Join me on this week's podcast as I sit down with the lovely Julie Boyer, host of the Wake Up With Gratitude podcast and author of 30 Days of Gratitude: The Gratitude Program That Will Change Your Life, to discuss the vital Reiki Ideal - Just for today, I will be grateful.
We dive deep into how gratitude can be incorporated into your daily life. Julie also shares her expertise in cultivating an attitude of gratitude, which can lead to profound shifts in perspective and overall well-being.
But that's not all - Julie also leads us in a powerful gratitude experience, allowing listeners to tap into the transformative power of gratitude firsthand. We explore the ways in which this practice can help us connect with ourselves and others on a deeper level and the immense benefits it can bring to our lives.
If you're interested in learning more about the practice of gratitude and how it can enhance your life, this episode is a must-listen. So tune in as we delve into the power of gratitude with Julie Boyer on this week's podcast!
Julie's contact info:
Free Gratitude Meditation download: http://bit.ly/GratitudeLoveLetter
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@juliecmboyer
Facebook: https://facebook.com/juliecmboyer
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juliecmboyer/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliecmboyer/
Pam's ICRT Classes:
Book a Reiki, Animal Reiki, or Animal Communication session:
Order The Reiki Business Book here:
Pam Allen-LeBlanc is a scientist, a businesswoman, and a Licensed Reiki Master Teacher with the International Center for Reiki Training. She is the author of "The Reiki Business Book" and a co-author of ICRT Animal Reiki training. Pam teaches Reiki, Animal Reiki, and Animal Communication online and in person in Canada, the US, and Australia.
thank you to Music from Pixabay for the intro music and to Nate Miller for the meditation music
Register for our newsletter!
Join me on this week's podcast as I sit down with the lovely Julie Boyer, host of the Wake Up With Gratitude podcast and author of 30 Days of Gratitude: The Gratitude Program That Will Change Your Life, to discuss the vital Reiki Ideal - Just for today, I will be grateful.
We dive deep into how gratitude can be incorporated into your daily life. Julie also shares her expertise in cultivating an attitude of gratitude, which can lead to profound shifts in perspective and overall well-being.
But that's not all - Julie also leads us in a powerful gratitude experience, allowing listeners to tap into the transformative power of gratitude firsthand. We explore the ways in which this practice can help us connect with ourselves and others on a deeper level and the immense benefits it can bring to our lives.
If you're interested in learning more about the practice of gratitude and how it can enhance your life, this episode is a must-listen. So tune in as we delve into the power of gratitude with Julie Boyer on this week's podcast!
Julie's contact info:
Free Gratitude Meditation download: http://bit.ly/GratitudeLoveLetter
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@juliecmboyer
Facebook: https://facebook.com/juliecmboyer
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juliecmboyer/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliecmboyer/
Pam's ICRT Classes:
Book a Reiki, Animal Reiki, or Animal Communication session:
Order The Reiki Business Book here:
Pam Allen-LeBlanc is a scientist, a businesswoman, and a Licensed Reiki Master Teacher with the International Center for Reiki Training. She is the author of "The Reiki Business Book" and a co-author of ICRT Animal Reiki training. Pam teaches Reiki, Animal Reiki, and Animal Communication online and in person in Canada, the US, and Australia.
thank you to Music from Pixabay for the intro music and to Nate Miller for the meditation music
Register for our newsletter!
Hi, and welcome to the Reiki from the Farm Podcast, brought to you by me, Pam Allen Loblaw from Hidden Brook Farm. I am a scientist, a businesswoman, and a licensed Reiki master teacher with the International Center for Reiki. each week in this podcast, you'll be entertained as you learn about a wide variety of relevant Reiki topics helping you become a more knowledgeable and effective Reiki practitioner. We caution you though this podcast may also dramatically improve your life. And we are so happy that you're here.
