Somatic Healing for Wellness-Focused Women

(#104) Gratitude Duality & Practices for When You’re Overwhelmed, Anxious, or Grieving During the Holiday Season

• Rae The Somatic Coach • Episode 104

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This week’s episode lands just in time for Thanksgiving 🦃  Rae offers a gentle, somatic approach to gratitude, especially for those navigating big emotions, grief, burnout, or overwhelm during the holidays.

🎧 Inside this episode, you’ll hear:

  • How to practice gratitude without bypassing what’s hard
  • What to do when gratitude doesn’t feel accessible
  • Embracing the duality of the holidays: joy + grief, connection + loneliness
  • How small sensory moments anchor you into the present
  • Five journaling prompts to ground your nervous system and connect to gratitude
  • A self-love practice: write a gratitude letter to yourself

✨ Take what you need, pause if you want, and come back anytime you need a reminder that gratitude can be gentle, grounded, and entirely your own.

💌 Want to take this work deeper? Get my Free Somatic Breathwork Bundle when you join the Somatic Healing Newsletter. You’ll receive 20+ guided breathwork practices to support you through anxiety, stress, emotional blocks, and more.

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Disclaimer: Please remember that the information shared on this podcast is intended to inspire, educate, and support you on your personal journey. It does not substitute for professional mental health advice. I am not a psychologist or medical professional. If you are experiencing distress, mental health challenges, or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified professional.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome back to the podcast. If you are new here, I'm Ray. I'm a schematic coach and breath work facilitator. And if you aren't new here, welcome back. I'm so glad that you're tuning in for today's episode. So for today's episode, this week it is Thanksgiving tomorrow from when this episode will be released. And I am hosting Thanksgiving at my house this year, so I feel very adult. We're doing adult things over here. And I am probably prepping and cooking as you are listening to this episode in real time. So I'm really excited for it. I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. And I have like a really good menu, and I did a lot of pre-shopping already from when I'm recording this episode. So I think I'll be, I think it'll I think it's gonna go good. I think it's gonna be good. So Thanksgiving is uh traditionally a time of giving thanks and feelings of gratitude, and so I thought today would be a great episode to chat about exactly that. So let's dive in. So I want to start with what do you do when you're not in a space where gratitude feels accessible or is at the forefront of your mind, and you know, we're all going to be feeling that way at some point where something else is, you know, the primary emotion or feeling, and there's no uh like shame in the game, so to speak, of yeah, struggling to feel grateful. There's nothing wrong with that. Uh, there's no, you know, spiritual bypassing that we want to take part in. We just want to be really, you know, honest with ourselves around what we're feeling and what's coming up. So maybe if it doesn't feel as accessible to you because you're feeling other things more strongly, for example, something like grief or loneliness, uh, duality can exist. You can feel two things at once, and more than one thing can be true at the same time. And the holidays in general, you know, this is Thanksgiving, but we have, you know, Christmas coming up, which is so crazy. I feel like time is going so fast. But the holidays in general can hold quite a few uh contrasts. So you can hold they can hold two things at once. You can feel really connected and excited to be with family, and at the same time, maybe you're feeling lonely. Maybe you know, family looks a little bit different this year. You can feel excited, and there's lots of celebrations that happen around the holidays. People get engaged, announce, you know, baby announcements, and there can also be a sense of grief and loss. There's a lot of reminders of the people that aren't around anymore around the holidays. You can feel anxious around your family, uh, you can feel, you know, burnt out from the year, exhausted. So there's so many different emotions and feelings and ways of being that can come up around the holidays. And, you know, when it comes to feeling grateful, it doesn't erase any of that. It doesn't make any of those feelings necessarily, you know, not exist uh or make them like not important or anything like that. Uh gratitude can coexist with how you're feeling. So oftentimes I think what's really helpful for gratitude is getting present with things, even if they are feeling not great, even if they are feeling messy, you know, whatever it might be. So presence is a really good way to get closer to those feelings of gratitude. And one way that you can cultivate more of this feeling of presence and gratitude is by noticing the really small sensory experiences that you are grateful for. So they can be super granular, you can, you know, play around with