Moving into 2024 truly with heartfelt gratitude

We often hear these days just how much practicing gratitude can make you feel more content and well, grateful!.. But where does this feeling really come from?

What exactly it is we feel gratitude for and at what stages of our lives we feel it is also likely to change with the wisdom and hindsight of accumulating years, along with how we’ve lived them.. As the old rolling stones song goes-”You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might just find, you get what you need”..

Not one to be always fatalistic, I don’t believe that our path in life is completely mapped out for us from start to finish. I do however believe that we are presented with a ‘few forks in the road’ and it is our choice about whether we take left, right or straight ahead at various different junctures in our lives.

Some choices we make may not always lead us where we expected they might, I do though think they lead us to where we’re meant to be headed. Even if at the time we can’t always see where that is going to be!

Presently I feel full of gratitude for many things, especially our recent trip to the beautiful tropical island of Mauritius, Africa. Almost every morning I borrowed a paddle board very kindly offered by our Airbnb hosts and off I floated across a little section of Indian Ocean that lay at the foot of their garden to practice my beloved SupYoga, then simply sat in meditative stillness observing the surrounding water as it dawned on me how little time I had given to such wonderful things upon feeling the huge sense of calm that came especially in the pause between my inhale and exhale. Sunsets like molten lava turned into mesmerising evening meditations, and I experienced some transformative somatic/shiatsu practices with our wonderful hosts where I learned anew how magical the oceanic environment can be for influencing much of our movement, breath and being as a whole if we really listen and allow it to.

While experiencing a tropical rainforest downpour we saw one of the largest giant tortoises I had ever seen, not however indigenous to the island. The story goes that they were introduced by Charles Darwin in the 1800s after the Islands original tortoises had been hunted to extinction, just like the famous Dodo who also originated there was, and we’ll all likely have heard the saying ‘dead as a Dodo’ .. Sadly many other places all over the world have similar historical tales about creatures that once roamed the earth, but due to their extinction sound now almost mythical.

For our own species we will hopefully begin to implement more conservation programs globally that encourage regeneration so that our symbiotic relationship with nature will become paramount for future generations. By practicing truly heartfelt gratitude for mother nature and all her wonders, observing things like the vast diversity of life on, above, under the ocean and how earths water ways can influence our lives, from the fruits she bears to the shear power enforced with shifting tides under the influence of new through to full moons I often feel awestruck. Of course there are moments turbulent times globally can leave us feeling frustrated by governments and overwhelmed about how we can individually play our parts to help, but what we do have agency over are our thoughts and subsequent actions as one informs the other. So if we feel grateful for something we tend in turn to cherish and care for it.

I am moving into 2024 so thankful for being able to travel, especially trips that have allowed me to become immersed in bodies of water which have turned in to precious aqueous like gifts that float around my dreams and conscious memory, forever teaching me how important our oceans and all who live there are. On many public beaches in Mauritius I saw government posters with a giant turtle swimming towards plastic bags floating in the ocean that are aiming to highlight the impact that non compostable waste especially plastic is having on sea life, but ultimately making changes whatever and wherever in the world they may be lie with us all individually in our day to day actions.

*drinking water, immersing in it, appreciating it’s beauty, and striving to mimic its qualities leads to a full expression of the vitality of life. To cultivate the fluidity of life, you can explore your relationship to water in terms of how much of it you drink, how you use it in other therapeutic ways, how you emulate it in movement, how you apply its qualities to all aspects of your life. *from Engaging the Movement of life by Bonnie Gintis

**with huge thanks to "@thetechnologyoftenderness and @fabriziodallepiane for being such inspirations