On this week's podcast, I'm speaking with Julie Boye, who is a podcaster with Wake Up With Gratitude. She has a book about gratitude and you're also a landscape photographer, Julie, with gorgeous. Are those your, for those watching on YouTube, are those your shots behind you? Yeah. Yes, absolutely. I saw your calendar. It's it's stunning. And I wanted to invite Julie to the podcast to just talk about one of the Reiki concepts or precepts, which is gratitude. So welcome. Thank you for coming. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me, Pam. I'm so glad you're here. Before we begin, I just wanna let you know that I will soon be heading to Australia. For those of you who are there, I've got five days of the the classes that contribute toward the professional membership and the Reiki Membership Association, a Level one and two, and masterclass. And when you take those from a licensed teacher, you qualify for professional membership. They are available in person and I'm investigating whether they can be online. So if. Go ahead and reach out if that's something that you're thinking about, but it definitely will be the Australian time zone. I'm also teaching I C R T Animal Reiki there, and in April I've got a full lineup of classes here at the farm, which you can also join online if you would like. And please consider joining us for that. But I do look forward to seeing my Australian friends in Australia. Again, we'll be teaching just outside of Canberra in a little place called Royalla. Beautiful farm there surrounded by kangaroos and horses and the most beautiful birds I've ever seen. So it couldn't be love. Before we go too far in, did you have anything you wanted to let people know about Julie? Anything going on that they could like your calendar, I realize we're in February now, but anything like that? My calendar's sold out actually before the end of December, and you can always keep me in mind for next year. It's all, I live on Vancouver Island, which is off the west coast of Canada, and I'm very lucky to live within driving distance of several beautiful beaches where I get to watch the sunrise. So my calendar's Vancouver Island sunrises. That's my favorite way. How I combine gratitude and the sunrise practice, wake up with gratitude, right? I love to watch the sunrise. Welcome a new day, and just welcome it in with gratitude and then take pictures and share them. I love that. We're just gonna invite everybody. Julia's also a Reiki level one practitioner, and maybe going further with Reiki, I don't know yet. But I'm gonna invite everybody to go ahead and bring your hands in Gassho and just go ahead and activate your Reiki energy today, and we'll just remind each other of the Reiki ideal. asked us to chat with our mouth and speak with our heart every morning and evening with our hands in prayer or in Gassho. Just for today. I will not be angry. I will not worry. I will be devoted to my work. I will be kind to others, and I will be filled with gratitude. and just feeling the energy of gratitude wrap around us and through us just thinking about some of the things that you're grateful for in this moment and some of the things you are grateful for yesterday, last week. Last month and even last year, there's something about shifting into gratitude. It changes everything. And when we remember to be in gratitude. We bring to ourselves more things to be grateful for what we focus on expands, and that is what makes up our lives. Just for today, I will be grateful and just for today, I'm grateful for you, Aho awesome and Namaste mistake. thank you. Oh, that was a beautiful way to start the podcast, Thank you. I just love there's something about grounding myself and my guest in the Reiki energy and also the listener, and that way the Reiki energy flows through us the whole time that we talk. And I can get very excitable. And this keeps me grounded. And I think it flows through the listener as well. And I just believe that's, that helps them hear the parts of the podcast that they need on any given day. And so thank you Julie, tell me a little bit about you. You feel so strongly about gratitude, that you wrote a book about it, you have a podcast about it. What in your journey brought this focus to gratitude for you? It's interesting. The first time I was. Formally introduced to using gratitude as a practice was many years ago with the movie The Secret. Oh, I dunno if you remember that. Yeah. And the book and the book. And they also had secret gratitude journals that you could write in. And in these journals, on one side of the page, it asked you to write in the present tense what you were grateful for that was already happening in your life. And on the other page, it was a gratitude intention. So things you wanted to manifest into your life that had not yet occurred, but you were acting as if you were using gratitude in advance for something that had yet to come into your life. So that was where I began my gratitude practice. And I did that for a few years, but, I don't know. It didn't seem to work. It wasn't really, I liked it, but it seemed like it was just not quite working the way that I wanted it to, and I stopped the practice like many people do. That's normal. Just like I'm sure with a Reiki practice, right? They go through the same, they'll go through times in their life where it's really important and a priority, and other times when it's not. Yes. So I paused my practice and fast forward a couple years, I was at an event, a convention event, and I went to a workshop with a gentleman, his name is Sean Aker. He wrote the book, the Happiness Advantage. He has a great TED Talk, so we can share that. And the book. Yeah. But he talked about how to change your mindset in 21 days. So if you had, the negative mindset to switch to more positive, and he gave all these ideas of what to do, and one of them was a gratitude practice. And what I liked about his gratitude practice is so at the time, this is 2011, he's write your gratitude in your phone, which today seems obvious, but in 2011 it was not. We weren't all walking around with smartphones, right? We had our little blackberries or whatever. But you write three things you're grateful for that are specific to that. And then you're not repeating it. So you're doing something different every day. For 21 days, I know it takes longer than that, but at the time, he recommended for 21 days. So I thought, this is really great, you know this, I think I could do this. And then I went back to what I'd learned