Gratitude to Enhance Well-Being

A Year-Round Gratitude Practice Through Mindfulness by Stephanie Cordel

Mindfulness First has been implementing a school-wide mindfulness program at David Crockett Elementary School in Phoenix, Arizona since August of this year. Our goal is to make it the first entirely mindful school in Arizona. Our instructors regularly visit each classroom and practice mindfulness with the students as well as teach them various concepts that relate to it.

Mindfulness is the practice of actively paying attention to what is happening in the present moment without attaching judgment. A structured way of cultivating this awareness is by taking time each day to sit and focus on your breathing. This seemingly simple act of bringing attention to your breathing helps you to recognize all of the thoughts, feelings, and sensations that serve as distractions from the present experience. It is during this time that we learn how to practice bringing attention back to our original focus by developing better awareness and concentration. We practice this routine with students of all ages to aid in their own cultivation of mindfulness.

Gratitude is one of the important concepts that we incorporate into our curriculum and teach to all of our students as well.You may be wondering how gratitude fits into a mindfulness curriculum. Well, because Mindfulness First seeks to provide mindfulness as a social and emotional learning tool, we pair mindfulness with other concepts that are shown to support positive social and emotional development among children of all ages. In fact, there are numerous scientifically-proven physical, psychological, and emotional benefits to consciously practicing gratitude on a regular basis.

Several studies have researched the impact of gratitude across different domains. One study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies found that men and women who wrote letters of gratitude consistently over the course of 3 weeks showed an increase in happiness and life satisfaction along with a decrease in depressive symptoms. Another study in the Journal of Counseling Psychology highlighted that gratitude helps to strengthen and maintain relationships. In the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers report that practicing gratitude positively impacts a person's well-being and people who practice gratitude are even more likely to exercise regularly.

Another reason we link mindfulness with gratitude is that regularly practicing gratitude is not easy. It's not conventionally emphasized and we often forget to consider the aspects of our lives that give us joy, fulfillment, and meaning. This is especially true when we experience tough times. It can be difficult to consciously practice gratitude when we deal with challenging situations. However, it is during those difficult moments that gratitude can help us the most. That's where mindfulness comes in.
When we are experiencing a difficult moment we can easily lose ourselves and our perspective with the intense emotions and consuming thoughts associated with a painful or challenging experience. This entanglement can give a sense of overwhelm and inability to act. If we can take a moment and focus on our breathing when we are caught up with our thoughts and feelings, we can create a pause during this automatic whirlwind. During this pause, if we gently bring awareness to our internal experience of thoughts and feelings, we can become an observer of what is happening instead of a passive participant. This is done by simply recognizing what is actually happening in the moment instead of ruminating, speculating, or judging.
Once we have created enough of a separation to not become consumed by our internal experience, we can then make a choice to shift our thinking by bringing awareness to a different aspect of life such as the things we are grateful for. This active choice of practicing gratitude is how mindfulness can assist in changing the direction of our thoughts and feelings. It is important to keep in mind that this ability to pause during an overwhelming moment takes time to develop. It requires a consistent mindfulness practice to cultivate a habit of purposeful awareness.

At Mindfulness First we recognize the numerous benefits that have been scientifically studied along with the important link between mindfulness and choosing to practice gratitude. Thus we teach gratitude as a tool for students to utilize and a way to personally benefit from when experiencing, particularly when experiencing difficult moments.

During this holiday season don't limit your recognition of the positive things in your life to just this time of the year. Remember that any moment of any day throughout the year provides an opportunity to practice gratitude, which can benefit you all 365 days.

Grow your own Happiness

Grow your own happiness: how meditation physically changes the brain

By Sarah Knapton

People can boost their happiness by growing a part of the brain which increases positive thinking, scientists believe.

Aristotle said that ‘happiness depends upon ourselves’ and a new study suggests it is possible to physically grow a happier brain through practices like meditation.

Although scientists have known which hormones produce emotions like pleasure or desire, it has been unclear where the feeling of overall contentment and well-being stems from.

To find out, scientists at Kyoto University asked 51 volunteers to rate their own happiness levels and then scanned their brains to see if they could spot any differences between the upbeat individuals and their more glum counterparts.

"This does not surprise me at all. The brain is malleable, just like other organs"

Prof Paul Dolan, London School of Economics

Intriguingly they discovered that an area of the brain called the precuneus was larger in people who were happier. It suggests that happiness can be worked like a muscle.

Previous studies have shown that regular meditation can boost grey matter in the precuneus, which could explain why those who meditate report experiencing feelings of general contentment and even bliss.

The scientists behind the finding said it will now be possible to clinically measure what things make people happier.

"Over history, many eminent scholars like Aristotle have contemplated what happiness is," said author Dr Wataru Sato said. "I'm very happy that we now know more about what it means to be happy.

"Several studies have shown that meditation increases grey matter mass in the precuneus.

“This new insight on where happiness happens in the brain will be useful for developing happiness programs based on scientific research.

“This study suggests it is possible to grow a happier brain.”

Researchers believe that the precuneus is particularly important for subjective happiness, such as where someone chooses to make the best of a situation and see it in a more positive light.

Volunteers who scored higher on the happiness surveys had more grey matter mass in the precuneus.

In other words, people who feel happiness more intensely, feel sadness less intensely, and are more able to find meaning in life have a larger precuneus. The difference in size between the person with the biggest and the smallest was about 15 per cent.

“Happiness is a subjective experience that has special significant for humans,” added Dr Sato,

“Our results suggest that psychological training that effectively increases grey matter and volume in the precuneaus may enhance subjective happiness.”

Happiness expert Prof Paul Dolan at the London School of Economics said it was clear that the brain could be changed.

Speaking about the new research he said: “This does not surprise me at all. The brain is malleable, just like other organs.

“Paying attention can literally change your brain. In London, Black Cab taxi drivers have to pass a very difficult test that requires them to know and be able to navigate 25,000 different city streets.

“Only half of the prospective cabbies who take this test pass it. Those that do pass have larger hippocampi – the part of the brain that corresponds with spatial processing – than those who fail.

“Yet it isn’t that the drivers started out with better spatial processing; instead, as they studied for the test, their hippocampi became larger as they learned more.”

Prof Dolan, who is a government advisor on how to make the population more contented, and author of the book Happiness By Design, claims that many of the things people believe will make them happy are fleeting and can actually alter their lives in a negative way.

“Most things we think will make us happy won’t,” he said “We’re really always happier if we are focussing on the person we are with and the thing we are doing right now. So make that something you enjoy.

“You should listen to music that you like listening to. That has a substantial effect on your mood. Your brain literally lights up. There is no other stimulation like music to arouse the brain.”

The research was published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.