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Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Happiness Is A Drug



"Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared." Buddha
That's the quote that opened my yoga practice tonight and I thought to myself, "Wow, sometimes, something is all around you and you never even notice it. Then someone points it out and you can't stop tripping over it."
If you've read my blog lately, you know that I am on a gratitude kick. For my health, my friends and family, and all the generous businesses and donors who have contributed to the fund raising that I'm doing on behalf of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. So thankfulness, gratitude, happiness - these things buzz around me like fruit flies.
Yesterday, I was having coffee with a friend and she was telling me about the connection between yoga and Thanksgiving. I hadn't really made that link before but it tweaked my interest and so I did a little research.
I found a beautiful and smart piece all about this subject, originally posted in 2007 on Divine Caroline by Molly Mann. It's called Yoga: A Practice of Thanksgiving and you can find it by clicking here. In it, Molly says, "By practicing gratitude, in essence, we are create more reasons to be grateful."
Melody Beattie, the author of Codependent No More, and a bunch of other things, puts it this way: "Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."
What's kind of scary is that gratitude begets gratitude. The more you are thankful for, the more you will have to be thankful for...or the more you will RECOGNIZE that you already had to be thankful for. It isn't necessarily about having more or loving more or doing more or being more. It might even be about letting go of more. When the things that you have and that you are become enough or even more than enough, you have found your sweet spot -- and that can be an odd and unfamiliar place!
This must be where the yoga breathing comes in...


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