from this secret and started adding a gratitude intention. So I started that practice that night. I started writing, actually a Blackberry tablet that I had, which they don't even make those anymore, but I started writing it. Three things I was grateful for specific to that day. And then a fourth gratitude intention. And my gratitude intention was to reach a business goal. This had been in a business conference and. 12 weeks later, I achieved this business goal in my network marketing business, and I was like, oh my gosh, this gratitude thing. It's like it's working. So that's where the journey began. There's lots of other, steps along the way, but that's really where it started was those influences in my life. Oh, I love that. And it's just expanded for you. It turned into a book. Can you tell us a little bit about your first book and then, maybe segue into the one you're working on right now? Sure. Yeah. So I continued this practice every night and started implementing it with like my team training. So every team training there would be some gratitude included in some of the work that we were doing. It was teaching about gratitude intentions. Actually 12 weeks after that we manifested our first family home. So I was like this, this is working. So I have a daughter, she's 12. Great girl. She's doing fantastic. And when my daughter was two and a bit, I got pregnant for the second time. And at 15 weeks of gestation where you think that everything is going to be fine. I had a very traumatic miscarriage. Oh. I miscarried at home. I was in the bath, definitely not the waterbirth that I had planned. It was I was home alone. I had to call. 9 1 1 police broke down my door. Then the paramedics took me to the hospital and I ended up having emergency surgery cuz it was an incomplete miscarriage. So I had to have, A D N C and it all happened so fast and the whole thing happened in about four and a half hours. And then we went to pick up my daughter at daycare Wow. It was just, This unbelievably horrible, traumatic experience. And then we get in the car and go pick up my daughter at daycare after I've had surgery. So I got home that night and I had developed this practice of writing in my gratitude journal. So I, I wrote in my gratitude journal that night, and I wrote that I was grateful that my daughter had been at daycare. Yeah. And I was grateful that the police were able to break down the door. and then I wrote that I was grateful that my husband and one of my best friends had been at the hospital with me. And so I thought to myself, if I can find gratitude on what was then the worst moment of my life, then I need to share this with people. And that's where my first book, 30 Days of Gratitude, the Gratitude Program that will change your life began. I started writing. in February, so that was the end of January. I started writing it in February and. My sister is a high school English teacher who offered to edit for me, so she helped me. So I was writing as she was editing, and the whole book was finished by the beginning of April, launched. Unbelievable. At the end of May. And then, yeah, we did an Amazon bestseller campaign before those were. those were a cool thing to do, it was a pretty incredible experience for me and I really thought that was like the culmination of my gratitude journey, but it turned out that it was definitely just one part of my journey. Oh. Like just the beginning, just the beginning. Where did that, and I see there's some noise in your background. Don't worry. That's why it's called Reiki from the farm. Our listeners are very generous with us I homeschool that beautiful 12 year old daughter and she's, even though she's aware that I'm recording, cuz as a podcaster I record often, she just, I think she just forgot that I'm recording. Oh my, my family can forget very easily too. And especially the dogs but don't worry. That's amazing. And your book, is your book still available? Is there a link that we can put? It is the podcast for it. Okay. Yeah, for sure. And you can order it. Through your common websites, but if you are in Canada, you can order it directly from me and then I'll sign the book for you. Absolutely. So that you can order through my website. I have a few copies on hand, and then yeah, you mentioned another book. So this, yeah, this year, 2023 will be the 10th anniversary of the book. And so having now. Been through this whole journey, podcasting for three years, interviewing people about gratitude. I thought it'd be a really good opportunity to release an updated and revised edition. So the first book still sells. I just sold a bunch over the holiday season and it's still great. So even if you got the book that I have right now, the new book is different. It's not, you're not gonna feel. You missed out because you bought the first one. You can get a lot from the first one. I just wanted to expand it and share. I have so many stories to share now because of the number of people I've interviewed for the podcast. Having conversations about gratitude, right? Yeah, exactly. And so what can people expect from the first book, like the 30 Days of Gratitude? It, it is life changing. I know because with Reiki it's led me to just be in gratitude. the majority of the time I'm not gonna say all of the time, but probably 75, 80% of the time I'm looking around me just noticing the things that I'm grateful for and it just brings more things to be grateful for. And so what was the, what was your, the theme and what was your first book about and what will the second one be about? So the first was really focusing on basic, simple gratitude habits to help you shift your mindset. So a lot of the first, it's written in three sections and it's 30 days. Like each day has a different exercise and it's very simple and precise to what to do each day. So you're guided every day. The first section is really about your mindset, so shifting your mindset, what you can do to help stop the negative mindset, what you can do to feed your positive mindset with things like affirmations. The second part of the book is about designing your life, so things like vision board and goal setting and 90 day plans and all that stuff. Because when I wrote it, I was really. In growing my business, and these are strategies that I was using to grow my business. So it was like, these are working, these make sense. And then the last section of the book is about different ways to use gratitude in your life. Gratitude and kindness. Gratitude in children, gratitude in