I wonder if I am grateful for Thanksgiving turkey. I know that I am grateful for my brother’s stuffing, but the turkey? Actually I know that I am grateful for that too, but I struggle with the amount I eat, the feeling of over-the-top fullness that feels like inevitability. The truth is I know that this is not the turkey’s fault. How did gratitude and turkey get associated with gluttony anyway?
We all know that we should feel grateful. Most of us have wonderful lives. Although it is easy to lose the forest for the trees, if we have food, heat, shelter, and love, then there are ample reasons for gratitude. I know I am grateful for my life. If you have read my book Waking, you know that my life has been anything but easy. And yet, I feel grateful, not just in my head, not just as an act of judgment, but as something that emanates through me. This does not happen in every moment of every day, but when it does, I do not soon forget. Lately, I have been wondering how this is possible. How gratitude can emanate directly through us.
Since we were little, we have been asked the question what are we “grateful for.” This makes gratitude a reaction to particular facts, conditions, or things in our lives. For example, I am grateful for my son Paul or my brother’s exploits in the kitchen.
For a while now, however, I have been in the middle of a different exploration. Rather than identifying the reasons for gratitude, I have been focusing on the sensation itself. Authentic gratitude is a mind-body sensation, a feeling of lightness, a sensation that wells up inside and makes us feel more connected, less alone. Sometimes it brings a smile to the face, sometimes a tear to the eye, but always a feeling of transcendent company. My point is that the sensation of gratitude feels bigger than the thing or situation for which we are grateful.
I have been practicing yoga for over 23 years. My fundamental interest is not what poses I can or cannot do. I practice yoga for what it reveals about the human metaphysic, for what it reveals about our connection to the Universe around us.
I am also a yoga teacher who has been sharing yoga with everyone, including people living with all kinds of trauma, loss, and disability. One of my core messages is that something, some part of us, precedes the particular circumstances of each of our lives. I do not mean this an idea or abstraction or something ethereal. I mean it as a literal, tangible but subtle sensation. In my yoga practice, I have experienced that the core of our existence, the core connection between the Universe and us, manifests as a hum. IT hums; we hum; there is a shared unity. It turns out that this unity can be more or less revealed, depending on our bodily alignment, our precision in movement, and our breathing. Most of all, this unity depends upon our comfort level with a profound sense of emptiness.
This is also true when we center in the beginning of a yoga class. Something precedes. It hums and courses through us. When I sit and become more aware of my base – that is, the parts of my body in contact with the floor and the parts of my body that are touching – when I gently lift my chest and soften my lips like I am about to smile, I realize that the humming and the gratitude are the same sensation. They are unified.
That is truly something to be grateful for.