The Benefits of Daily Gratitude + A 3-Minute Practice to Try

Welcome back, beautiful soul! ✨

I practice gratitude every day. It is the last part of my morning practice (I share my exact practice with you at the end of this blog post), and when I go for a daily walk by myself, I make it a point to name several things and people I’m grateful for along the way.

Gratitude has helped me become a more whole, content, and present person. The more gratitude I have practiced, the more I notice what I’m grateful for. And that makes me feel amazing…but it makes others feel amazing, too.

When you say, “I’m grateful for you,” there is a mutually beneficial experience for you and the other person. You feel gratitude and experience its benefits and they feel gratitude for your generosity. That experience of generosity and gratitude between us is medicine for our souls and, I believe, a key element of the social cohesion we’re all longing to experience.

In this blog post, I outline for you:

• What gratitude is and how I personally define it

• Some of the science-backed evidence on how gratitude can positively support our health

• A 3-minute daily gratitude practice (the exact one I practice daily!)

What is Gratitude?

I experience gratitude as a generous, spiritual quality you can consciously invoke that allows you to fully receive and embrace your life in the present moment. Gratitude can create a positive ripple effect across all aspects of your health and well-being, because it brings you back into to the present moment and inspires you to be generous towards other people.

Instead of lamenting about the past or rushing towards the future, gratitude helps you anchor yourself in the here and now, and reminds you of the abundance that always lives right here in the present moment. This is medicine for you on an individual level.

Similarly, instead of remaining mired in your own experience and becoming overly self-focused, gratitude inspires you to be generous with other people and to connect with others from the heart. This is essential to our well-being.

the science speaks

In The Science of Gratitude, Summer Allen, PhD, cites several scientific studies on gratitude and its potentially positive effects on the many areas of our health. I highly recommend reading the entire paper for a full, comprehensive breakdown of all the studies! In this paper, Allen writes and cites the following about gratitude’s impact on physical, spiritual, and psychological health:

Physical Health
”A longitudinal study of patients with one of two chronic illnesses—arthritis or inflammatory bowel disease— found that patients with high trait gratitude at the beginning of the study also had fewer symptoms of depression; that was still the case six months later (Sirois & Wood, 2016) [4].”

“A 1995 study found that when participants felt appreciation, an emotion related to gratitude, their heart rate variability, an indicator of good heart health, improved (McCraty, Atkinson, & Tiller, 1995) [2].”

Spiritual Health
”…university students who reported more “higher-order gratitude” (which includes thanking others, thanking God, cherishing blessings, appreciating hardships, and cherishing the moment) also reported more life satisfaction and positive affect, even after controlling for their gender, age, religion, personality traits, and dispositional gratitude (Lin, 2014) [17].”

Psychological Health
”Multiple studies have found that people with higher levels of dispositional gratitude have signs of better psychological health, including higher levels of perceived social support and lower levels of stress, depression, and anxiety (Wood, Maltby, Gillett, Linley, & Joseph, 2008) [395] (Froh, Emmons, et al., 2011) [180].” Studies have also found that regularly practicing gratitude increases life satisfaction and optimism.

A daily GRATITUDE PRACTICE

This practice is inspired by my personal studies with the HeartMath Institute and the positive impacts of heart-focused breathing and gratitude to increase mental, emotional, physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being.

3-minute Daily Gratitude Practice
1.) Find a place where you can feel as comfortable and cozy as possible.

2.) Settle into that place by sitting or lying down, or placing your body in a position that feels most comfortable to you.

3.) Close your eyes.

4.) Bring your awareness, focus, and attention to the center of your heart. Breathe naturally in and out your nose.

5.) Keeping your focus on your heart, on your inhale, feel/sense/see your breath entering into the center of your heart. On your exhale, feel/sense/see your breath settling into the center of your heart.

6.) As you do this practice, mentally name what you are grateful for. Start with simplicity and specific as possible.

For example: “I am grateful for the sounds of the birds I can hear outside my window” or “ I am grateful for the presence of my cat on my lap, and how soft her fur feels.”

7.) Continue this for 3 minutes. Practice daily.

I hope this can inspire you to begin to make gratitude a sacred part of your everyday.

Seeking 1:1 support?

If you’re currently struggling with anxiety and/or the resurfacing of past trauma and you’re seeking a holistic approach to healing that could help you break free from these stuck patterns, let’s have a consult and see if working together would be a good fit. Read about my private coaching offering and book your discovery call here.

With care,
Heather