The Gratitude Playground
An interactive way to open your heart
Dear Kula Diaries,
The idea for the ‘Gratitude Playground’ came to me (not surprisingly) while I was dancing this week. Specifically, it came to me while I was dancing during our evening Kula Diaries Virtual Dance Party. This week was chock full of a lot of tasks: I’ve written SO MANY OTHER THINGS over the past week… and I was feeling so much oversaturation with my writing that everything seemed like it was blending together. In the midst of trying to ‘figure out’ what to write… I had no ideas.
Until I danced. Because in that lovely evening dance session of not trying to figure anything out… suddenly, my mind and heart were a bit more open to the ideas that were not able to reach me from a place of ‘not knowing’.
In my mind, I visualized an interactive post: a gratitude ‘obstacle course’ of sorts… except that instead of trying to avoid the obstacles… you’d be graciously completing them…. a series of small tasks that, if I put this together correctly… and if you are open to receiving these beautiful gifts in your heart … should help you summon a deeply wonderful feeling of gratitude.
Gratitude is a feeling, not a list. Many years ago… in the beginning of my own spiritual journey, I started making very ‘static’ lists of things that I was grateful for. Mechanically, I’d write down a list of items… without really stopping to think about what they meant to me… or noticing the impact on my life. In short, while my thankfulness was a good thing… I never really received the benefits of cultivating a feeling of gratitude. Gratitude (and appreciation) are some of the most important feelings that we can cultivate — they are an active form of love that sends out a very strong signal to the universe: show me more of these things for which I am deeply grateful. Gratitude and appreciation are also feelings that help us to be more present. Instead of living in a constant state of wishing for something different or better… they help us find a sense of peace and wholeness, exactly where we are.
My tiny offering to all of you is simple… this little Gratitude Playground… a simple series of actions that you can follow that will help you to (very strongly) cultivate a feeling of gratitude in your life. I’d recommend starting at the beginning and moving through each exercise one by one. In total, it should take about an hour to complete the whole experience. If you don’t have time to complete all of them at once, the overall effect might be less intense, but no amount of time ever spent with the feeling of gratitude is wasted.
It might seem like a ‘small thing’ to spend time opening your own heart. Some might even say that it’s frivolous, but I can assure you that it is one of the most selfless things you can do. When you are in a state of gratitude, you have access to ideas… inspiration… energy… that can shift and change the world around you in unfathomable ways. From a place of gratitude, you will make decisions and you will be in this world in a completely new state of being — and the ripple effect of that will send love to all corners of the earth. Trust that when you summon powerful energy, it will do its work — without you having to control every aspect of it.
For this experience, I’d recommend quickly scrolling through each practice to see how you might need to arrange your current space in order to complete all of the activities in a row (if that’s your goal). Things you might need: a journal and a pen or a computer (for writing), a photo of yourself as a child, space to dance, comfortable shoes or socks and water.
If you complete the entire gym session (or if you complete it in segments), PLEASE let me know how how it went for you! If you can’t complete it all at once, I’d recommend doing it in segments — and then setting aside time to see if you can complete the entire gym session … take note if there are any differences between doing it in segments versus all at once.
Most importantly: HAVE FUN!! This is a gift from you to you. It is not true that you don’t deserve to set aside time to cultivate love within your own heart. Be open to the possibilities… enter the playground with an open heart… and see what happens.
Understanding of gratitude and appreciation
To lay out the welcome mat for this practice, I’m going to read a passage from (my favorite) Eckhart Tolle that defines gratitude in a way that is far better than anything I could attempt to paraphrase. The purpose of this reading is to set the stage for the feeling that we are going to cultivate from within ourselves — it is an understanding of gratitude that goes beyond thinking. It is a feeling of connectedness with all things: a deep reverence for this incredible gift of life. Please note that
If you’d like to read it on your own (instead of listening to it), you can find the blog post here:
And if you’d like to listen to me read Eckhart’s words, you can listen to that here:
Be Here Now
To get started, we need to settle ourselves and become present. This means that we need to be here and now: the only moment that ever exists.
