Meditation for Stress: Finding Grace and Gratitude
Life is stressful, and in stressful times it can be difficult to see the good in ourselves and others. It can be difficult to balance all of the emotions we feel and the many “hats” we are required to wear. When stress becomes overwhelming, it can have a negative impact on nearly every aspect of our lives. We can experience fatigue, moodiness, lack of focus, and behavioral changes.
While we can’t always control the stressors in our lives, we can learn to control our responses to stress – both physically and mentally. Meditation for stress is one of the more promising ways to relieve feelings of stress and replace them with more positive emotions and attitudes, such as grace and gratitude.
“Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every moment with love, grace, and gratitude.” ~ Denis Waitley
Importance of Grace
Grace is defined in many ways. It can be defined as beauty or elegance, propriety or generosity. It can also be defined as surrender and searching for our truth. Of course, yoga, meditation, and movement can all be defined as beautiful or elegant, but they are also practices that require surrender.
When we meditate, we are focusing our mind, breath, and movement. This is a practice that helps us learn how to focus on the present moment. It allows us to surrender our negativity, doubts, and distractions, and instead, focus on looking deep within and finding your most authentic self. This encompasses elements of surrender and devotion, as meditation requires patience, discipline, and practice. One must be devoted to their practice in order to master true mindfulness and ultimate meditative peace.
By finding grace, we can also tap into our sense of generosity. Grace is often viewed as a link between us and those around us. A connective thread that binds all of us together through a spirit of generosity and helpfulness. When we extend grace to others, we invite them into our collective. When we extend grace and forgiveness to ourselves, we improve our health and mindset.
By bringing grace into your life, you are opening up possibilities for:
Moments of great joy
A feeling of calm and peacefulness
Seeing things from a new perspective
The joy that comes from feeling appreciated
The ability to handle problems more easily
Previously stressful areas of life become effortless
An increased sense of gratitude for the things and people in your life
A deepened sense of love and respect for yourself and those around you
A life that is full of grace is one that is full of love, forgiveness, and gratitude.
Importance of Gratitude
Gratitude is the act of acknowledging and being thankful for the things, circumstances, and people in your life. We all have experienced moments of gratitude – an unexpected gift or compliment when we’re having a bad day. But how often do we practice gratitude unintentionally and without provocation? How often do we look at our lives and feel truly thankful, for both the good and bad?
Gratitude is a trait that is very undervalued in today’s society. Society is fast-paced and heavily technology-driven. Most of us have very little time to spare, and often, that time is spent attempting to break from the chaos before plunging right back in.
Finding gratitude in your life is one way to improve your overall well-being. As you learn to find and practice gratitude, you will find that it increasingly becomes part of your everyday life. As a result, your life will improve, including your health and mental wellness. Finding gratitude:
Strengthens friendships
Encourages humility
Increases fulfillment
Reduces selfishness
Increases empathy
Improves physical wellbeing
Improves mental wellness
Strengthens self-esteem
By finding gratitude, you are putting yourself on a path to a healthier and happier life.
Meditation for Stress: Finding Grace and Gratitude
Science has proven that regularly practicing meditation is one of the most effective ways to manage your stress and improve overall health and wellness. Several studies support Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) techniques as a means to improve mental wellness and reduce symptoms of stress-related disorders. Meditation for stress relief can:
Lower blood pressure
Improve immune function
Decrease anxiety
Improve digestion
Reduce everyday stress
Improve our ability to ignore stressors
The effects of stress on our physical health are profound. Uncontrolled stress can increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes, and diseases like diabetes.
When we reduce stress, we improve various aspects of our lives. We are able to better focus on areas of our lives that need attention or improvement while banishing the things that no longer serve us. Meditation is also a great way to tap into traits that are often overlooked or undervalued, such as grace and gratitude.
Bringing Grace and Gratitude into Your Life
Everyone’s experience with stress is a little different. While many of us are battling similar stress related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the current political climate, we all respond to stress differently. We also all have independent stressors that are unique to our life circumstances – stressors from our family, jobs, finances, health, and the symptoms of stress that manifest in our daily lives.
By practicing meditation for stress, we all can learn valuable lessons in letting go of the things we cannot control. We can also learn how to harness traits that will improve our health and wellness, such as grace and gratitude. By bringing these traits into our lives, we can help facilitate healing for ourselves and those around us.
If you are interested in learning more about meditation for stress relief, yoga, breathwork therapy, or collective healing, check out the Nalaverse. Our team can help you connect with yourself and a community of instructors and fellow practitioners who all have the same goals – reduce stress, improve health and wellness, live more authentically and make wellness accessible to all. Together, we can bring about healing and facilitate grace and gratitude in our families and communities.
Source:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361002/
