Gratitude can be a powerful healer. It is an excellent mind-body technique to use to foster natural health and alternative healing.

 
What happens when you tap into the attitude of gratitude?

 
Think about it. When you feel thankful and are thinking grateful thoughts, you relax, sink back, and your muscles release tension. You assume a more open and receptive posture and frame of mind.

 
You stop pushing, pulling or striving. You are more likely to smile, laugh and to actually feel happier. Anger, frustration, and impatience are not very compatible with the emotion of gratitude and so you are less likely to feel those negative, harsh and toxic emotions.

 
Gratitude acts as a natural alternative medicine.

 
A body state of relaxation and openness is more conducive to natural health and healing. The body is more likely to operate from a position of well being and safety. Stress hormones are reduced and stress hormones on a long term basis are so destructive to optimal natural heath. Pleasurable neurotransmitters may be increased. These natural biochemicals contribute to feelings of pleasure, well being and happiness. They also help you sleep better and digest food better. The positive neurotransmitters act similarly to opiates and may reduce pain and discomfort. All in all, anything you can naturally do to encourage positive neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin may help you feel better and actually have better health.
 

So, how do you foster gratitude on a daily basis, especially if you’re having a rough time?

•  It sounds trite, but make a list of 3, 5 or 10 things you can actually feel some gratitude for today. It doesn’t matter how small those things are. In fact, small concrete everyday items are good to feel thankful for because it is easy to replicate them on a daily basis and easy to remember their details.
• It does matter that you can actually feel a sense of thankfulness for the items on your gratitude list.
  Focus on that feeling of thankfulness. Get into the sensory details of it. What does it look, sound, feel or smell like that makes you thankful? Just let yourself rest in that sensory memory of a moment. Don’t rush on to the next thing on the list or reasons why you aren’t thankful.
• Try to experience things that give you a sense of gratitude and joy on a daily basis. I step into my garden and smell the lavender, the roses. Listen to that favorite song. Look at those photos you have stashed away. Taste the ripe fullness of the strawberry.
• Be sure to think of at least one thing about one person that you’re thankful for. Close your eyes and picture them. Tell them thanks. And sometimes, preferably regularly, tell the people in your life you are thankful for them.

 
Do this gratitude practice for 30 days and watch your health- and happiness- increase.

 
What are you grateful for?
How has gratitude impacted your life and health?
How do you tap into gratitude when you are feeling poorly?

Share with us in the comment section.

Get a dose of happiness here.

And thank you, my friend, for reading this article. May you be blessed with your best natural health,
 
Val Lovejoy
Natural Health Consultant and Reiki Master
www.ThriveNaturalHealth.com

These really are anxious times we live in. And if you’re suffering from stress and anxiety, you’re not alone.

 
Anxiety and stress, when left unchecked, can wreak havoc in your life. You feel miserable, anxiety can prevent your progress or even pull you down, and stress disrupts your relationships. Family and friends, your support system, worry about you or struggle to understand and help. Anxiety and stress can lead to or exacerbate medical problems and illnesses.

 
So, how can you cope with stress, worry, fear, dread, sleeplessness, increased blood pressure and rapid heartbeat, panic attacks and other symptoms? When life hands you problems it can be hard to stay optimistic and positive and handle those problems effectively.

Mind-body alternative medicine offers effective strategies and support.

 
Positive psychology and cognitive (thinking) techniques help you achieve and maintain a healthy and more positive outlook on your current life and future. This helps you stay calmer, feel more in control, think of new solutions and options to your problems and act more effectively. You feel better even when things are not so good.
 
Using meditation and visualization also help manage anxiety and reduce stress. Meditation can be easy and enjoyable. It does not require years of study and practice to reap substantial benefits. You do not have to subscribe to spiritual beliefs or particular systems.

 
Here are some ways to manage anxiety and stress with positive and cognitive psychology.

