Gratitude. It's a simple statement, but has many meanings for everyone who reads it. I find gratitude is something that I'm practicing more and more as my years progress.
Gratitude can be expressed in so many ways.
Enjoying laughter is very quickly becoming my favorite gratitude because it reminds me of childhood, finding something so funny that a tear falls from your eye, that tightening of the tummy, and that shared experience with another person, just can't be held back, making me feel young again. So I try to laugh often!
I have even laughed at my yoga practice. Laughed at trying to relax my mind, trying a balancing pose and falling, and gathering the strength to plank for a minute, but finding myself is the best form of the expression of gratitude. It's a practice of gratitude and of yoga on a daily basis that I find the most peace, love and understanding for myself and others.
Gratitude seems to become expressed most often during the latter half of the year. Many of us take our holiday time to being to think of all the wonderful blessings we have in our lives. Family and friends often appear on the top of the list. Material items make appearances too. But if someone were to ask you, "what are you grateful for?," how would you answer? It sure isn't always the easiest and or the quickest response that wins. How much thought we put into it IS what counts. Have you made your list this year?
We all make lists at this time of the year (or at least the type A's do), for shopping, preparing for company, and other things. Why not enrich our lives with one that can bring peace, love, understanding, and gratitude into our lives! Create your gratitude list, explore who is in your life, where you live, what you have, what makes you special, what practices are in place, what qualities do you like/look for in others, what gives you entertainment and the other millions of reasons to find your joy in life. Start with one thing and soon you will find hundreds of them maybe even millions!
Gratitude can be expressed in so many ways.
Enjoying laughter is very quickly becoming my favorite gratitude because it reminds me of childhood, finding something so funny that a tear falls from your eye, that tightening of the tummy, and that shared experience with another person, just can't be held back, making me feel young again. So I try to laugh often!
I have even laughed at my yoga practice. Laughed at trying to relax my mind, trying a balancing pose and falling, and gathering the strength to plank for a minute, but finding myself is the best form of the expression of gratitude. It's a practice of gratitude and of yoga on a daily basis that I find the most peace, love and understanding for myself and others.
Gratitude seems to become expressed most often during the latter half of the year. Many of us take our holiday time to being to think of all the wonderful blessings we have in our lives. Family and friends often appear on the top of the list. Material items make appearances too. But if someone were to ask you, "what are you grateful for?," how would you answer? It sure isn't always the easiest and or the quickest response that wins. How much thought we put into it IS what counts. Have you made your list this year?
We all make lists at this time of the year (or at least the type A's do), for shopping, preparing for company, and other things. Why not enrich our lives with one that can bring peace, love, understanding, and gratitude into our lives! Create your gratitude list, explore who is in your life, where you live, what you have, what makes you special, what practices are in place, what qualities do you like/look for in others, what gives you entertainment and the other millions of reasons to find your joy in life. Start with one thing and soon you will find hundreds of them maybe even millions!
Remembering to make one note of gratitude a day, gently placed in a jar, gives you 365 gratitudes to read once a year.
By the years' end you'll discover being positive isn't so hard after all!
By the years' end you'll discover being positive isn't so hard after all!
Because each list is personal and this season is the perfect time for traditions, why not try to ask each of your holiday guests to come to the table with one thing that they are grateful for this year.
I find gratitude in you for sharing a few minutes of your day with my written words of love, light and peace! Namaste!
I find gratitude in you for sharing a few minutes of your day with my written words of love, light and peace! Namaste!
Dawn Kowalczik is a proud Wyandotte resident, a mother of three amazing young adults, and a wife of twenty four years. Her passion for yoga began in 2009 with a regular yoga and meditation practice that changed her and her oldest teenager’s life forever. In 2011 she proudly graduated from the Yoga Alliance certified 200-Hr Teacher Training program at Yoga 4 Peace and continues to study yoga with various teachers in the area. With deep gratitude and a peaceful approach, her gentle and therapeutic classes aim to provide students with a way to explore yoga’s harmonizing practice that will help to rebalance the body and mind, leaving the student in a rejuvenated serene state. She is currently teaching at the Yoga and Wellness Collective in Dearborn, Yoga 4 Peace in Southgate and offering assorted private in-home lessons.