faith. So that's the first book. The new book that I'm working on also has three sections in 30 days. And the first section is really more, it's still about d it's about developing your gratitude practices. So sharing I've, cuz I've learned so many different ways to pa that's what I love is you and I recorded a podcast recently and you shared a gratitude practice, with your dinner and the gratitude rock that I had not. Thought about. So I was like, I love that. I'm always learning. So I use, I'm using a lot of stories of other people of what they do to practice gratitude. And then the second section of the book deals with how to, how gratitude supports us during our most difficult times. So things like going through cancer mental health challenges, difficulties, with chronic pain. So specific because again, a lot of my guests shared their personal stories of how they got through these difficult times with gratitude. And then the last section of the new book are just about different ways to connect with gratitude to change your life cuz that's the book. Of gratitude, the gratitude program that will change your life. So how gratitude can change your life. So it's a bit similar like concepts to the first book, but in a lot more detail and with a lot more stories. Yes, because you've had so much experience with it now. and it, and tell me about it led to your podcast. And so tell me a little bit about your podcast that you've been doing for three years, just on gratitude and some of the things that you've. So the podcast is interesting because the podcast began when I was going through a personal difficult time. I just wasn't feeling, I was doing all my gratitude practices, but I just wasn't feeling very good about myself and I was struggling with my own self-worth and self-love, and. I was trying to think of what to do next. And I was at the beach with my family one afternoon and you know how people paint rocks? Yes. And they paint words and they leave them wherever. And so I went to the beach and right by the like bench where we sat down, there was a rock that was painted that said self-love. And I thought, huh. And I was like, this is it. 30 days of self. That's just what I meant to do. And what I decided to do for this 30 days of self-love is I interviewed friends, people that I was already connected with directly about what self-love meant to them. And then I would ask them about their personal gratitude practices. And I did this as a video series. Mostly on Facebook. So every day for 30 days, there was a new video that was posted, but I had also recorded the audio through Zoom, kept the audio and said I'm going to eventually turn this into a podcast. So I did this sort of in the fall of 2019, and then in December of 2019, I launched the podcast with the interviews that I had done for 30 days of self. So I started the podcast already having a bunch of interviews on hand, which was really cool. Nice. And that really helped. Yeah. Okay. So it started in that way and then, you've been podcasting for a while, like the changes and evolves and grows and the different ways that, that I interview people on the ways that I connect. I connect. a lot more with people that are specifically in the gratitude community now, because, once you meet one person, then they introduce you and on. And it's cool that it's a community actually So I love that. And tell me about how you feel gratitude and Reiki in your, you've spent so much time focused on gratitude, studying gratitude, learning about gratitude, how. how do you feel that it goes together with Reiki? I think it's this, it's the energy of it, right? Like gratitude itself is energy. it's the way that we show up in the world. It's the way that we share our energy. It's becomes like our default practice. So something like Reiki, and I don't have nearly as much experience as many of people that you've had on the podcast or as other people that might be listening. But when we open up those energy channels through Reiki, when we allow our energy to flow more, freely, gratitude becomes easier to find, I think. And I really feel that, you know what, if you're a Reiki practitioner right now, or even if you're practicing just for yourself, if you choose to tap into that energy of gratitude through your Reiki practice or as part of it, right? As bringing it into my practice, like you said, what am I grateful for today, last week, last month? bringing that in. You develop this muscle over time. And so what happens is when bad stuff happens, because it's going to happen to all of us. you can tap back into that energy of gratitude a lot more easily, even if something negative has happened. And I think for those that are already skilled with re. It's like that can bring you into a head space and a body space and an energy space to practice gratitude and allow it to flow a lot more easily. Oh, I love that. I think that makes perfect sense. And so what are some things, because gratitude is a part of Reiki and some people are disciplined enough to go into Gassho every day and grow through the Reiki ideals, but many of us, even though we think of them from time to time, We don't necessarily have that as a daily practice. And it is possible even as a Reiki practitioner, even though gratitude is a big part of what we do. To get off track, you had said about the the practice with the dinner with the rock, and I'll just expand on that. I noticed that Reiki can really help change my perspective and that when my perspective is in a place of love and appreciation or gratitude it just brings more and more things into my life to appreciate and to be grateful for. And so gratitude did become, Very much a part of my life. Early on I write I think Julie and I found we both write three pages every morning called Morning Pages. It's something that Julia Cameron recommends in order to allow your creativity to flow, because we're both writers and creatives and. During those three pages, not only do I is it a bit of a mind dump where you just allow solutions to come together for things that you're thinking about or wondering about, but it's also I always wind up my morning practice with gratitude and it just changes. Flavor, of my day. It just makes it that much easier and more pleasant and lovely to within my life. And so I thought, I need to find more ways to bring gratitude in. And so in addition to going on a walk in nature every day and just being conscious of looking around me, even if I'm caught up in my thoughts sometimes, as I sometimes