•  Look clearly and objectively at the stresses in your life. The boogeyman is always bigger and more frightening in the dark.
• Make a list and factual description of the problem as it is now. Don’t dip into the past (It was always like this or it was like this when X horrible thing happened it the past, etc.) Don’t assume a bad future. (Because it’s like this now, then this catastrophe will happen or this good thing will never happen, etc.)
• Containerize your stress and problems. Put the list or description you made in a mental box or an actual box and place it in a little used place, mentally or literally. Take it out if you wish when you are working on solving your problems and remember to put it back in the box when you are done. Then, leave it in the box. It will always be there for you when you want it, but you can live the other parts of your life more effectively.

It is more than ok- it is necessary- to live the parts of your life that are not the problem. When we fail to do this, we infect the parts of our lives that give us joy, peace, satisfaction and support with the stress and anxiety.

This containerization of stress may not seem simple to you right now, but it gets easier with practice. And you feel a whole lot better. And you know what? You may just find you see new solutions or options to your problems.

Allow for the possibility of solutions coming to you in steps or in unusual ways.

 
Sometimes our contacts and network can offer some interesting alternatives. Your network can expand, too. A friend of a friend of an acquaintance may come into your circle bearing new possibilities. So, think how you can meet new people in a positive environment, online or in person. Conferences, retreats, workshops and classes can be good way, too.
 

Check out these related articles-

Love as Alternative Medicine

How to Be Happy

Don’t Try to Reduce Stress

May your life open to new possibilities as your enjoyment and natural health increase,
 
Val Lovejoy
Natural Health Consultant
www.ThriveNaturalHealth.com

How to be Happy: The Scientific Secret to Happiness

 
Has happiness often managed to elude you?

 
Scientists are honing in on the secret of how to be happy.

 
According to the famous Harvard happiness professor Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, enduring life happiness is not the soaring ecstasy we feel in moments of great triumph in our lives. Those moments are wonderful, but pass quickly.

 
How can we feel general happiness with our daily lives while acknowledging there are rough spots and painful moments?

Ben-Shahar suggests there are four approaches to life. The first three do not lead to happiness.

• Rat Racer- This person puts their nose to the grindstone for years, even decades, doing things they don’t want to do in order to reach a must-have goal. Trouble is, when the goal is reached, the happiness is often as unsubstantial as cotton candy and gone just as quickly.
• Hedonist- This person may be a partier or a person revolving around physical or temporary pleasures that have no meaning even to them. They don’t think much about tomorrow and have no future goals. Their pleasure is short lived and they may come to feel hollow and empty. They may also have to deal to the negative consequences of these hedonistic pursuits.
• Nihilist- This person does not feel much pleasure or enjoyment in their present life and may not believe they can achieve future goals or that their future will be positive. They have given up on happiness. The Rat Racer and the Hedonist may become Nihilists as they find their approaches do not work. Nihilism can lead to depression and despair.

How do we adopt the Happiness Approach?

 
In the Happiness approach, you engage in as many pleasurable and meaningful activities as realistically possible while you are acting towards goals that have value and meaning to you. Think present pleasure and enjoyment while engaging in meaning and value for the future.

 
Now, there is always tedium and unpleasantness sprinkled in our lives, but you want to maximize the pleasurable. And you may not achieve the ultimate goal, but if your current activities are enjoyable and meaningful, you can be flexible towards needed goal tweaking and goal outcomes.

 
Of course, Dr. Ben-Sharar goes into more detail in his book, aptly called Happier.
 

Which approach is your modus operandi?
 
What ways can you think of to increase pleasurable activities in your life? (Hint- Ben-Shahar suggests you ritualize these activities, such same time, day, place, accoutrements, etc.)
 
What goals do have that are meaningful and of value to you?
 
Please share with us in the comment section.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like-

Don’t Try To Reduce Stress

Much happiness to you today and always,
 
Val Lovejoy
Reiki Master
www.ThriveNaturalHealth.com

Here’s a powerful video for you on attracting prosperity and abundance into your life.

For many years, Esther Hicks has channeled Abraham- a group of beings or expanded self. Her husband is also part of the team, attending to many of the practicalities and business. Abraham-Hicks was talking about the law of attraction before its current popularity.

