Last week I gave a do-in session to a very smart woman, mother of 2 young children, highly skilled scientific, managing her career, household, children education and an also successful yet busy husband with brio…
She came to me after listening to my talk about stress, she has back pain (she is in her mid 30’s), shoulder stiffness and would love to fix it. She knows she might be a bit stressed, that she does too much but what to remove from the list of all that she likes/has to do ?
In addition of being a very smart woman, she studies philosophy so when I mentioned gratitude, she quickly answered that she knows and loves to do it as soon as she has time… writing pages in her notebook about all the things she is grateful for.
I invited her to close her eyes, and bring the memory of a very precious moment she had with her children lately. Her face softened, her hands got quiet, her eyes stopped moving behind her eyelids … she smiled and deeply exhaled.
No doubt she knows what is gratitude but that morning, she experienced the physical effect of it.
If you are familiar with Yoga, meditation, Tai-Chi or other technics you are also familiar with this notion of gratitude but for the more rational ones (Yes I am one of yours), we often raise an eyebrow when someone tells us to feel gratitude… But it is when East meets West !
Our Brain is a story maker : 80% of the signals comes from the body to the brain, Temperature, sounds, vision, presence…. mostly via our nervous system. The brain summarizes and takes action to react in accordance to these stimulus. The body reaction is influenced by hormones (managed by the brain), small chemical rushing to our organs and each cells of our body via the blood stream.
When we feel happy, as ease, connected to others, Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin and Endorphin are released, easy to retain : DOSE
Dopamine : Motivation, pleasure and brain’s reward system
Oxytocin : Bonding, connectedness
Serotonin : Mood stabilizer, well-being
Endorphin : primary helps one deal with stress, reduces feelings of pain
ok… chemistry… but where is gratitude ???
The Hormones interact with cells, as a key and door system, the more cells will be receive a specific hormone, the more it will generate doors to get more keys…. It is therefore a vertuous circle (if you build on happiness hormones) or viscous circle (if you build on stress hormones).
The brain being a “story maker”, there is no need to actually experience Happiness to generate this DOSE release… simply remembering of a nice memory, or even only truly smiling will send the signal to the brain that DOSE have to be released !
Simply seat, close your eyes for a moment, and allow yourself to smile at a nice memory and … feel
As the hormones travels via the blood stream, it is important to TAKE THE TIME to feel the Gratitude state, you are simply giving the time to a maximum of cells to get their DOSE !
Photo de Senjuti Kundu sur Unsplash