am, Taking the time to look around me at one point and just be grateful that I'm able to walk my dogs in the woods on a trail in nature. That it's easily accessible to me here in rural New Brunswick, Canada. Grateful for the sunrises that comes in. Come in and I usually end my day in my Reiki practice thinking through the things. I was grateful for that day, but I thought, how do I include my family in this? Because I thought it made such a big difference to me. So I heard about, I don't even know where I heard about it. But I heard about this practice of taking a rock. So we found a very special rock. The children weren't very old at that time. They're all grown now. And We we actually even lost it at one point and we had to get a substitute gratitude rock. But and then we found it, so now we have two. But we found this very special rock and it's just a lovely green rock. I think we found it on a beach and it's, it just fits nicely in your hand. Even when your hands are little. It fit not too badly. And so we. At the end of every meal together, we would one of us would pick up the gratitude rock and. Hold the rock and say the things that we were grateful for. And while you were the one holding the rock you were in charge. And it was, it's neat because there were times when the kids were little, they were pretty into it and they would grab the rock and they would think about things they were grateful for. And a lot of times their dad and I were things that they were grateful for and the dogs and. Different things. And then as they went through their teenage years, they sometimes would roll their eyes and have a little harder time, thinking And even my son sometimes would've, maybe he was bullied at school or he'd had a rough day and he'd say, I can't think of anything today. Mama I'd say, buddy, there's gotta be one thing. You can't pass the rock on until you think of one thing and. they would say it and then pass the rock along. And do you know that rock has sat on our table for at least 15 years and now the kids what? We don't get to eat together as much anymore because the kids live different places and so on. But whenever we do sit down at the table for a meal, which is few and far between, somebody says who's got the gratitude? Rock And they'll, they're in their mid to late twenties now, early, mid, and yeah, later twenties. And they still look for the gratitude rock and say what they're grateful for. So I just love that practice. But what are, so you've been exposed to this so much. What are some of the things that you would recommend to people? Before I answer that question, I. Believe that I may recall where the gratitude rock is about 15 years ago is that's when the movie this came out and there was a scene in The Secret where one of the people talked about having a gratitude rock that you would put in your pocket for the day and you find a nice river rock or whatever. And that was your special gratitude rock and you would put it in your pocket in the morning, think of something you're grateful for, and you'd put it back on your dresser at night and you would think of something you're grateful for again. And it, I don't know and you don't remember, but it probably is because I did work that seems the timing and read the book and Yeah. But the fact, what I love is that you kept that going for so many years. And I'm probably gonna use that story in my book because I have a chapter about finding gratitude at home. That right there. So we walk around our house all day long. And just take it for granted. We take for granted that we have a roof over our head. I live on Vancouver Island, as I mentioned. It is one of the, it is the warmest place in Canada. However at the time of this recording, it is below zero degrees Celsius and there's 20 centimeters of snow on the ground. We have a high population of unhoused people here that don't have anywhere to go are, we don't have a lot of shelters. We just don't have this space, and some of them don't want to. So they're. they don't have a roof over their heads. They are not sleeping in a bed. They don't have warm blankets. They're not, I write about in my morning pages, I write about being grateful that I have a wood stove and then I have fuel for that wood stove. Because we f heater home with oil. And oil is. Very expensive at this time, and so we're trying to make it work with the wood stove, with wood that we chopped and my husband chopped. And I'm grateful that my husband chopped this wood, and I'm grateful that I have a fridge full of foods. I don't have to go out when the roads are bad. I'm grateful that my pantry has food in it. I'm grateful that every tap in my home has clean drinking water. Again. easy to take for granted. talk to some of your friends in your local indigenous communities or your provincial indigenous communities about drinking water. right? This is, we take this for granted, so just even being in your home and recognizing what you're taking for granted. Like every time you flush a toilet, you're flushing drinking water. I think about. right? I think about that too. I'm like, I want a gray water system for my, yes. Some of my, for my sinks, right? Yeah. To reuse that water. We've been in droughts, so all of these things, but most people just aren't thinking about it, and it's not because we're not grateful people, it's just that it's so easy to not be grateful for this stuff that's obvious that's right in front of our faces and I just find that if we remember to just look around where we are right now. Are you in your car driving gratitude for your vehicle? Are you out for a walk right now? Gratitude that you can use your legs and your feet and walk. Gratitude that you have a phone that you can listen to, a podcast on gratitude for the environment that you live in that makes it safe for you to walk outside. They just, it's endless noticing and little reminders and. because my business is called Wake Up with Gratitude. My favorite thing, of course is to help people to figure out how they can wake up with gratitude. So I'll give you a couple of simple ways to wake up with gratitude. So one, if you're using your phone, a zero alarm, which most people are, you can name your alarm. So you can change the name of your alarm to say, I am grateful or grateful for this day, or, thank you for this gift. So that when. Pull your alarm and turn it off. Grateful gratitude. I am grateful first thing, right? I do recommend your phone is on airplane mode before you go to bed, so you don't get