'Tis the Season For Gratitude

In a world that sells dissatisfaction, it’s almost heretical to feel happy about your body. And on the rare occasion when body satisfaction is socially acceptable, it’s usually in the context of “Hot dang, I look amazing in my wedding dress/tailored business suit/unitard/bathing suit/whatever I just spent a lot of money on in order to make me feel this way for a couple of hours.” For all the sunshiny Facebook messages telling you “You’re beautiful!” there’s not much to make us feel legitimately joyful to be in our own skins.

So where does happiness come from anyway? Psychological studies show that happiness stems not from being the best, most successful, or sexiest but from gratitude. So telling yourself over and over that you’ve got a great body is less likely to leave you feeling happy than feeling grateful for the body you’ve got. 

Still, it’s the season of giving thanks and if there were ever a time be thankful for the bodies we inhabit it’s now. You can give thanks that your body:

• honours your parents simply with its presence and the features it received from them 
• is young and healthy and strong
• has taught you important lessons about pain and the mental and emotional strength you have in bearing it
• has the senses to know beauty, the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings of the world around you
• includes a mind that can think, imagine, and dream
• has built, dug, cooked, sewn, planted, and otherwise influenced the world around it
• has given rise to new life
• has survived the ravages of disease and/or injury
• has seen you through many long years of life
• has touched, held and taught the bodies of others around you
• while it may contain the seeds of the disease that may one day kill it, it will not die today

Massage therapists get to see the wonder of the bodies around us every day. It’s an honour and one I am perpetually grateful for. On Thanksgiving Day, give thanks for food and family and friendship, those standards of the season. Express your gratitude however you do: through writing in your journal, phone calls to your loved ones, a reflective walk in the woods, or prayer. But don’t forget that inimitable body of yours which has accomplished so many things throughout your life. If we all inhabited our bodies with an attitude of gratitude, who knows what might happen? Maybe that whole peace on earth business wouldn’t seem so far away.

See you in the clinic,
Dana