Have you ever started a Gratitude practice? The one where you make a list and write down 3-5 things that you are grateful for each day in an attempt to encourage yourself to always see the positive in things. I’ve done this and yet somehow this practice can fall short. I made the list, yet I still didn’t feel better. I felt like I was doing a practice that was forcing a path to create joy.
Finding ways to improve the vibration or mood in the body requires an actual change of energy. A physical shift. The difference between saying I am grateful for my son and the vibration that comes when I remember the sweet look in his eyes and the feel of his fingers when he was a baby and I was breastfeeding him. Those tender memories that stir the emotional remembrance and response in my body so that I can re-create that bliss in the present moment. That is true gratitude. That is when I harmonize with the sensation of joy.
For a gratitude practice to sufficiently work in uplifting my mood, I need those connecting sensations that uplift my energy field. That is what I mean when I use the phrase embodied gratitude. Saying I am grateful for my dog can bring a smile to my face. To go further into remembering the feeling of his warm body lying still on me while he sleeps. Then, I reconnect with the sensations of that love and connection that we shared. This brings the energy and vibration of my body to a more joyful state and allows me to embody gratitude.
Here is the message from my guides when I asked “What is embodied gratitude?”
11/4/26 From my guides:
Hmm. Yes, the feeling of bringing the memory of an experience into the body. A memory, for example, of... being in love, and remembering that tingle in the belly, and the flutter of the heart, and the excitement, and the vibration of the body. And that state of love is the state of gratitude, the state of being present in the moment, and really appreciating what is there before you.
Bringing this feeling into the sense of gratitude. When looking at the drop of water on the tree that just rained, and the sun is shining in the light, and you can feel the vibration and the shine, and the glimmer from the sun, like a crystal, vibrating, and radiating rainbows all around. At this moment is the gratitude, the gratitude for the tree, the gratitude for the sun, the gratitude for the rain, which all creates this sparkle and magic, and reminding the body of the feeling, of lightness, of the feeling, of belonging, of the feeling, of being present, in this Earth, in this time.
This gift that it is. This gift that it is to be this human, in a body, traveling this earthwalk, in this presence. Carrying the energy of the sun and the stars. And the light in your body. That is gratitude embodied. That is the feeling of gratitude from within. When we can reconnect with these sensations, these feelings, this is the point of the gratitude practice. It is the point of bringing the body to a reminder of ecstatic levels of being, the lightness, the groundedness, the connectedness. The gift of being on this Earth. That is embodied gratitude.
Let's take another example. You have had this decadent dessert, a chocolate soufflé, and it is moist, and it is perfectly sweet, not too much, just a little bit, and the sensation in the body is vibrating at the chocolate, and the sugar, and the cream, and the squishy flavor. (It) just makes the body sing in delight and pleasure to be in this feeling, to be in this feeling of connecting and having this experience, this experience of eating a piece of decadence. It is just short lived. It is not something that you do on a regular basis. Oh, no, we all know that the sugar is not great for the body, and the stimulation, but the stimulation is the gift. The beauty, the experience, to be able to stimulate the body and have this amazing reminder.
All of this is a reminder of the, uh... Uh, how do we say in this time? It's a reminder of your star essence. The connectedness, the bliss, and the beauty of being together and being in the present moment together. This is the remembrance of who you are. Your essence of who you are, is to be a radiant life at a radiant time.
Yes, there's lots of learnings, there's lots of challenges. And yet, every time, the challenge is to take off the old coat and to step into the new reality with the lessons that have been acquired and learned. And yet, at times, we take those messages and we take those hurts and we bundle ourselves in them, and we forget the part of taking the layer off, taking the layer off.
So as we head into this season of going within, of being in the dark, of being in the womb of the mother, of being held in the divine feminine, thinking about the richness of the soil and the nutrients that surround, and all of the gifts. And remembering that everything has to decompose before it can re-birth.
Think of the bulb of a flower, and each year, it sprouts a new awakening, a new remembering of the beauty and gift, and the perfect form of a flower. And at the end of that season, the flower must die, and yet the bulb is not dead. The bulb goes into quiet, the gold bulb goes back into a cocoon and restores itself and gives itself strength and power to recreate another beautiful essence.
So this is embodied gratitude. This process of bringing up and reclaiming, those feelings, those feelings of connectedness, those feelings of ecstasy, those feelings of bliss in the body, the lightness, the joy. This is the practice of gratitude. This is the practice of... reconnecting with those feelings, so that when you are in a challenging moment, a challenging time, you are recreating and re remembering that this, too, will pass this season, this cycle. This challenge is a time of the moment, and it too will shed, and it too will decompose, and it, too, will give you the strength to go on to the next beautiful adventure, the next form of being in this present life. This next opportunity to grow and shine and be your glorious, radiant self. This next opportunity to be the warrior of your own life and being, to set the path, to set the goals, to be a new expression. And this all comes from this process of embodied gratitude. Oh, we say blessings. And goodbye.
