What stops us feeling grateful?

Feelings and emotions are transient but is gratitude transient?

August is my birthday month and for the last couple of years I have started treating the whole month as a cause for celebration (it has left me wondering why we don't treat the whole year, every day, as a cause for celebration?). Even more importantly August has also served as a reminder to actively take steps towards moving closer to myself and actively and intentionally engage with acts of self care. These have ranged from food treats (and there were quite a few!) and pampering (massage was on the top of the list), being actively social, spending time with friends and generally engaging with all that is outside, to devoting the equal amount of energy cultivating and nurturing all that is inside. Through the practice of tapas, discipline, turning up for myself and stepping on the mat daily, to explore new practices, and to continue digesting familiar ones, in the process being open to learning something new about myself.

At the risk of this sounding like a cliché, what emerged most strongly through all these practices, of the external and the internal, has been a joy for the experience itself, a deep gratitude for slowing down enough to have moments of "presence" and recognise all that I have. In many ways it is a feeling and an experience difficult to express in words, perhaps it is easier to say what is not - what is not is the feeling that life is passing me by, instead I have found myself being fully emerged and appreciative of the waves that is life, coming and going.

In truth, despite every day starting with such feelings of contentment and fullness, some days, somewhere between those seemingly mundane interactions of daily life, being stuck in traffic on the way from work, food shopping and chatting to the neighbour over the fence, I would find myself far away from being present, forgetting to appreciate all that I have, and instead having moved down the hole of self pity, of doubt, of insecurity, of blame and irritability.

Does this sound familiar? It's not a place I want to be, I am sure, it is not a place anyone wants to be, and yet there I am! Sometimes even after I have realised that is the space I am occupying, I am ashamed to admit, I find myself reluctant to let it go, to move away from that suffering and allow myself to remember that in essence I still have everything I need, to allow myself to feel lighter and happy even. What is encouraging is that those moments, are mostly moments these days, and the reluctance very short lived.

I am not alone in this continuous rising and falling - in fact many great teachers have spoken extensively about it, written books about it, and have given numerous indications and suggestions how to, at least recognise, that this is happening and perhaps start to change it. It has often been spoken as part of the strong identity of the Ego. Of our wrongful identification with form and objects, something more akin to doing than being, with an "investment" in the "I" that it forgets the "being". When this forgetfulness starts to happen, Patanjali tells us, the illusion of separateness starts to emerge which in itself is the foundation for all our suffering.

Eckhart Tolle suggests that feeling the inner body as a way of not identifying with it is a good starting point. And the key here is to feel the body as opposed to have thoughts about it. The physical body feels like a good starting point to me. It's the part of us that perhaps we can more easily identify with. For most of us there is a certainty that "this is my body" and "this is my hand", my waist, my cheek. I read somewhere once that the physical body serves as a map with the sign "You Are Here" - that resonates.

Daily, therefore, I have consciously and intentionally revisited this body to find out where "here" is before I can proceed with the rest of the day. It has been invaluable.

Invaluable mostly because these learnings, most of them I realise, have been re-learnings, in that (I have to laugh with myself) I seem to have arrived at the same conclusions and bright meaningful insights many times before; only to forget them again and find my way back to them as if new and fresh! I guess in some ways they are new because "here" has moved and the understanding has gained a different perspective.

Part of these new-old learnings has been the understanding that engaging with new practices can provide a space for new insights to emerge, whereby we experience ourselves outside of potential expectations and as such have allowed ourselves the space to feel, experience and be - usually this brings gratitude.

There is value in consistency too, in coming back to the same practice, one for the discipline it requires and coming to know ourselves as able to exercise the willpower it requires, but also for the ability to see how we change day to day, moment to moment, the same practice, feeling and manifesting differently to how it did yesterday, because our "here" has moved and we hold a different map.

The practice therefore continues as we slowly, continuously, learn about ourselves, we explore, we experience and we remember to be grateful through being.

Svadhayaya, self study and the different aspects a yoga practice comes to manifest will be part of this new term's weekly classes indoors and outdoors, if you would like to explore these more.

For more in-depth exploration of ourselves come and join our "Finding Wellness" day retreats, first one, 6th of November 2022