all the other notifications, you just do your alarm. That would be great. And then another really simple way to wake up with gratitude is simply when your feet first hit the ground. Just say thank you. And I have a mantra that I use. It was inspired by Wayne Dy. And I just say this, thank you for this gift of another day and the opportunity to be of service to others and to make a difference in this world. Wow. That's it. I love that. And one of the things that in Reiki that a lot of us have adopted from William Rand is please guide me and heal me so that I may be of greater service to others, myself and to others. And, I love that adding gratitude. And although now I'm gonna do the alarm, my phone is named Love. So whenever, you go to connect to somebody's car or whatever it says, oh, who's love? Oh, that's me, That's awesome. And I probably should have called it Reiki Love, but my friend Camie did it for me and I don't know how to change it. Yeah, those are some great ideas. And I love the idea of waking up with gratitude and a lot of Reiki practitioners wake up and that's when we begin doing Reiki is first thing in the morning. And so it might be even possible to go through. As Yasui asked us to do just for today, I will not worry, I will not be angry. I'll be devoted to my work. I'll be kind and I'll be filled with gratitude, but I just, I love that. That's those some great things. How can Reiki and gratitude do you feel be used together just to help in those stressful, challenging. I think what you just shared about starting the day, going through like with Reiki on yourself personally combining that with a gratitude body scan. So it's when you start at your feet. and you just think about why you're, being grateful for your toes and then move them around and grateful for your feet. They carry you where you wanna go and grateful for your knees that allow you to bend down and grateful for your hips that allow you to, spin that hula hoop and do so many things. So it's going through your body. It's just a gratitude body scan. So you can do that as part of. if you're doing the Reiki morning practice already in bed, and then just taking it one step further and then just bringing this gratitude body scan just through your whole body. And if you don't have time and you're in a rush, at least just pause in gratitude for your heart. that has kept beating all night, right? It is a gift that you woke up. Yes. Your heart beats, right? You don't, we don't do anything. The heartbeats and beats and it beats until it just doesn. and then grieve. Yeah. And we can, great. So just grateful for a few things. The body contains our soul, the breath, the heartbeat. Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, I love that. Easy. Yeah. Are there any others and I'm just thinking of some of the stressful and challenging times, how were you, do you feel able to get to a place of gratitude after such a difficult day? I just, last week I did something really, I did, I made a really bad choice and I was meeting someone outside and I didn't tie my boots up, so my leases were loose and it was clear like no snow, nothing. So just walk out with my boots. Give the person what they were picking up, turned around to get the dogs and the eyelet of my one boot. The lace from the opposite boot got caught in the eyelet, and so I was already going forward and because there was nothing I could do, I knew it was happening, but I couldn't stop myself from falling forward and slamming onto my driveway. And I caught myself with my hands and Pretty hurt, but not like enough that I was like not getting up for a moment. I saw stars and stuff and my phone had been in the pouch of my hoodie and it slammed down. And as a person who uses their phone to do all the photography and yeah, I was really quite upset. And then my husband, helped the people. They left and then he picked me up, picked me up, brought me a house, and I was just I was like really upset, like just. I haven't, I don't know the last time I've been that upset or in that much pain. I was just so not enough to go to the hospital. So that was like, okay, I'm grateful I don't have to go to the hospital. And so I. I'm grateful my husband can be here to care for me, but I am like so upset. I'm like crying so hard and I'm, having trouble breathing and I'm just like, little things are like popping up. And then even by that night, I was having trouble writing cuz my hands just hurt so much from taking the brunt of the fall and I was trying to hold my pen and I just wrote, I'm grateful I can hold the pen and write a couple things in my journal. and the next morning again, I was just more things that I could be grateful for. I'm grateful that I, it wasn't worse that I didn't break my wrist, that as much, even though I'm sore, like it could have been so much worse. I'm grateful that my phone is still usable. So even though the screen is quite spider shattered, I can still use it cuz sometimes when you break your screen it gets sharp and you can't use it. So I can still use my phone. That's how quickly for me it is a reflex. Interesting what you said about building a muscle, like it's a muscle. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's just a reflex for me now. There's always, I'm just, it comes up. Whatever situation we're in, I'm like, I can just. Find something to be grateful for. Even in, and that's not, I mean I could share a lot more difficult ones, but I thought that's just a really good everyday example of, yeah, something that was really not good. Very upsetting at the time, and I can still like find gratitude. I love that. And it, and I like how you said, it is a muscle, so it becomes a reflex because yeah, you've used it so much. And so basically using the gratitude pa or just being in gratitude so much strengthens. your ability to be in gratitude, is that right, Yeah, for sure. And it doesn't mean that bad things don't happen to me cuz they do. No, and it doesn't mean I don't go through difficult times cuz I do. think the last five years that we've lived in BC we moved from across the country in Ontario, have been really hard for me and my family and, but gratitude has been there with me the whole time. So it's. gratitude doesn't stop the bad stuff from happening. What it does is it helps us to frame things in a different way and move through them as opposed to spending more time there. Combine that with a Reiki practice, especially your own practice. and that just helps tremendously. Again, it's not that