Few feelings are as transformative, expressions as powerful, and acts as healing as those associated with gratitude. In the past, while being of great interest to religious scholars, gratitude wasn’t taken as seriously by the sciences, and research only began to take off in the 1950s. Fortunately, today there exists plenty of scientific evidence supporting the healing power of gratitude.
Since Envol's inception, gratitude has been a core part of our healing mission. Like our other nourishments, it's free and accessible to everyone. You can practice it anywhere at any time, and the more you do the more you’ll feel its profound influence on your body and mind.
We want to help you experience this for yourself, so read on and find out how you can tap into the myriad benefits of gratitude!
The Healing Power of Gratitude:
1. What is gratitude?
Gratitude is an expansive word — its meaning changes depending on use and context. This results in it being difficult to define as it's bound up with other abstract feelings and sensations. But, much like its semantic companion, love, we instantly recognise it when we feel it.
The most obvious example of gratitude is when someone gives you a gift and you feel grateful for it, responding with feelings of warmth, kindness and reciprocal generosity. Using this as a starting point, we can broaden this feeling of thankfulness to include the entire universe and our relationship to it.
Gratitude isn’t limited to the quality of being thankful, but can include a sense of profound wonder and connection. Such is its tremendous power we can completely embody it; surrendering to it and allowing it to work its alchemic magic on our system.
2. Faith, science, and Russell M. Nelson
Russell M. Nelson is the 17th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Born in 1924, he’s witnessed all the trials, tribulations, and technological advancements of the last 90 years. Formerly an internationally renowned surgeon, his commitment to science as well as faith has reinforced his unwavering belief in the healing power of gratitude. As a practice, gratitude has long been encouraged by religions and spiritual traditions around the world.
Now, science is finally ratifying what before was consigned to the realm of faith and mysticism. Nelson, having an acute understanding of both worlds, is helping to spread awareness about the innumerable benefits of giving thanks.
3. What are the benefits of gratitude?
Regularly practicing gratitude can have a hugely positive impact on your health, enhancing wellbeing, improving the quality of your sleep, decreasing stress, and more. Read on to learn about some of the science-backed benefits of this healing emotion!
Improves happiness
Yes, believe it or not, expressing gratitude can actually make you happier. According to a 2003 study by Emmons and McCullough, practicing gratitude can increase happiness levels by approximately 25%. Studies prove that those who practice gratitude feel significantly more joy, optimism and satisfaction with their lives compared to people who entertain negative or neutral thoughts more often. What’s more, rather than a fleeting occurrence, the increased feelings of happiness can persist for many months.
Increases resilience in the face of stress
“Gratitude fosters adaptive coping mechanisms. By managing positive emotions like satisfaction, happiness, and pleasure, gratitude enhances our emotional resilience and builds our inner strength to combat stress.” — Gloria & Steinhardt, 2016.
Gratitude has been proven to mitigate negative states such as stress and depression. Research shows that those who practice it are more resilient in the face of adversity and report significantly lower incidences of depression, anxiety and PTSD.
Improves sleep
Struggling to get a good night's rest? Practicing gratitude has been proven to help people fall asleep faster, remain asleep for longer, and wake feeling more refreshed. A 2009 study that included over 400 adults, forty percent of whom had sleep disorders, found that quality of sleep was greatly improved by gratitude.
Boosts immune function
Given the benefits we've listed, you probably won't be surprised to find that gratitude improves immune function. After all, when taken holistically, less stress, better sleep, and improved wellbeing naturally have a positive impact on your immune system. But there's more.
Robert A. Emmons is a professor professor of psychology and one of the leading experts on the science of gratitude. He points out that:
“The practice of gratitude can have dramatic and lasting effects in a person’s life. It can lower blood pressure (and) improve immune function.”
Research found that dispositional gratitude is associated with a healthier lipid profile (a panel of blood tests used to find abnormalities in lipids like cholesterol and triglycerides). What's more, along with higher levels of good cholesterol (HDL) and lower levels of bad cholesterol (LDL), gratitude can also lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure.