it, almost make it like a game, but it could be something like the smell of your coffee in the morning. It could be if you have like a favorite, you know, blanket that you like to lay on the couch with or sleep with, or a favorite pillow and it's like really soft. It could be like the textures of how soft it is. It could be the sounds of your, you know, the sounds that your family make. Maybe it's like someone's laugh or the sound of someone's voice. It's cold out right now, but when it's when when you can feel the warmth of the sun in those moments, even though it's freezing out right now. Um, so these like small sensory experiences in the moment of exactly where you are, these little moments are gonna remind your mind and your body that you are safe, that you are present, and naturally that's going to make more space for gratitude to arise and come forward when you're in that state. And then a few practices that are helpful for cultivating gratitude. Uh, you can check out the show notes for access to what's called Breathe Easy. It's a resource library, and there's about 15 to 20 different breathwork meditations in there, and there are a few on cultivating gratitude and gratitude practices. Uh, so that's a great resource. I'm also a big fan of Insight Timer. It's like a free app on your phone, and they have so many different practices on there. Uh, I'm on there as well, so you can always look me up, give me a follow. But even if you don't, there's so many practices on there for uh for everything, but gratitude included. So those are two resources. Uh, one another tool that you could use is writing a letter of thanks, but making it to yourself, really, and really acknowledging yourself for getting to where you are today. You know, you've come so far, and it's a great time to acknowledge your resilience, acknowledge your growth, acknowledge your courage and your strength. And you can do this sort of practice now around Thanksgiving, and it's also something that you can revisit in the new year as well, um, or really just any time that you're looking to connect with that, those feelings of gratitude. And I think we kind of look past feeling grateful for ourselves. Sometimes we look outside of ourselves, so it's a good practice to kind of come back into your experience and yeah, really feel grateful for how far you've come. And then the last practice that I'll leave you with are a few journaling prompts. And I love journaling, I think that it is a great practice to have in your toolkit. I like how it can be guided. You know, you can use different uh jump-off lines or questions or prompts to allow yourself to express in a different way and also allow your mind and your body to connect. You know, it's a great time to release, a great time to reflect, a great time to observe, and also just another avenue of being creative as well. So big fan of journaling. And I have five questions here. They are um like the same question phrased in a in a few different ways, but I'm going to share them with you now. You can answer them in real time internally. You can pause and return back to this later and then write these questions down and answer them then. Uh, you could do this Thanksgiving morning as you start your day. So there's a lot of things that you could do with this practice. Uh, but yeah, the first question is what is a physical thing about my body that I am grateful for, and why am I grateful for it? And the second question, what is a non-physical thing about myself that I am grateful for and why am I grateful for it? Third question, what object in my life am I grateful for and why am I grateful for it? Number four, who in my life am I grateful for and why am I grateful for them? And question number five, what place or situation or circumstance in my life am I grateful for and why am I grateful for it? So wherever you fall on the gratitude scale today, lots of duality or not, you can embody gratitude in a way that feels really good for you, really authentic for you, and really meeting yourself in the present moment exactly where you are. So I am so grateful for you that you're here and tuning in to this podcast and listening to these episodes. I really, really love creating these for you. I have so much fun with it. And yeah, I hope that you have an incredible Thanksgiving if you celebrate. I hope you enjoy your time with your family. And yeah, I hope you have an incredible rest of your day and incredible rest of your week. And I will talk to you soon. Thank you for being here and tuning in to Somatic Healing for Wellness Focused Women Podcast. If you were moved or inspired by today's episode, please take a moment to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It truly helps the podcast grow and helps more people find me on their healing journey. Make sure to check out the show notes to sign up for the monthly newsletter, links to more resources, opportunities to work with me, and ways that we can stay connected. If we aren't already connected on social media, head over to Instagram to follow me at Ray the Sematic Coach. Send me a DM. I'd love to connect with you, and I answer each note that comes in. I am so happy you're here, and I cannot wait to talk with you on our next episode of the podcast.