Resourcing: A Path to Embodied Gratitude
We’ve all heard the news. Having an “attitude of gratitude”, or having a “gratitude practice” or just generally feeling grateful as a way to have a better, higher quality and fuller life. It feels a bit silly to say but I have struggled for years with the idea of gratitude. Perhaps not so much the idea of it but the actual feeling of it.
I know that I should have some. I mean, my life is pretty awesome after all. I have lots of things to be grateful for and thankful about. And yes, I’ve heard and read much of the advice about starting or deepening a gratitude practice - often involving something like journaling at the end of the day. In fact, I just googled “how to have a gratitude practice” and below is the first thing to pop up. All of these share a common theme. Can you guess what it is? (Hint…it's all the “doing”).
Say what you're grateful for out loud. ...
Write down what you're grateful for. ...
Share your gratitude with others. ...
Meditate on gratitude. ...
Plan to be grateful in advance. ...
Challenge yourself to be grateful in difficult circumstances. ...
Get inspired by others' gratitude.
I’ve tried… really. But I found myself bleary-eyed at the end of the day fishing about for something, anything to be grateful for. My lists ran from the mundane to the repetitive to the truly trite. “I’m grateful for my health”, I mutter under my breath as I write in my special gratitude journal that I have purchased for the express purpose of cultivating a gratitude practice. “I’m really grateful for my cats and my mom and my Sweetie and the fact that I have a safe and comfortable place to sleep at night”. I put some smiley faces and hearts next to this line for good measure - willing the hand drawn emojis to bring me a felt sense of…something. But all I feel is tired and a little bitter about this new chore I’ve set for myself.
I had a practice for a while when walking to work in the morning of just thanking everything around me.
“Thanks sunshine!”
“Thanks birds!”
“Thanks jerkface who left dog poop on the sidewalk! You are supporting my practice of forgiveness!”
“Thanks-cool-looking-flower-I-wonder-what-you-are-and-if-my-plant-app-might-actually-work-this-time?”
To be honest, this was a lovely habit but for some reason I was not able to sustain it. (I came to find out that I was so, SO close with this one! More on this later.)
This brings me to Resourcing as a practical way to experience, feel and wallow in the sensation of gratitude. The felt experience of appreciation. Resourcing is borrowed from the world of Organic Intelligence® and the wacky idea that our entire experience of the world arises from our biology (it’s true!). In this model, we cultivate our experiences of pleasure and satisfaction (which are fundamentally nourishing for our animal selves) as a way of broadening our capacity for enjoyment - which guess what? Leads to a felt sense of gratitude!
From Organic Intelligence®:
Orientation: Often our biology is not responding as if it’s in the here and now. It’s responding as if it’s somewhere threatening resulting in stress on our systems. This is unnecessary if we’re in a safe enough and comfortable enough environment. The way our biology knows it’s present in the here and now is through a connection to the environment through the senses.
Orienting to pleasure: The Organic Intelligence model suggests that focusing too much on trauma can be retraumatizing, and instead encourages orienting to positive experiences and stimuli. This can help build a sense of safety and resilience.
I’ve been talking for a number of years about this in my bodywork practice without having a name for it - talking with clients about how we tend to focus on our discomfort and pain and rarely take note of the times when we feel good let alone pay attention to the goodness when we do. Oftentimes we only take note of our bodies when they hurt (either physically or emotionally), otherwise they slide out of our day to day awareness.
What might it mean to “wallow” in the pleasure of waking up and feeling good in our bodies and our minds rather than simply leaping out of bed to start the day, mentally collecting items for our to-do lists and with them the growing sense of anxiety that we won't have enough time to complete them? What might it be like to experience - and attend to the experience of - what feels good in any given moment with the same fervor that we attend to distressing experiences?
This is what I suspect I have been missing in the messaging around gratitude (see list above). That the path to gratitude involves some sort of “doing” rather than a natural result of attending to or being with our immediate felt reality. When we count our blessings do we actually experience the gift or are we simply ticking off the gratitude box at the end of the day? Is my gratitude practiced as a set of external behaviors rather than experienced as an innate upwelling of thankfulness and appreciation? The first, in my experience, does not necessarily produce the latter. I suspect that for many, the fake-it-till-you-make it is a solid strategy, so please don’t think I’m disparaging this approach. Manifest away! I only meant to say that it has not worked well for me. Though I think it points in the right direction, I’ve come to understand that this is a top down, cognitive (thinky-brain) path to what is fundamentally an embodied, felt experience. The top-down approach is backward.
What if we begin at the bottom? What if we begin the exploration with and in our biology? What if we begin with the felt experiences of our animal selves? What if we begin our gratitude practices in the place where all experience happens? Our bodies
As I write this, I’m traveling. I’ve been away from home for close to three weeks now. I’ve experienced the peculiar mix of dissonance and disorientation that I’ve found can come with long travel. Jet lag and wonderful new foods. Digestive strife and the delight of hearing new languages and accents. Poor sleep and beautiful vistas. Monotonous hours in a car burning fossil fuels to reach a crowded yet stunning tourist destination that is in imminent danger of disappearing due to the same crowds and type of transport we’ve all employed to get there. A sense of obligation to go and “do” (since I’ve come all this way) giving way to a bit of resentment as I start to climb when I’d rather be napping (hello jetlag!), shifting into the deep enjoyment of movement and discovery once the hike is underway. In all of this, looking at the entirety of the experience, I struggle to say in all truth that I am grateful per se. What I’m experiencing - in its fullness - is too big, too much to fit into one word. Yet, I know intellectually what a privilege all this is. I understand that I am one of a scant number of the world’s population for whom this is possible yet I struggle with the reality of how the few (myself among them) have emperilled this very beauty that I am now surrounded by. I “should” feel grateful (“everyone” says so!) but what I feel is murky and mixed when I think about the whole of the experience.
