Welcome Zen friend . I hope , wherever you are , you are doing well , and if you celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States , then I hope you had a very happy Thanksgiving . Keeping with the theme of gratitude , today's guided meditation , or drop of Zen , will be focused on connecting with gratitude , so I invite you to find a place where you can sit or comfortably lie down , and we'll begin by closing our eyes or a nice soft , gentle gaze downward Before we connect with the things we are grateful for . I want you just to allow any annoyances , anything that's kind of driving you crazy , or maybe anything that didn't go well for you during the holiday , just anything at all that feels negative . Just allow it to come up for you . Just allow yourself to be with your annoyance or your sadness or hurt or embarrassment or any less than pleasant feelings that might be there . Just remember that everybody feels this way at times . Emotions come in and emotions go out . They don't stay forever . It can be really helpful just to allow ourselves to feel our feelings whatever they are . They have less of a chance of getting our attention with physical sensations that are often unpleasant , like headaches and stomach aches , so just allow yourself to be with anything that doesn't feel amazing as far as emotions and just know that you can be there with yourself and you can feel feelings , even those that feel uncomfortable . We'll stay with them for just another moment , just allowing them to be sitting with them , being with them .
Speaker 1And now I invite you to start connecting with something that you appreciate . It could be a pet , it could be having comfortable socks . It doesn't need to be something really big , anything at all that you can feel true appreciation for and notice where you feel it . Do you feel it in your heart center ? Do you feel it somewhere else ? Really invite that sensation and experience of appreciation into your body and then see if there's anything else that you can appreciate as things come to mind . Allow yourself to feel that deep feeling of appreciation , and if you're not connecting with that feeling , that's okay . Just an invitation to feel it , whether or not it happens , we just are opening a door for that possibility .
Speaker 1And now see if you want to stay with appreciation or are you able to move into gratitude . Is there something that you feel gratefulness for ? Notice what it is invited into your body , just as you did the feeling of appreciation . And again , it doesn't have to be something really big , it could be something simple Notice if there's something else that you can connect with , feeling appreciation or gratitude for , and again invite that in .
Speaker 1I typically feel appreciation or gratitude in my heart center , but it might be different for you , so just allow it to be however it is . And two more times I'll ask you to connect with something that you are appreciative for or feel gratitude for , and then one last time , what comes to mind that you feel appreciation or gratitude for . I'm just connecting with the feelings that are coming up for you and staying with them for as long as you'd like . When you're ready , we'll take one nice deep breath in and a long , slow exhale and softly and slowly opening your eyes . I'm so glad you joined me here today and until next time , friend , I hope you'll continue to take some time today and every day to do something kind for yourself .