But its healing power doesn't stop there. Practicing gratitude even lowers creatinine levels (an indicator of the kidney’s capacity to filter waste from the bloodstream) as well as levels of C-reactive protein, (a marker of cardiac inflammation and heart disease).
Helps to work through grief
Misfortune is inevitable — we all experience varying degrees of grief throughout our lives. Grief can be crushing, debilitating, and emotionally draining. When you lose something or someone, it's hard to feel anything but an overwhelming sadness and sense of loss. Gratitude can help you navigate grief and allow you to reframe it.
While you're experiencing the acute absence of what you once loved, you can simultaneously be thankful for what this person or experience meant to you. It may not be easy at first, but in time the feelings of gratitude will be inseparable from the grief — they will go hand in hand. Just how gratitude can decrease stress and increase resilience, it can also provide you the much-needed strength to work through grief.
4. How to practice gratitude
Practicing gratitude is easier than you think. Just like we recommend in the Envol App, even allocating just 5-10 minutes a day can work wonders. Below are some tips to keep you started.
Select A Time
The trick is to make gratitude into a habit; to make it a part of your daily routine like brushing your teeth. Select a time each day to practice gratitude, such as immediately upon waking, on your commute to work, or at bedtime.
Having a predetermined, structured time makes you more likely to commit to the practice long-term. Overtime, gratitude will become an effortless habit — something you just instinctively do.
Take 5 minutes
You'll be pleased to know you don’t need to spend hours each day sitting in zen-like contemplation! All it takes is 5 minutes. During this time think of or write down 3-5 things you are grateful for. As you make your list, ruminate on why you are grateful for these things and become enveloped in the positive emotions they elicit.
Go big or go small
Most people think they can only be grateful for the big things like a marriage proposal, house or new job. In actual fact we can learn to cultivate gratitude for the small yet beautiful things that make life worth living — our children’s laughter, a hot cup of tea, or a warm, cosy bed.
Think about the people in your life and relationships you cherish. Grabbing a coffee with a friend, having lunch with your sister, cuddling up with your partner on the couch and watching a movie—it's the accumulation of the small things that enrich our lives. When giving thanks for little moments like these, we can see how much we can take for granted, and how we may have more blessings to count than we realise!
5. Gratitude and heart coherence
"One of the most effective ways to really reduce stress and anxiety, and even feelings of overwhelm, is to learn to access the intelligence of the heart, and shift the rhythms of the hearts. It sends a different neural message to the brain." — Rollin McCraty Ph.D., Director of Research HeartMath Institute
When you practice gratitude you induce a state of something called heart coherence. Scientific studies have revealed that by cultivating — intentionally or unintentionally — emotions of gratitude, compassion, and love the oscillations of our heart rhythm become more consistent or coherent.
In contrast, when we are stressed, our hearts send chaotic and erratic signals to the nervous system, which taxes our physical body, depletes our mood and weakens our cognitive abilities.
Tapping into the healing power of gratitude enables our hearts to send harmonious, health promoting signals to our brains and nervous system. These coherent signals support our health and overall well-being. As this 2014 study concluded:
"Numerous studies have provided evidence that coherence training consisting of intentional activation of positive and calming emotions paired with HRV coherence feedback facilitates significant improvements in wellness and well-being indicators in a variety of populations."
6. How Envol Can Help
After reading this, you probably won't be surprised to find that gratitude is one of our pillars of health. We see it as an incredibly powerful means of healing, which is why we encourage you to incorporate it into your daily routine.
Not only will Envol help remind you to practice it, and monitor your progress, but the app also contains many amazing tools to bring gratitude into your life. From our long-list of affirmations, to our heart-centred audio tracks, to our breathing timers that facilitate a state of heart coherence, there's something for everyone.
Gratitude is one of the most powerful means of healing we have, and it's absolutely free! All it takes is 5-10 minutes a day to boost your mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing. So let go of your doubts, and tap into the healing power of gratitude today!
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