Originally posted June 26, 2018.
Gratitude feeds the white wolf…6 mindful nibbles a day!
Almost all days, I habitually remind myself to stop, take a deep breath, close my eyes, drop my shoulders, open my heart chakra and breathe in the energy of gratitude.
This takes, oh, probably less than one minute.
And I repeat this in the car, at red lights, in traffic, as I sit in the waiting room for an appointment…you understand…it can be any time you have a few moments to reflect.
Research shows that pausing and doing a mindfulness exercise 6 times a day for about 2 minutes helps reuse anxiety and depression….The exercise can be a small thing like …. mindful walking and breathing, or stopping, putting your head upside down and shaking all the stuff out of your head and laughing…or doing the Serenity Meditation, or direct Lovingkindness thoughts to yourself and others..it could be watching the birds out the window…
But the idea is to habitually pause 6 x times a day for 2 minutes or so helps reuse anxiety and dpesisocn… And over time, these mindful practices will retrain your neurobiology, will create new pathways in your mindbody and these habits of self-regulation and relaxation will lower the tendency of the nervous system to be excited and be there for you to use….
And, yes, the most challenging time for me to feed my white wolf is when I’m getting tense and annoyed…
I’ve worked through and developed holistically what works for me in my own emotional and mental health. I’ve studied many healing methods for 25 years. You can do this, too.
And I observe with my clients how these methods work on an individual basis as I’ve walked the healing path with them.
I emphasize habitually.
Feeding the white wolf of humility, compassion and gratitude is a daily practice of lovingkindness. It takes effort and discipline habituate to feeding the white wolf and not the black wolf of anger, envy and resentment.
How does gratitude help feed the white wolf of love and humility?
It helps you reduce criticism of your self and others.
When you look at your life through the lens of calm thoughts and feelings, instead of through the flurry of idealization, annoyance and anger, you’re able to keep your boundaries intact and assess situations and relationships more realistically.
It helps you to focus on what you have, not what you want.
When you focus mindfully on what actually is and not on perceived lack, you get to fill yourself up with happiness and beauty.
You get to disconnect from the consumer lifestyle trance the advertisers spend billions on to saturate our energy space! You can counteract the energy of the consumer trance!
It helps you access your positive traits and abilities
When you feed your white wolf by realistically inventorying your positive abilities, you can gauge how often you actually do access your positive abilities and release the energy of positive work into the world!
It helps you create an internal emotional climate of calm
Mindfully feed your white wolf. Mindfully being in the present and taking realistic stock of all that you have in your life allows positive feelings to be released and allows you to experience a positive way of interacting with yourself.
It helps you let the kindnesses of people feed you, not the thoughtless acts.
Acknowledging the people in your life for their positive influences and love helps to realistically normalize that people are a sum of positive and negative traits, neither idealized nor demonized. For all the deceit in the world, there are 1000 acts of kindness.
Here are my four gratitude prayers for today:
I thank my husband for being so kind and steadfast and believing in me and my work for all of these years.
I thank my brothers and sister for their support throughout the year as we dealt with the progressive and degenerative symptoms of our mother’s Alzheimer’s.
I profoundly thank my wonderful clients, who teach me every single day about perseverance and strength as they face and overcome their life challenges.
I thank my virtual family of friends, fellow trauma and perinatal clinicians, fellow mental health activists whom I met on Facebook and Twitter, for including me in this wide circle of support and kindness all year long.
Namaste,
Kathy