we. Gonna have these moments of difficulty in these challenging times, but these two practices together can just make it easier for you to go through. Instead of getting stuck. Instead of getting stuck. That's right. Yeah. And it's like a reframe you said, and Tony Robbins talks about there is good around us every minute, every second, every nanosecond of every day. And. there is positive and good, or there is negative and things that we would classify as not good or bad. And he said, you have a choice of what you wanna focus on. Do you wanna focus on the things that aren't working or the things that are, and when you, and kinda like what you said, this muscle as you focus on what is working. And that's what I've noticed, especially with Reiki. Reiki seems to accelerate everything. So as I focus on what is working, more things that bring me love and joy and that are working, more of those seem to show up and almost know I said at one point, talking with a friend I said, life has got so beautiful. I don't know if I can contain it all. We've just recently had so many wonderful and beautiful things happen and I was sitting at our beach house looking out at the water, just thinking wow. And I, I've often said to my husband, pinch me. I just can't believe. But I feel looking back, it is a result of just noticing the positive and it bringing more positive, I think the secret and some of the things that you were talking about earlier, about manifesting, like you manifest more of these wonderful things in your life when you notice them and focus on them because the universe really responds to your thoughts and your beliefs and yeah. I love that, Julie. My gosh. What are some common misconceptions about gratitude or gratitude with Reiki? Is there anything you can think about there? I think this kind of points a little bit to toxic positivity, uhhuh, where it's like you're using gratitude to whitewash a situation or to not address your feelings. That's dangerous. So for me, gratitude is not, I'm not grateful that I fell and smashed my phone and hurt myself. No, definitely not. But I can find gratitude from that situation. And that's where, to me, gratitude is more important. addressing your emotions. You can even be grateful to be angry or frustrated in a certain time. Like you can be grateful for your emotions. Gratitude doesn't always have to be positive. you can be grateful. for negative things because I'm grateful that I'm angry. That's good. I have something to be angry about. Or that you're living in a society where you can express anger. Yeah. That's, you don't have to suppress it or whatever. Exactly. So I think just staying clear of toxic positivity and knowing that gratitude doesn't, and toxic positivity they're not connected. Gratitude is very, it's different and it's, Being aware in a situation of there are so many things to be grateful for, even in the darkest of times, in the darkest of moments, even amidst negativity, but not, but being aware that the negativity may still Yeah. Is still there. Yeah. And yeah, and not ignoring it or, or pretending that it's not there. So I love that. How does like Reiki and gratitude and how. Relate to other spiritual or mindfulness practices in in your opinion? I think any practice that connects you back to yourself and brings you into your body. Is a spiritual practice. So whether using Reiki on its own, Reiki and gratitude on its own, any other prayer, meditation, any practice that brings you back into your body, I think is how you make that connection. It is how you change and shift your vibration. It doesn't happen when you're focused in your head. You're jumbled in your thoughts, getting caught up in ego. It's bringing yourself into your body, into your heart space, and. is how I think all these practices really connect, and then it's finding the one that you resonate with or that you're curious about to follow and to explore more of and learn more of. So whatever that is for you personally, and again, that's being in tune with your heart and where that's leading you and that. That's what's fun about this is that just like with gratitude, there are endless ways to explore Reiki. You yourself, you have so many different ways to use Reiki, whether it's following your heart towards exploring the ways that Reiki allows you to be open-hearted and, use your energy in a beautiful, positive way, or following the gratitude path to put you in that more positive mindset and allow you to have that reflex muscle when you're faced with challenges. I love that, that muscle. And we would say, connecting with our authentic self in with Holy Fire, Reiki, that's a big part of just connecting with who we are, authentically that light inside of us that. Can sometimes, not be present. And I think gratitude is a part of uncovering that light and our authenticity as well. So I love that. And what are some things you would suggest to us about how Reiki and gratitude could be used to help promote personal growth and self-improvement? What would you say? That's an interesting question because I have been on a personal development, self-improvement journey for a really long time, and I'm grateful for all of the work that I've done. And I've also, and your listeners might not wanna hear this, but sometimes in personal development, self-development, there are promises that are made that. don't happen. And you feel like you work so hard and you do what you're told and you follow the instructions and you're still not manifesting as you had desired. And you don't, you haven't reached your goals and your financial goals and all of these things. And what I've learned is that I think coming back to myself, coming back to my, like you said, authenticity and understanding my own vulnerabilities is the direction to go for personal growth and for where I am exploring my journey now. So that is where I am at in my own personal development journey. After being a personal development journey for 16, 17 years. It's coming back. Remembering that your body has all the answers, and so these practices that bring you back to your body and listening to our body, I know that I'm not the only woman in her forties who is. Just finally waking up to actually listening to my body and not just following what everybody else says and coming back to that. So I'm in a space of personal journey, personal development, so I don't have an answer for you right now. That's okay. But what I know what's working right now is coming back to my body and actually paying attention