Thank Your Body
Happy Thanksgiving week, Vibe Tribe!
This month, we have been concentrating on our theme of Thanks-LIVING - embodying gratitude and shifting our focus towards kindness, compassion and living lives awake, aware and in full recognition of the gifts around us.
During this week leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday, most of us tend to reflect upon the things, people, places and experiences in our lives for which we are most grateful. We thank our friends and families for the love, comfort and support that they give to us so selflessly throughout the year. We thank our community for allowing us to live and work and thrive in harmony. We focus on how grateful we are for what we have, for what we do and for with whom we are fortunate enough to spend our time.
This Thanksgiving, we want you to remember one more thing for which to be grateful, and we want to help you to thank it fully.
Your body.
That may sound strange, but it is actually one of the most important gifts we have, yet when was the last time you thanked it?
Your body does so much for you.
It allows you to experience this world in all its splendor. It allows you to see, do, feel, touch, taste, hear, smell and LIVE all of the most amazing, magical, wondrous things around. Your heart keeps beating, your lungs keep breathing, all of your systems work together in ways we don’t even think about to allow you to run, jump, dance, eat, love and live in this world.
Interestingly enough, most of the time that people focus on their bodies during the Thanksgiving holidays, it is with negativity. It is with fear over how a big meal will affect it. It is with concern over the impact that a day’s rest from our exercise routine might have. It is to judge or to compare.
This year, Tribe, we want to help you change that. This year we want to help you to focus on everything that your body does, everything that it allows you to do, and everything that your body means beyond aesthetics. This year, we want to help you thank your body.
The most effective way to thank your body is to listen to it. Your body speaks to you all of the time, if only you allow yourself to listen to it. It speaks in nudges and whispers, aches and urges, comfort and satisfaction. Your body adjusts and reacts and is constantly communicating with you as to what it needs. We urge you to listen to it. To honor it. To allow it to guide you. It won’t steer you wrong.
Another very important way of thanking your body, especially those of you who are active, is to stretch. Your body, even on rest days, does so much - it is in constant motion, lifting, moving, running, jumping, dancing, twisting, turning and making every movement needed for you to accomplish all of the tasks, large and small, necessary each and every day. Even when you are sitting for long stretches, your body is busy, active and engaged. Your muscles, bones and joints work hard and stretching is a way to thank them. And, trust us, when you thank them, they will thank you back by continuing to allow you to achieve everything you want and need to do.
Living a life of gratitude is a beautiful thing, and can have many positive effects. But in order to truly give gratitude outwardly, you cannot forget that it all begins with you. Your body is your ally. It is your home. It is the vehicle through which you can demonstrate your love, kindness, compassion and gratitude to the world around you. Your body has one, singular purpose in this world - to keep you alive. Your body wants you to do amazing things - and its goal is to give you the means with which to do them.
So this Thanksgiving season, when giving thanks for the people and things in your life that matter the most, we urge you to remember the thing that allows you to experience all the rest. Your body is amazing. And for it, and for you, we say Thank You.
