I've felt myself embarking on a new and exciting journey of learning about the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza, Deepak Chopra, Seth Godin and others that speak in their own way of the concept that if you change your energy, you can change your life. I'm not sure if this is directly related to the fact that I am turning 50 this year and I have been feeling a bit like I have missed the bus on goals that I haven't yet accomplished in my personal and professional life.
As a nurse, I have primarily practiced from a place of what I learned in nursing school. If you ate well, exercised regularly and indulged in moderation that would keep you "well" and when you got sick, prescribed medication and mental health resources would correct whatever was going on in the body to bring it back to alignment. I believed that to a great extent, disease was either due to genetic disposition which is out of our control or choices we have made about what we put in/on our bodies. I am now acknowledging that energy and vibration allows humans to heal themselves far more easily than we have thought.
In the continuum of space and time, Albert Einstein said "Everything in life is vibration". In school, we were all taught that everything is made up of atoms and depending on external variables such as temperature the speed of the atoms will form a liquid, gas or solid. If everything in our reality is constructed from vibration, this means that thoughts and feelings and the corresponding emotions are present because of the matching vibrations present.
I understand very little of chemistry or physics beyond what I needed to learn for nursing school. While reading about energy and that everything is made of energy, I have learned that quantum physics has proven time and time again, that our universe, the solar system is entirely made from energy. We are a part of shared energy that connects everything on the planet.
We are all living in energy in constant motion, at different frequencies and vibrations- and we are all connected. Deepak Chopra states that "about 99.999% of an atom is empty space. That means that everything we see is made up of mostly empty space and the only thing that makes them material is their energetic frequency."
So, what does any of this have to do with gratitude? Gratitude is intended to focus our intention on what we appreciate in our life and remain connected. If energy is what truly keeps us connected, then you don't have to solely rely on practicing gratitude to experience the benefits of feeling connected to others. When I practice gratitude, I have felt that I am not benefiting in ways I had expected and feel disappointed. If I apply this theory of energy, the low vibration of energy created from my feelings and thoughts of not achieving what I expected from practicing gratitude, makes me feel less connected and impacts my feelings of connection to others.
When you learn that by surrendering to the universe and following your intuition you will remain connected to the core of where you came from and as a result to all other things. Perhaps this is why, in part we tend to gravitate towards people that are very similar to ourselves and who make us feel grateful to have them in our life. Connected to feeling grateful and expressing gratitude is humility. Being grateful for every person and object in our lives keeps us connected to each other and acts as a constant reminder that we are all connected and the universe will respond positively when we exude positive energy. This practice of expressing gratitude towards others is known as Hado in Japanese culture. This is a concept that means "wave" and "move". In Japanese culture, the practice Hado is believed to be present in all things in the universe. When you become aware of Hado and that energy from thoughts and emotions affect our reality it is then possible to incorporate this practice into our everyday life and create small changes that bring us closer to our truest self and our purpose on Earth.
xo Michele
Comments