While I believe we co-create our reality and have some disagreement with some people and simplistic concepts in the pop create-your-own-reality world, I find Abraham-Hicks to offer many interesting and useful ideas and practical action steps.

The Art of Allowing

Abraham-Hicks talks a lot about the art of allowing as a way to create and receive what you want in life. I resonate with that idea. I have never found that pushing, pulling, forcing or trying to make something happen has worked very well for me. Yet, allowing what you want to come to you can be a learning!

The art of allowing strikes me as similar in some ways to the Taoist concept of do without doing and everything gets done.

If you want to have abundance and prosperity in your life, you need to allow it to come to you and to expect it to come.

And, of course, you need to know what you want! Abraham-Hicks also talks about being vibrationally or energetically consistent with what you are wanting.

So, you need to consider specifically what abundance and prosperity would look like in your life.

And you need to make those things welcome in your life before they arrive. Think of preparing for a house guest. You have to make clean and roomy space and get all the resources your guest may need. You want to have an open, anticipating and welcoming attitude and feeling.

Certainly, it makes sense that the more you believe, feel, think and act differently from what you want the harder it will be to create it and the more difficult it will be to attract it into your life.

Yet, I would suggest there is room for doubt, questions, discouragement and so forth. How many people do you know who never experience any of that in relation to getting what they want or abundance and prosperity?

Yet, they work through or release those blocking thoughts and feelings. Or, they have an over-arching faith or belief that what they want can happen, they can be prosperous, they can be abundant.

And you can, too.

How do you believe abundance and prosperity can appear in your life? How are you making what you want welcome? How are you preparing for the guests of abundance and prosperity? Leave a comment below and share it with us.

If you liked this article, you might also like:

 Best Way to Use Affirmations

Abundance Prosperity Reiki Affirmation

See How Your Thoughts Affect Things

Enjoy the video.

Many reiki blessings for your natural health,

Val Lovejoy,
Reiki Master
www.thrivenaturalhealth.com

You can increase abundance and prosperity in your life with a reiki affirmation.

  
The affirmation has been infused with actual reiki healing energy to make it especially powerful. Reiki is an effective energy method of natural health.

 
It’s important to simply allow this abundance affirmation to bring prosperity to you. Check yourself for resistance to it and release any of those blocks.

 
On the other hand, don’t try too hard. Don’t grab it. Allow it to come to you like a cat. You don’t have to make this affirmation happen. You can rest in the knowledge that reiki healing energy is bringing it to you.

 
Here’s the affirmation:

 
I am delightfully surprised at the many ways abundance and prosperity come to me now.

 
Repeat it three times, five times per day for 30 days. Write it three times each of those days.

 
Optionally, you can also place a picture with the affirmation words on or beneath it by your desk and/or underneath your bed.

 
How is this working for you? What other affirmations do you use?

 
I and all of us here at the Tribe of Thrive would be delighted to know. Leave a comment below. Thanks.
 

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:
 

Best Way to Use Affirmations
 

Abundance Prosperity Reiki
 

Abundance Prosperity Reiki Blessing

 
Many reiki blessings of abundance, prosperity and natural health to you!

 
Val Lovejoy
Reiki Master
www.thrivenaturalhealth.com

Similar to Masuru Emoto’s famous water and ice message experiments, what we say to our food affects it.

Here’s a short video of a rice experiment where one bottle of rice is labeled ‘thank you’, another ‘you fool’ and a third is ignored.

There’s a little surprise- the experiment may not have ended entirely the way you think it did.

Hmmm, makes you think about what you say to things, hey? Or even what you think, period.

Imagine the implications of these results on health and healing.

Affirmations may be more powerful than we think.

How might the world be different…

Here’s to your natural health!
Thrive!

Val Lovejoy
alternative healing and natural health

www.thrivenaturalhealth.com

p.s.  Eat some nice, fresh organic brown rice

Affirmations can have a life changing effect. Just reminding yourself of a positive statement of intention can make those changes happen.

Sometimes it happens soon, other times much later. Sometimes those changes are obvious, other times subtle or different than you thought they would be!

 Save and paste up your affirmation. Try following it for a week. You don’t need to try hard, in fact, don’t try. Just put the affirmation where you will see it several times a day and allow and intend  it to work.

