Let’s Talk Turkey

No, I’m not talking about my local, neighborhood hoodlums: the ones with feathers who materialize out of the forest to strut down Third Street, sometimes 50 at a time,* brazenly stopping traffic with bold displays of avian bravado.

No, I’m talking about gratitude.

Gratitude is a big deal. Bigger than the conversations you don’t want to have with family over the cranberry sauce. Bigger than Black Friday. Bigger than, well, bigger than almost all other emotions we can experience. (Except bliss. Bliss is really big.)

Gratitude is an emotion, and emotions are, quite literally, energy in motion. They are a vibration. We know this instinctively; we know how it feels being next to an angry person, or someone who is joyful, because emotional energies are visceral. They provide our bodies with important information and they communicate important information to others. (“Stay away from mom: she dropped the turkey and she’s pissed!”)

Gratitude is an elevated emotion, meaning that its frequency is fast and it emits a very powerful, measurable electromagnetic field (which is what we feel around that joyful person). It has a lot of energy, and this energy can, quite literally, change your life.

In a study done by researcher and author Dr. Joe Dispenza, saliva samples from 117 participants were taken at the beginning of a four day workshop and again at the end, to measure their immunoglobulin A (IgA), a marker for the strength of the immune system.

(NOTE: IgA is an incredibly strong chemical; when activated, it is the primary internal defense system for the human body. When stress [cortisol] goes up, IgA goes down, compromising and down-regulating the immune system. You know what comes next: colds, covid, cancer, autoimmune disease, nervous system disregulation, you name it. Ain’t stress grand?)

They asked the participants to enter into elevated emotional states (think: love, joy, gratitude, bliss — if you can get there) for 10 minutes, three times a day for four days. The result? Average IgA levels increased 49.5% and cortisol (the survival/stress hormone) decreased 16.3%. Dispenza writes,

“Something as simple as moving into an elevated state [i.e. focused thought and emotion] for five to ten minutes a day can produce significant epigenetic changes in your health and body.” (Becoming Supernatural, p.44)

Pretty flippin’ cool. But wait! There’s more …

Gratitude changes your brain and it changes your body in wonderful and positive ways, yes. But another marvelous thing is that because of the electromagnetic field it creates, it also changes what we attract to us. Like attracts like. (The Law of Attraction is a very real, science-y thing. Another topic for another day). Being in a state of gratitude attracts more things to your life to be grateful for. It really does.

And, not to pass over the obvious, gratitude just feels good. It makes us nicer people to be around. It helps us through the really rough times; you simply cannot be wholly negative if you are connected to and practicing gratitude, and there’s always something to be grateful for.

Always.

Five minutes a day to experience more joy, better health and greater peace and abundance is really a no-brainer.

Kinda like my Third Street turkeys.

*Fun Fact to share over Thanksgiving dinner: A group of turkeys is called a rafter. Don’t ask me why.