Before you get started, find a comfortable place where you can sit (relatively) quietly. If you aren’t able to be in a quiet space, that’s OK too. The present moment contains whatever you are experiencing right now (I’ve had some of my most profound meditations in very noisy, crowded places!).
For our first practice, we will simply take 10 conscious breaths. That’s it!
Sit or lie down in a comfortable place, and, if possible, close your eyes. Begin to breathe, and see if you can ‘watch’ your breath coming in and out of your body. If your mind starts to wander, simply bring it back to your breathing in a gentle way.
Here’s a quote on presence to get you started:
“The moment you realize you are not present, you are present. Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it. Another factor has come in, something that is not of the mind: the witnessing presence.” - Eckhart Tolle
If you feel as though you would greatly benefit from a guided practice of 10 intentional breaths, you can use this short meditation:
Open your heart
After you finish your breathing practice, you should notice a slightly increased sense of calm and peace within yourself. If you don’t, that’s OK too! Without judgement, just observe how you are feeling.
Next, we will complete a slightly longer (but still short!) meditation that will help you cultivate a feeling of gratitude from within yourself. So often we (incorrectly) believe that feelings arise as a result of external changes. We spend most of our life waiting for things outside of ourselves to change so that we can feel the way that we want to feel. We’ve been so misled! We are the holders of the key to how we feel! The feelings that we yearn to experience: freedom, relief, peace, joy, love, openness, gratitude, abundance, happiness, etc…. they are within us and each of us has the power to summon them, completely independent of the circumstances of our lives.
Please note: this does not mean that you should force happiness upon yourself amidst dire circumstances. Instead, it is less about finding elated feeling such as happiness, and more about finding a sense of stillness and acceptance and trust with life… instead of fighting against it and pushing it away. It is an allowing of life to be as it is, right now.
So, let’s cultivate a little bit of gratitude together, right now… this meditation is only about 5 minutes. If you’re familiar with it, that’s OK. I encourage you to make time to do it again as a gift to yourself:
Move a little bit:
Now, I know that not everybody feels comfortable dancing… but I’m going to (gently) encourage ALL OF YOU to get out of your comfort zone a little bit and try something new. I was one of those people who was ‘allergic’ to dancing a few years ago, and now, nearly 1,600 days later… I’m still dancing. The scientific benefits of dance are too many to name… and a recent study found that dancing was a viable and effective method for supporting the treatment of physical and mental health.
For this small exercise, I put together a short playlist … and then… I danced to it. So, the video of me hopping around my garage is below, if you want to dance ‘with me’ … you can use that option. I’m also sharing just the playlist if you’d prefer that option.
Keep in mind: you do not need to do ‘certain moves’. If you simply sit and a ‘bop your shoulders’ while allowing yourself to experience a tiny moment of levity… that will be enough. You do not need to get up and flail like crazy. This is simply about letting go just a tiny bit. See if you can get go of what your ego wants to tell you (i.e. this is dumb… this is pointless… I can’t dance… blah blah), and allow yourself a small moment of surrender through this process. In other words, surprise yourself.
Most importantly: HAVE FUN. It’s OK to have fun. This is YOUR LIFE, and you will be surprised what happens when you let go… just a tiny bit. If this playlist doesn’t suit your needs, please put together a short playlist of songs that DO excite you and dance to those songs. Make this your own, and be open to the practice, even if it is a little bit new or uncomfortable.
