Enhance your health with a dose of gratitude

You live in a culture today that’s becoming increasingly out of balance.

Everyday you’re faced with more to do and what seems like less time to do it in. Many of you struggle to balance time, family, money and work, all while trying to maintain your own needs, health and wellness.

Stress attacks from every direction, ranging from constant anxiety about money, career and relationships. Because you have no time to prepare a healthy meal, you expose your body to toxic products through what you eat and drink. Eventually, your stressful life leads to physical, mental and emotional imbalances as you try to compensate for changes in the world you live in.

Stress can make you ill, especially if you can’t cope with it. It’s linked to several leading causes of death, including heart disease and cancer, and is responsible for up to 90% of all visits to the doctor.

Fortunately, stress is not so much a result of what’s going on in your life as it is about how you perceive those events. And you have some control over how you perceive the world around you. You can help restore balance to your body through chiropractic adjustments, acupuncture, nutritional supplements, herbs and homeopathic remedies. Exercise and mindfulness are also effective ways to return balance to the body, thus restoring your physical, mental and emotional health.

But one of the most powerful ways to restore balance to your body is through the constant practice of gratitude. Try to see everything in your life as a blessing, and learn to be grateful not only for the wonderful things in your life, but also the most challenging. You can then begin to dissolve the “charge” associated with a stressful situation. Changing worry to gratitude dramatically affects the way your body responds to stress.

Robert Emmons, Ph.D., professor at the University of California, who has been studying gratitude for almost ten years, is considered by many to be the world’s leading authority on gratitude. He has written the first major scientific study on gratitude, its causes and potential impact on human health. In his book, Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, Dr. Emmons has concluded that “grateful people experience higher levels of positive emotions such as joy, enthusiasm, love, happiness, and optimism….”

Other benefits of practicing gratitude include an increased ability to cope with stress, a stronger immune function leading to quicker recovery from illness and an increased feeling of connectedness, which helps to improve your relationships.

Love and gratitude are two of the most powerful healing forces. By looking for the blessings in every person and event in your life, you will begin to dissolve feelings of fear and guilt, bringing more ease and well-being to your body and mind.

Try spending a few moments a day practicing gratitude and see how your life can be transformed.

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