to my body. And both, Reiki and gratitude do that. They bring you back to the body as I mention. That's right. And it is so easy, I think of how many times my body said I'm hungry, and I said, no, you're not. I'm busy, I've, I'll get to you later. Or I'm tired and it's but I have this project to finish Yeah. So we'll sleep later. and I, so I think even myself, I, I don't do that as much anymore, but certainly in my thirties and forties and my career. How often do you not listen? And the answer was for me, personally, quite a lot. I didn't listen So I love that, that bringing us back. And Julie, is there anything you'd like to share with us before we move into our meditation today? I think it's just a reminder that gratitude practice doesn't have to be d. it and it's free. doesn't take a lot of time to do, and you don't need any special skills to do it. You just need to do it. And the more you do it, the easier it becomes. The more ways you develop to find, to practice gratitude, and you'll just never run out of ways to be grateful. And that's what's amazing is. There's just endless ways to express our gratitude, and so if you're feeling stuck in your gratitude practice, I maybe pop on over to the podcast for, just listen to any episode and you'll just get a new idea and a new way to connect back to yourself, your body, and to your practices. Absolutely, and we'll put a link to your book and your podcast and your website in the in the the podcast notes. So you can easily do that if you would like to check that out. Thank you. I wonder you have a gratitude experience or meditation. I've actually downloaded it, but I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet. But I wonder if you would lead us in that to end our podcast today. Yeah, absolutely. And we can link to the, if people wanna download that meditation, they can so that they just want the meditation bit. They can have that and they can put it on their phone. So we'll make sure they link to that one as well. Absolutely. So I'm gonna take you through a short gratitude meditation. I call it my sunrise meditation. So we're just gonna, I'm just gonna take you to the sunrise with. So thank you. Okay, so wherever you are, as long as you're safe and you're comfortable, you can close your eyes or just look down at the floor, make sure you're sitting or lying comfortably. Whatever feels good for you and your body, and bringing your attention back to your breath. Noticing what it feels like when you're breathing in, allowing your body to relax into an exhale. Anytime you feel like your mind is wandering away from what I'm sharing, just come back to your breath. Allow yourself to notice the air breathing in through your nose, filling your lungs, allowing your belly to expand, and noticing how your belly falls and your lungs drop. Shoulders relax on the exhale. You can always bring yourself back to your breath. You're gonna come with me to watch the sunrise at the beach. So we arrive at the beach together. You can hear the sounds of the ocean. The waves gently lapping the shore. Calls of the seabirds and you notice the pre dawn light, there's still some blue in the sky, but you notice some color on the horizon. It's not quite dark, not quite light yet. The horizon is lit up in a deep orange color and above it overhead. The sky is going from a dark, deep indigo to a lighter daytime blue. A few stars still speckle the sky as you notice the contrast between the horizon. And the sky above you. As you walk towards the shore, you hear the sand and the pebbles underneath your feet making a gentle crunching noise. As you step, you find a comfortable place to sit. Leaning back on a piece of driftwood and allowing yourself to gaze off into the horizon. As the colors start to change, dawn is upon us. You notice the colors becoming brighter and different shades of now red and pink. You place your hand over your heart in a moment of gratitude before the sun rises and you repeat to yourself. Thank you for this gift of another day, and the opportunity to be of service to others and to make a difference in this world. And together we open our eyes again and keep our eyes focused on the horizon, watching as sea life swims by us or overhead grateful for the eagle that glides above us, or the gulls that squeak and squawk. Sharing their breakfast of sea stars. You close for your eyes for a moment again. And breathe deeply grateful for the air entering your lungs, nourishing your body with much needed oxygen, smelling that sea air as it comes through your nose and exhaling to release any tension. In your body as you melt into the beach and that piece of driftwood, when your eyes open again, you notice the sun has started to peak over the horizon. Together we stand up, move right to the shore where the waves are just tickling the edges of our toes. We stand beautifully placing our hands over our hearts, looking out as the sky makes its way over the horizon and lights up the morning sky in beautiful oranges and reds and yellows. There are just enough scattering of clouds that it creates a beautiful canvas for this rising sun. You feel a tear trickle down your cheek as you're in awe of the beauty of the natural world and what a gift it is to be able to watch the sunrise. Together we breathe. Breathing in the ocean, air, breathing in the gratitude in this moment and this gift of another day, and we turn to look at each other. Smile, hug. And reach our hands to the sky. Enjoy to say thank you. Thank you to the sunrise for welcoming another day. Come back to where you are. Find me in your breath. Let my voice bring you back to the room that you're sitting in right now. And when you're ready, take one last deep breath in. And on the exhale, I invite you to open your eyes and come back to us here. That was delicious, Thank you. I hope you were there with me. I could see you. I could see you, and I was, and holding your hands and giving you a big hug. I sure was. And I could feel the Reiki flowing through me, through us and through. all of the listeners. Julie, thank you so much for this deep dive into gratitude and for your ideas for the meditation. I really can't wait to dive into your book. So I will be ordering the signed version, please, Awesome. And thank you for being here with us. It was truly my pleasure. I'm so grateful to your listeners for listening in, and I just wanna remind everybody to choose to wake up with gratitude. I couldn't have said it better. Thank you. And thank you also to the listeners Namaste.