Here’s the playlist if you want to dance alone (highly recommend using headphones):
And here’s the video of me dancing in my garage to the entire playlist if you’d like to dance ‘with me’ (or just watch me flail around gleefully). Yes, this is how I dance when I’m alone. This is also how I dance when I’m with other people — it is purely joyful. I LOVE IT (in case you can’t tell). Please note that the music and my dancing might not appear ‘synced’, because of the delay on Zoom recordings… but, this is still a fun way to have a ‘partner’ while dancing if it helps you feel more energized about the idea:
Savor the feeling
After you move your body for a few moments, it’s time to come back to your heart for a few minutes. Think about this for a tiny moment: you exist. You are alive… you are breathing… your heart is beating. You are a living human being who has the ability to experience the joy of moving your body in dance. You have the ability to experience all of the multitudes of life on this incredible planet. Today is a day in this universe that includes you.
Now, it’s time for (another) short meditation practice — and the purpose of this second meditation is to really allow yourself to ‘marinate’ in the feeling of aliveness and the feeling of specialness of what it means to be alive. This meditation will help you see the BIG PICTURE: just how unbelievably important and rare and precious you truly are.
I’ve recommended this meditation before, but if you’ve never done it — please take the time to complete it. It will truly open your heart in a very profound and powerful way:
Noticing Nature
This is a simple way to cultivate the feeling of gratitude: to notice something in the natural world from where you are right now. There is no need to go on an epic backpacking trip. Simply glance outside at the sky… or hold a pebble… or look deeply at a plant. Set a timer for 2 minutes, and… just. observe. What can you feel without naming what you are looking at? Can you sense something that you hadn’t noticed before?
Just spend two minutes… noticing.
Gratitude for others
With this deeply profound connection to life itself, it’s now time to radiate that love towards others. Take a few moments to think about a person or persons for whom you are very grateful. Then, dedicate 10-15 minutes to sitting down and writing that person a letter. You can type this letter… write it in an e-mail… or handwrite it. If writing doesn’t feel good to you, you could record a voice memo or a short video on your phone. Do what works best for you. Really allow yourself to feel deeply profound gratefulness for the existence of this other being, and for the impact they’ve had on your life.
This is important: you do not have to send this. Of course, you can send it… and I’m sure that somebody would love to receive a heartfelt letter like this, but, you absolutely do not have to send this. The practice of gratitude is still valid and important without sending the message — and your powerful energy has still been gifted to that person, whether they read about it or not.
If you can’t think of anybody to write to, then I encourage you to write a letter of gratitude to the universe itself. Look around the room you are in right now: can you write a letter of gratitude for your kitchen? For your cat? For the rain? For the sky? If you’d like to do this as an exercise, you can send your universal gratitude letter to me, and I’ll respond (seriously):
Anastasia Allison c/o Kula Cloth PO Box 120 Granite Falls, WA 98252
See how you feel when you generate gratitude within yourself and share it with another.
Love yourself
It is sad to me that the concept of ‘loving yourself’ sometimes feels a bit cliche. In fact, loving ourselves is often overlooked and it’s a very powerful way of shifting our energy — towards all beings. It is only when we can feel love for ourselves that we are able to radiate that love outwards to others.
I did not always find it very ‘easy’ to love myself. In fact, I have (very often) been my own worst critic. Harsh judgment — that I would never extend to a friend — was cast instantaneously and without mercy upon myself. Mistakes were not permitted. Screw-ups were devastating.
This past week, I sent out an e-mail through Kula Cloth that contained a broken link. The e-mail went to around 85,000 people … and while it’s typically very helpful to be notified of an error, one of those individuals decided to write back to me… with a screen shot of the broken link page and the words (in all caps): DO BETTER.
Me of many years ago would have been crushed. She would have felt like such a failure and she would have succumbed to her shame about this mistake. As I read this e-mail from a customer, I felt a bit annoyed that somebody had approached me in such a snippy way… but, almost immediately, I realized that holding my hand against the hot stove of suffering was not going to help. What was the real situation? The real situation was that I had sent out an incorrect link. Was it fixable? Absolutely. All I needed to do was send out another e-mail with the correct link. Was anybody hurt in the process? Nope. It was just a link. Suddenly, I felt a deep sense of peace creep over my entire body: I had done nothing wrong… I was deserving of love.
