Thanksgiving Day: Why Gratitude is Good for Your Health
By Silvia Casablanca, Voxxi
When I tune my mind into gratitude mode, the world looks almost immediately brighter. If I am feeling down and whiny, I swiftly grasp a wider picture of any situation and my worries, concerns and sourness easily turn into just a tiny blemish in the bigger order of things. I say bye-bye to sadness and gather enough energy to get my body out and move.
Growing up, I was deeply influenced by 11-year old orphan Pollyanna, the heroine of Eleanor H. Porter’s 1913 novel turned-movie. Pollyanna finds joy, even in the face of life’s difficult moments, by exploring what to be glad about in each circumstance of her life.
When my daughter was little, there was a time when I used to sit at her bedside and asked her what had been the best part of the day. Counting the blessings always rendered a bonding, happy moment.
Later in life, I learned that to achieve mastery in my spiritual path I must follow five “simple” principles that Reiki founder Mikao Usui had laid down a 100 years ago as “The secret of inviting happiness,” and, “The spiritual medicine for all illness.”
Those principles or precepts were:
- Do not anger
- Do not worry
- Give thanks for all of your blessings
- Show appreciation to others
- Work honestly to become the best person you can be
Of all five, giving thanks seems central to achieving happiness.
Research on gratitude: Beyond Thanksgiving Day
The attitude of gratitude “has been linked to better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety and depression, higher long-term satisfaction with life and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners.”
Thanksgiving Day is not exclusive to the U.S. Almost every culture and religion includes some gratitude ritual or precept, usually reflecting a healthy relationship with Mother Earth.
In these times when neurobiology and psychobiology are growing as new fields of science, gratitude has become one interesting subject of research. There is consistent evidence showing that being thankful plays a significant role in a person’s wellbeing.
A recent article from the New York Times reported how the attitude of gratitude “has been linked to better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety and depression, higher long-term satisfaction with life and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners.”
Psychologists are introducing gratitude journals as part of their research and treatments, finding that people who record things for which they feel grateful find it easier to not only overcome emotional hurdles but also alleviate physical symptoms.
Grateful people tend to be also optimistic and optimism is a plus.
Neurobiology of gratitude
Imagine that you could change your brain chemistry or even your brain wiring just by being grateful or feeling gratitude from others.
In the sixties, when I attended medical school, science still stated that we basically would die with the same brain we were born with; that the brain wouldn’t evolve much during a lifetime and that dead neurons meant not only a group of forever lost nervous cells but functions that could no longer be recovered.
We now know that even though nervous cells do not reproduce as other cells in the body, neurons are continually born throughout our life in certain areas of the brain.
We also know that our upbringing, the environment, our experiences, all form our neural connections (wiring).
Our emotional outlook is dependent on the repeated release of chemicals associated with patterns of behavior, perceptions or emotional responses.
Because they are unconscious, we can’t see how these patterns determine our relationships, our work, or our expectations. But we can change them by a conscious effort to change our thoughts.
Neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to change as a result not only of our daily experiences but also of our mental activity, means that, “the mind creates the brain,” to use the words used by neuroscientist Daniel Siegel in his book Neurobiology of ‘We.’
If we want to change our patterns, we first need to change our beliefs and our thinking.
How to express gratitude? (Not only on Thanksgiving Day)
Learning to be grateful could lead to an increased capacity to see the positive side of things, a growing self-esteem, an increased appreciation of what we receive from others. Gratitude might turn a hostile world into a kinder one.
- Experiment how expressing gratitude makes you feel. Try it!
- Try to acknowledge what others do for you.
- Offer support to a friend or family member even if they look self-sufficient.
- Say ‘thank you’ with a meaningful gesture: a little present, a card, a note on the wall.
- Express admiration for someone’s talents or accomplishments.
- Listen with interest to the story a relative is telling even if it’s not the first time you hear it.
Everyone benefits from gratitude. It makes us realize our own value, makes us feel that we matter.
When we realize how much we owe to those who cared for us; to our antecessors for the world we live in; to those who made sacrifices for us, we are also measuring the importance of our own contribution to the lives of others.
This article was first published in Voxxi.
Silvia Casabianca is a Reiki Master, Medical QiGong practitioner & Holistic psychotherapist. She graduated as a Medical Doctor in 1972 and practiced Medicine in Colombia for 28 years. She is the author of “Regaining Body Wisdom: A Multidimensional Approach. “
[Photo by abcdz2000]