Make notes in your journal about the effects of the affirmation on your feelings, health and what happens in your daily life. How does it unfold for you?

You might be surprised at the results.

And, affirm your best natural health!

 
Thrive!
Val Lovejoy
alternative healing and natural health

www.thrivenaturalhealth.com

Northern lights flute meditation video for stress

I love the northern lights, the aurora borealis. To me, it is life energy made visible. It reminds me what this world is really made of- conscious energy. Light, with a capital letter. It is miraculous and beautiful. The lights are awe inspiring. Watch them and you can know that everything in the universe –including you- are so much more than we seem.

I also find the Lights to be a very healing energy.

They are mesmerizing and put me into an expanded meditative trance where intuitive knowing can emerge. Here questions can be answered and the true importance of things known. Problems can seem smaller. Stress melts away.

The Native American flute is a healing sound.

It’s clear, expansive sound clears away stress and problems. It focuses you, opens you, cleanses your mind and body. It is sound meditation as well as healing energy. You become ready to receive the Wisdom that rides upon the notes.

So, enjoy this lovely video I found of the northern lights and the Native American flute masterfully played. 

Healing blessings,

Val Lovejoy

Human beings are the only living things that try to be anything else than what they are.

We push ourselves, adding to our stress, and spend endless hours of our precious lives questioning and beating ourselves. If only we could make more money, exercise, eat less, stop smoking, stop procrastinating, do better at this or achieve that. We think if we try harder, we’ll have less stress. It runs contrary to mind-body wisdom for natural health.

And somehow, if we don’t succeed, we believe we have failed. It is our fault we may say, we are not good enough, or perhaps we blame others and become embittered. Our self esteem and self confidence plummet.

The stress ratchets up, not down.

Tell stress to buzz off.

Notice the animals and plants do not add to their stress the way we do.

They seek to meet their needs at any given moment and move on. If you watch the sparrow, it lands and pecks about for seed. After a few pecks, if it finds none, it flies away.

The bee goes to likely flowers at pollinating time. Finding none in a particular flower, it moves on to the next, loading up with the yellow prize. Neither the sparrow nor the bee frets about its worth or makes itself “try harder” in the unlikely spot. They do not blame themselves or anyone else. They simply move on to the next likely spot.

The bee does not “try harder” to make pollen exist somewhere it is not. The bee does not say, “Oh, if I just bumble a little brighter, hum a little longer, I’ll get a pot of pollen at the next flower.” Laughable, isn’t? But humans do that sort of thing all the time.

Buck up, begonia?

The gardener knows each plant will try its best to grow and bloom the biggest and healthiest it can.

When leaves of the begonia wilt, the person does not say to the plant, “Buck up, begonia! Lift those leaves higher, you lazy thing!” She says, “Ah, you must need water. Let me get you some.” The plant is not blamed or exhorted to be a better plant. We recognize the plant will always do its best for the conditions it is in. Change the conditions, change the plant.

Are you a cactus drowning in a bog of stress?

In the wild, the cactus does not grow in a bog nor does the pitcher plant grow in the desert. The fern rarely grows in the middle of the field; the sunflower does not thrive in the deep green forest. Plants thrive where the conditions suit them.

Managing life’s changes

The alders grow and shade out the grass. Cedars and spruce then deprive the alders of their time in the sun. Some summer, the lightning strikes the dry evergreens, fire devours all and the grasses and flowers move in again for awhile. The cycle continues. The grass does not say, “Oh, I failed at my life to keep the alders away.” The spruce never considers it could hold back the lightening. Yet each continues its life as best it can within the conditions at the time. Sometimes that will be a full, luxuriant realization of its potential. Sometimes it will be the twisted, craggy clinging of a 3 foot tall, 100 hundred year old fir at the edge of the mountaintop tree line.

Ease your stress by easing up

How can you encourage the best growth conditions for you? What beauty can you find in who you are right where you are? How about easing up on yourself a bit? It could go a long way in helping you manage stress and find meaning in life.

Reiki blessings to you.