I wrote an e-mail from a place of feeling love for myself — describing what had happened, and I wrote this:
If the BIGGEST screw up that you make today is cutting and pasting an incorrect link, my simple request to you is this:
Give yourself some grace. It's OK. You're doing OK. Nobody got hurt.
You're not doing anything wrong.
It's just a link. You are doing your best, and that's all that matters. Sometimes mistakes happen. Don't let insignificant bloopers define your sense of well-being of how you are. Embrace your own slip-ups and turn them into beautiful gifts!
There are people in this world right now who are struggling beyond anything that I could possibly comprehend. In the big picture of life, the little mistakes don't matter. Learn to let them go. What matters is the love that we extend to ourselves, continually, regardless of the ways in which the world has told us we have 'failed'.
So, today, you get permission to just be you -- accept yourself as you are. You don't need to DO BETTER. You are amazing, exactly as you are! You are loved, friend. Life is messy -- embrace it and go with the flow. Find the beauty that exist in all moments.
Appreciate everything - including yourself.
Within moments of sending the e-mail, I received an OUTPOURING of messages from other folks — offering unbelievably kind words… and also sharing that it was a message that they needed to hear. It was simply incredible to watch a place that could have been filled with loneliness, shame and disappointment… was suddenly awash with an infinite amount of love, kindness and beauty. It was a reminder, to me, of what happens when we love ourselves unconditionally.
So, for this next practice in the gratitude gym, I’m asking you to LOVE YOURSELF. And, really mean it. I’m going to give you a few different ways to cultivate this feeling:
Find a photograph of your younger self and spend a few moments looking at this photo. REALLY. LOOK. AT. IT. Look deeply into the soul of little you. YOU are in there… and that little child is in you. The essence of who you are is the one thing about you that is eternally unchanged.
This is the photo that I use when I do this type of an empathy and love cultivation practice:
It’s impossible for me to feel anything BUT love for this tiny version of me! Do this meditation of loving kindness, that will help you extend love towards your younger self with a powerful visualization. Here is a link to the meditation:
Write a letter to your future self — telling yourself how much you love YOU… and write down all of the things that you value and cherish about who you are as a person. Include anything and everything that feels important — really summon the feeling of love! You can choose to have the letter delivered at a future moment in time. Link to write the letter:
Finally, listen and receive:
I recorded a short reading and a simple piece on my violin, to simply share some gratitude with all of you. It’s my hope that this ‘final step’ in our Gratitude Gym will help you become the recipient of even more gratitude. Keep in mind: all of the gratitude that you’ve felt on this little gratitude gym journey is WITHIN YOU. You are the summoner. You are the creator of the gratitude. As you give, so too, shall you receive. The way that you feel as you near the end of this practice is not because of things outside of you — it’s because that infinite love lives WITHIN you at all times! We often forget that it’s there — caught up in our minds, it’s sometimes easier to notice the things that we wish were different. It’s easy to think that we need to focus on ‘doing things’ in order to change our lives… but this could not be further from the truth. Our external world does not need to change in order to ‘fix’ our internal world… instead, our internal world must remember the love that it is… and then the external world will shift to align with the good that we radiate. This, friends, is how each of us can change the world: through continually generating and finding the miracles that surround us at all times.
Apologies for any errors in the auto-captions! They are not intentional.
My favorite quote from 14th century theologian Meister Eckhart is so simple, yet so profound, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”
And so, friends, today I say thank you to each of you — for being here, for opening your hearts to the good that exists, and for sharing that love with each brand new moment in this wild experience of life. You are so very loved, friends. Thank you.
I hope that you’ve enjoyed this Gratitude Playground as much as I enjoyed filming the clips… and assembling it together. However you decide to ‘play’ with gratitude, I hope that — even in just a tiny way — this experience brings more peace and ease into your day… and reminds you how truly loved you really are.
Thank you for making and sharing this! We are bits of the universe made conscious briefly and I am profoundly grateful to be experiencing what it means to be human.