Gratitude is one of those words that comes up in yoga. Depending on how you're feeling towards the spiritual / emotional side of things, gratitude could be what the teacher is talking about while you're holding an awkward pose or it could be a meditation you seek to live by. Sometimes when I'm feeling a little cynical, I think to myself, "gratitude pose--I'm grateful I can even get into it today." (See photo on right from yogajournal.com.)
When I'm teaching parsvottanasana (gratitude pose), I like to remind the class to be grateful for something external but also something inward-facing. For some reason, self gratitude is often perceived as a lack of humility, as a negative. It can be challenging to retrain ourselves to think, "well gosh, thank you for looking out for me today." Despite all of our external responsibilities, our first priority should always be providing for ourselves (or we can't be as useful to the external world)!
It's a beautiful idea, all this gratitude. But it's easy to forget to be grateful for yourself and others that really are always there should you need them. Right now, I'm incredibly thankful for all my friends.
This post is an incredibly round about way of saying thank you.
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