Opening to Gratitude
by Kerri Hanlon
Remember when you were little and you knew it was Thanksgiving because your art project that week was making a hand turkey? You took your crayon and traced your little hand, going around each and every finger. Then you gave him legs and a beak and a little “gobbler”. Next you carefully selected a color from your Crayola Box of 64 to shade in each finger/feather. And just when you thought you were done, your Art Teacher said “Now think of something you’re grateful for and write it under your turkey.” Some kids immediately started writing “I’m thankful for my family.” Those who loved their art teacher wrote, “I’m thankful for art.” There was always the kid who wrote, “I’m thankful I’m not a turkey.”
As you moved from preschool and elementary school to adolescence, you may have been challenged to build on this premise of gratitude. Maybe yours was a family where as you sat at the Thanksgiving table, and just as you were about to dig in, your Mom said, “Before we eat, let’s go around the table and everyone say something they’re grateful for.” Maybe you were a little annoyed because you didn’t have lunch that day because you were told to wait until the feast and now you had to listen to your Uncles say they’re thankful for football and your Aunts sniffle and say how beautiful everything is and we should really do this every week. And by the time it the gratitude moment got around to you, you completely forgot what you were going to say because all you could think of is how your mashed potatoes were getting cold.
Then Adulthood hits and you’re challenged even more to give gratitude. From the 30-Day Gratitude Challenge on Facebook, to Oprah’s Gratitude Journal to a well-intentioned friend recommending the bestseller “An Attitude of Gratitude”. The cry for giving thanks comes at us from every direction. And sometimes, the louder the cries, the more we tune out.
Guess what? It’s time to tune back in.
Confession time, I am a huge gratitude junkie. November is by far my favorite month and Thanksgiving my favorite holiday. (What’s not to love? A day dedicated to food, family, football AND giving thanks? Come on!) At the start of the month I hang a big sheet of paper on my kitchen door and write at the top “I’m thankful for…”. Our kids and everyone who comes to our home is offered a crayon so they can contribute. By the end of the month, we have an amazing tapestry of gratitude – some turkey hands, some paw prints (pets can give gratitude too), and the most eclectic mix of sentiments.
So what does this have to do with yoga? To me, it’s everything.
One of the joys of owning a yoga studio is being able to asking people who come in, “What brought you to yoga?” and hearing the amazingly unique, but often similarly themed stories. So many of us turned to yoga at a time when we were searching for something. Whether it was at a time of emotional challenge and we needed a space of refuge, a time when our bodies craved something more, or our spirit was simply falling flat. We came to our mats to see if by looking inward, we could heal.
Yoga teachers often encourage students to see what learning they have from their mat that they can apply to their lives outside the studio. Perhaps it is in a challenging pose or in a balance series that teachers can see the frustration on student’s faces. This is the where there’s opportunity for growth, and when we need to tap into our sense of gratitude the most.
We all have yoga poses we love…and we also have yoga poses we don’t love. For me, being in upright pigeon feels tremendous – I love the spaciousness and feeling of opening in this pose. When I’m in this moment, it’s easy for me to give thanks to my physical body for allowing me to experience this pose as well as tick off so many things for which I’m grateful that my turkey hand needs more fingers. But when I have to lower down onto the earth in pigeon, things shift. It’s there that my physical body experiences twinges, my nervous system lights up and if asked what I’m grateful for my response would likely be, “I’m grateful I can come out of this pose soon.”
This is where our yoga helps us the most. We’re reminded to come back to our breath, to allow ourselves to experience what we’re experiencing in each and every moment without labeling or judging it. To be present.
We take this learning off our mat. It’s easy to cultivate gratitude when things are going our way. But cultivating gratitude when we’re challenged isn’t always easy, but it’s often the most meaningful.
In this season of giving thanks, I hope you’ll take a moment to reflect on the many gifts life has offered you. I hope you’ll find a sense of peace and gratitude in things large and small. And I really hope you’ll break out your crayons and make some turkey hands.
Kerri Hanlon is co-founder of Yoga Home, a Yoga Studio and Café in Conshohocken.
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