This brings me back to resourcing as an avenue to gratitude. Because, I’m ALSO currently experiencing the satisfying feeling of laptop keys clicking as I sit in a small sunny apartment that is not mine (no home chores! Whoo hoo!). The tiny haptic feedback of the keys offers a gratifying give at the end of each keystroke. I’m aware of the blanket on my lap and the warmth and comfort it offers. My eyes are receiving a quality of light that is different from what I’m used to and the sounds of blustering wind and gulls outside the window brings home the experience of warmth and shelter more strongly. I’m looking forward to going to a family get-together shortly and seeing folks that I’ve not seen for a few years and I’m sensing a warmth in my chest and a gentle hum of excitement for the coming gathering in my belly. I’m also a bit hungry and there are sure to be some delicious treats. These are the physical sensations that, if I note them, are accompanied by a sense of anticipation, pleasure and enjoyment. This is resourcing if I pay attention and wallow a bit rather than letting something more exciting (like anxiety) move in. Noting in the moment what is going particularly well or what is feeling particularly good or useful is sending signals to my animal self that all is well. And for that I feel the warmth of appreciation and gratitude.
This is a bit different from the cognitive approach (top down) that I have been attempting for so long which might look something like a journal entry at the end of the day or a passing conversation describing how lucky I am to be traveling, and how grateful I am to be seeing family and friends and beautiful new places. This “story” of gratitude may or may not actually match my inner experience at that moment and the telling of it may not bring about that particular state of being. If I persist with this story, wishing to induce a sensation that I’m not actually experiencing, it results in a shift away from my wholeness and I may note the sour, unsettled feeling of inauthenticity. I find that in an attempt to dictate or bring about gratitude by “practicing it” I’ve taken a step away from myself, negating my body’s perceptions of what is happening which are richer and more complex than I have words for.
Resourcing is a way of taking note of what is currently nourishing and supportive by way of our felt senses. Orienting ourselves to the immediacy of the world around us. By feeling, hearing and tasting the here and now, by noting how our bodies move within it and through it we can find our center. From here, I can find appreciation for what is. Then I might say it out loud or write it down; and when I do, it will be true. But I’m finding that the first step is always my embodied experience
If for whatever reason, I am unable to tune into something nourishing in the moment (perhaps I’m in a space that is too loud and too hot), I am in a position to take action based on that awareness (Hey! I can leave and go outside!) and that, it turns out, is often something nourishing and gratitude inducing.
As I write these words, I realize that this basically sounds like mindfulness and perhaps it is. However, my sense has been that, like gratitude, mindfulness (at least as I have tried to connect to and practice it over the years) has been a more a cognitive endeavor rather than a body-based practice. Meditation instructions often tell us to “count our breaths”, “to let thoughts go” or “to bring our attention back to the present moment”. How are moments measured? How do we know when we're in one?
I’ve just looked up the synonyms for mindfulness and am going to choose another similar word. Alertness. If I can find my way into and stay alert to my body's felt experience of the present happenings (thoughts and emotions count), I might note many things. Attending to what is uncomfortable or distracting (my back hurts, my eyes are itchy, I’m feeling jittery and distracted, etc.) becomes a meditation unto itself. I can also choose to open up perception and be alert to the multitude of other information available, coming to me through my senses (sound, touch, smell, etc). From here I might be alert to what feels nourishing and useful and good in all those same moments. I might begin with how the surface I’m sitting upon is supporting me and how little I have to do to be supported. I might tune into the sensation of air or clothing on my skin and take note of the texture or temperature. I might attend to the taste in my mouth or the smells in the air that simply arrive without me having to go get them. All of this information is allowing a settling within. Not negating the pain in my back or my bout of allergies but adding context and texture to the experience which is fundamentally one of safety and sustenance. I become “bodyfull” rather than mindful. I may refine my capacity for perception of the ways in which I am being nourished and resourced in the moment and I find this is often accompanied by appreciation aka gratitude.
Looking back on my practice of thanking the world as I walked to work, I realize now that I had it a bit backwards. I was thanking the sunshine and the birds in an attempt to “practice” gratitude. What I know now is that I need to feel the warmth of the sun on my face and the tickle of birdsong as it enters my ears of its own accord. By attending to what my body is experiencing and the ways that my animal self is being supported in the moment (sunshine, movement and air!) gratitude and appreciation simply arise. Nothing to “do” really. Just have a body and choose to be in it for a moment or two to see what feels good.
Poetry by Fara Tucker / Instagram - @faratucker
Today I Found Myself
worshiping the washing.
The dryer sang its signature ditty
as it delivered me
my cozy clothes and I swooned.
Today I bowed to the boring,
was moved by the mundane,
and danced
to the dullest of details.
Today I kneeled
to the nonsense,
adored the ordinary,
and made ceremony
of the so what.
Today I prayed
to the preciousness
of all the tedious tasks
I am still alive enough
to dread. Not every day.
Not most days.
But today.
~fbt