Taking Gratitude to the Next Level
The key to continued growth: challenging yourself and finding new ways to deepen your gratitude practice
Welcome to Gratitude: Week 3
For the first half of November, we worked on establishing a daily, gratitude practice with the following exercises:
Week 1 : Write a list of five things you are grateful for, first thing in the morning.
Week 2 : Spend time, every evening, reflecting on your day
If you haven’t read the previous two issues, I highly recommend checking them out. It’s never too late to get grateful!
This week, we’re taking a closer look at our gratitude lists. Are they starting to feel redundant, or taking on a “Rose Colored Glasses” tone that feels insincere?
Well, I’ve got good news: you’re ready to level up!
New here? Please consider subscribing. New issues of Root&Rise are published at 4am Alaska time, every Sunday. Check out the archive while you’re at it. It’s full of past issues with valuable resources to support your home yoga practice.
Progressing Your Practice
If you continue to show up consistently, your gratitude practice will become so deeply ingrained in your daily routine that you won’t even have to think about it. You’ll just do it.
Once you reach this point, your gratitude habit will be firmly established.
Now it’s time to take the next steps: Expand & Evolve.
Think of it like weight lifting: when someone begins their weight lifting journey, they start small. As they become stronger and more experienced, they gradually progress to lifting heavier weights.
Similarly, in your gratitude practice, you can add weight by digging below the surface and mining the parts of your life not typically associated with gratitude.
Though there are several underground qualities that can be used to enrich your practice, today we’re focusing on one particularly powerful gem — adversity.
Life is clearly teaching me some kind of lesson, but I can’t decipher it yet.
Katherine May
Finding Gratitude in Adversity
My son wrestled competitively for ten years.
Wrestling is an intense sport. When athletes compete in a tournament, they wrestle multiple matches over the course of the event. They often experience victory and defeat multiple times in the same day, sometimes in the same hour.
They have to learn from their losses, pick themselves up and get right back on the mat.
And they have to do it fast.
As I watched my son, and many other wrestlers, build tenacity, mental toughness and character through this process, I came to realize that losing is actually learning.
Winning feels great. It builds confidence and brings a sense of accomplishment, but it’s the losing moments that fuel personal growth.
These undervalued, and often overlooked, moments deserve gratitude as much as any success.
Expressing gratitude for challenging experiences may seem counterintuitive, but it’s in these struggles that we find our strength. By humbling ourselves and learning from our mistakes, we emerge wiser and more resilient.
Gratitude should’t be reserved for the times when we feel like we’re winning at life. When applied to failure, it is a powerful catalyst for positive change.
This is the path to genuine gratitude that can truly transform lives.
Smooth Seas Never Made a Skilled Sailor
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Put It Into Practice
Yoga is the perfect way to put these concepts into action. Our personal practice is where we learn to ease out of our comfort zone and pick ourselves up when we fall. Hello Tree Pose!
The following classes feature opportunities to lean into adversity by exploring some slightly more advanced flows and poses.
They are still accessible and definitely doable for all students — they might just require extra attentiveness, humility and modification.
I have been practicing them all week and I modify liberally. There is no shame in recognizing a pose is not for you, and choosing instead to move in ways that feel appropriate (and safe!) for your body.
I do it ALL. THE. TIME.
What do I mean by modify? Well, when the flow gets too complicated, physically demanding or advanced you have a few options:
Know your limits.
Teachers usually offers a basic, beginner friendly option before moving into advanced poses. There is no need to move deeper into a pose, if you’re not ready. I almost always choose to stay with the basic pose.
Rest in child’s pose.
Childs pose is always available to you if you get tired, frustrated or don’t feel comfortable with a pose that’s being taught.
Practice any pose that feels good to your body.
You don’t always have to do exactly what the teacher is doing. Go rogue!
Okay….try these classes, take your time, go rogue when necessary and see what you can learn from the challenge. I’m right here with you. We’re all in this together.
30 Minute Morning Yoga For Gratitude | Full Body Flow + Meditation | Jessica Richburg
31 minutes | All Levels | Modify as Needed
This is a lovely class. I’ve been practicing it on mornings when I feel energetic and well rested. Jessica’s pacing is perfection and her cues are clear. She also includes a savanna at the end, which always gets bonus points with me.
If you’d like to see how I modify for my personal practice, check out @rootandriseyoga on instagram. I posted a reel of me practicing this class this morning.
Yoga To Attract Abundance | Under 15 Minutes | Beginner and Plus Size Friendly | Jessamyn Stanley
14 Minutes | All Levels | Modify as Needed
Jessamyn’s abundance class is short, sweet and perfect for mornings when you want to get the most bang for your buck. I LOVE this class.
Pro Tip : a short advertisement interrupts the class, use this time to sneak in some cat cow! Use the adversity to your advantage!
30 Day Meditation | Day 16 | Meditation For Gratitude | Arianna Elizabeth
14 Minutes | All Levels | Beginner Friendly
In this simple gratitude meditation, Arianna Elizabeth invites us to direct gratitude towards many different areas of life.
Pay attention to what comes up as your awareness moves from one thing to the next. Some may be easier to feel gratitude for than others. Consider taking time to reflect on the people, places and experiences that challenge you and what lessons may be available to you here.
Final Thoughts
To those of you celebrating Thanksgiving this week and everyone else too - May you find time to connect with loved ones and share a nourishing meal with the people who make your life meaningful.
Many of us will have ample opportunity to practice gratitude in challenging situations as we gather with family from near and far.
Let your practice support you. Roll out your mat, move your body, meditate on gratitude and give yourself grace.
See you next Sunday.
Until then, please consider sharing Root&Rise. Your support helps get the word out and amplifies the message of accessible home yoga. Thank you!!
Thank you Jenny! I'm grateful for your great content and inspiration!