Awe-Gratitude-Joy
A Shared Moment of “Wow!”
As the final notes of a public performance of Mozart’s Masonic Funeral music faded away, into the deep silence came an audible “Wow!” And that “wow” was from Ronan Mattin, a 9 year-old autistic boy attending the concert with his grandfather, who acknowledge Ronan is primarily non-verbal and later told WGBH Boston radio: “I can […]
Gratitude – Not Because We Should, But Because We CAN
One of those freaky, terrifying moments. Driving late at night on a dark country road. I’m fine in my lane. Another car makes too wide of a turn from an intersecting road and suddenly – oh no! Not this! – the car is coming straight toward me in my lane. I brake and scream as […]
Being Thankful for Everything That Is Going More than All Right
I love the practice – being thankful for everything that is going more than all right. I learned it from James Baraz, my meditation teacher of 20 years, who used the phrase in his Conversations on Practices for Recovering Resilience. Gratitude has been a pillar of James’s teaching for 40 years, including teaching his 89-year […]
Gratitude for the Web of Life
I meant to put eye drops in my eye, but late at night I accidentally grabbed a bottle of ear wax removal from the medicine cabinet. The first agonizing seconds of stinging pain told me I had just made a terrible mistake. Flush, flush, flush with warm water. I called my medical provider’s emergency room, […]
Remembering What Really Matters Strengthens Our Resilience
As we learned in this interview with Jonah Paquette, moments of awe can act as a muse to our resilience. Here’s a practice for cultivating awe from the book Resilience. Awe is the larger-than-life feeling we experience in the presence of something vast and extraordinary — the glory of a panoramic sunset, a star-studded night […]
Cultivating Awe is Awesome for the Brain
As we strengthen our resilience by learning to manage difficult, negative emotions, it’s just as important to amplify the positive emotions that shift our brain functioning out of contraction and reactivity into more openness and receptivity. We cultivate positive emotions – kindness, compassion, gratitude, awe, delight, not just to feel better but to do better. […]
Giving Thanks – for Losses and Lessons
[Today is Thanksgiving Day in the United States. I have my own special reasons for being deeply, deeply thankful.] When I arrived in the Bahamas two Thursdays ago to teach four workshops at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat Center, I arrived late, tired. While stepping from the dock to the boat to go across the […]