Opening Your Heart in Gratitude

Opening your heart in gratitude releases a continuous stream of love energy that supports spiritual clarity, and creativity; strengthens the immune system, eliminates energy blocks, and diminishes fear, stress, and negativity.  It brings us into emotional balance so we feel less irritated when someone cuts in front of us in traffic, or when our partner makes an insensitive remark. It also helps us better observe our reactions, stop negative self-talk, cease judging others, and access our inner guidance to make more enlightened choices. Most importantly, our overall quality of life improves because we wake up each day with positive energy, inspiration, and a sense of gratitude for the many blessings in our lives.

When you open to the flow of this energy emanating from your heart, you will feel a distinct coherence as your brain and nervous system align vibrationally with your heart rhythms. You may sense a tingling or warming sensation, a buzzing, goose bumps, or a subtle vibration in parts of your body; or, you may feel like a sunburst, with waves of warm energy radiating from the center of your chest outward into the world. In such a state of openheartedness, you will feel relaxed and grateful toward everyone and everything around you, and enjoy a sense of peace, harmony, and universal love. The resulting emotional and spiritual balance not only frees you from being affected by the negative energies and choices of others, but also empowers you to feel secure and abundant in where you are in your own life, right now, without the need for comparison or judgment.

Opening the heart in gratitude can not only calm an anxiety-ridden brain, but can also flood the body with a healing vibration that releases internal energy blocks. Like an electrical circuit breaker that has been tripped, our natural healing ability may have shut down due to stress, fatigue, challenging life circumstances, or negative emotions. This shutdown leads to discordance in the heart’s rhythms and stress in the nervous system. When we open our hearts and focus on love as a healing vibration, we can alleviate many of these detrimental effects. Most of all, when we open our hearts in gratitude, fear, anger, and negativity cannot co-exist with this high vibrational energy.

The strongest electromagnetic field of energy in the human body emanates from the heart. When we operate as a source of gratitude, we generate a high frequency energy that brings body, mind, and spirit into harmonic resonance. When we tap into this energy, we rise above being a victim of our circumstances and become the creator of our reality. Listening to the guidance of our hearts, we tune in to this energy living in alignment with our soul’s journey.

Here are a few ways to open your heart in gratitude:

• Close your eyes, place a hand on the center of your chest, and focus your attention on your heart. Radiate love in the form of gratitude to yourself. Acknowledge the blessings of who you are and what you already have. Over the course of the day, keep a journal of things for which you’re grateful. Share three good things that happen each day with a friend or partner, and go out of your way to show gratitude when others assist you. Enhance the practice by repeating the mantra, “I am a blessed being,” or, “I bless myself, my fellow human beings, and the earth.”
• Deep, slow, intentional breathing will draw more oxygen into your body and open you to gratitude. While inhaling, breathe in love to yourself; when exhaling, breathe love out to others. Do this until your breath is rhythmic, and you feel calm and centered. Then, for at least a minute, let your energies expand outward in gratitude for yourself or someone else.
• Affirmations can be helpful in developing a practice of gratitude. This one by the poet e. e. cummings reminds us to affirm ourselves and life in this way: “I thank you God for this most amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky: and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.”
• Begin each day in gratitude with your partner, aware that there are challenges ahead but trusting that you will not be given more than you can handle. Visualize an image of the best your lives have ever been, and set an intention to make them even better no matter what has happened in your past.

Remember, as love ambassadors we can live in a constant stream of gratitude. We can wake up every morning with a sense of appreciation and a healthy anticipation for what the universe has in store for us. Before our feet even touch the floor, we can open our hearts and give thanks for the day in front of us. We can trust that no matter what happens that day, it will be a good day. We won’t complain about the little things because we accept life as it comes, and trust that we are getting exactly what we need to spiritually grow at any given moment. We can speak gratefully throughout the day about even the simplest things.