Reviewing how much I have to be grateful for makes me feel better. I love and need these messages. – Abigail
The Gift of Gratitude
"If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough." – Meister Eckhart
Gratitude: imagine how powerful its daily practice might be for you. In The Gift of Gratitude, Dr. Bob Weathers provides concrete guidelines, powerfully enhanced by Leigh Spusta’s binaural entrainment, for you to take just a few minutes each day to consciously remind yourself of all you are thankful for.
- One of the most effective ways to reduce stress, hence free up your optimal self
- Enjoy customized binaural entrainment music as backdrop to building your “muscles” of appreciation and overall positivity
- Begin focusing your mind and heart on the blessings of every day
A beautiful, relaxing, and joyous invitation to center into gratitude and abundance. – Lisa Celentano, MA, LMHC
Listen to the 3-Minute Sample Now
Use of headphones will provide the most optimal experience. To fully experience the potential of this program, please get comfortable, close your eyes, and relax for the next 3 minutes. Allow the guided meditation to immerse you in a deep sense of relaxation and peace…
Don’t be fooled – this is not just beautiful music – it is the design and technology infused in the soundtrack that evokes the deep relaxation response, along with Dr. Bob Weathers’ wise and gentle guidance.
The Gift of Gratitude guides you to:
- Consciously experience thankfulness for your life NOW
- Express gratitude in multiple domains of your day-to-day life: physical and security needs, relationships, contributing to the world, and spiritual growth
- Replace the brain’s negativity bias with positivity and learned optimism
- Accept blessings in your life which effectively counter earlier shaming messages
- A more profound and consistent connection to joy and flow
The Gift of Gratitude: A Living Practice for Dr. Bob Weathers [01:38]
Additional Info
About
Track Details
01 Complete Guided Meditation (31:57 minutes)
This longer version provides you with a complete introduction and is most useful early on.
02 Core Guided Meditation (16 minutes)
This more condensed version will serve you well in your daily practice, after first becoming familiar with the practice.
03 Music and Brainwave Entrainment (29:26 minutes)
The brainwave entrainment music creates a deeply calming space to relax and integrate the guided meditation.
Full package includes:
- 3 tracks (total of 77:23 minutes)
- Tracks accessible on the free iAwake Technologies app for iOS and Android
- Downloadable audio files available in MP3, WAV, FLAC, and ALAC formats
- User Guide (downloadable PDF)
- Ongoing support (responsive email, active Facebook forum, FAQs, videos, audios)
About the Tracks from the Creator, Dr. Bob Weathers
In my previous collaboration with iAwake, The Freedom of Forgiveness, we introduced self-compassion as one hugely practical key to increased self-esteem, as well as an effective antidote to shame, which lies at the very core of impaired self-esteem. Simply put, shame is the most stressful human emotion, and virtually all forms of human suffering have, at their root, this common source. The implication is clear: increase self-esteem by reducing shame, and you successfully address much of what ails you—physically, psychologically, even spiritually.
Which brings us to this current project, The Gift of Gratitude. Just as in practicing forgiveness (of oneself and others), so with dedicated gratitude practice, self-esteem may be significantly improved, and shame effectively managed and overcome. In fact, shame cannot coexist in the presence of gratitude; they are mutually exclusive. Shame tries to convince us that we are never deserving of happiness, owing to our being essentially flawed, broken, or defective. Gratitude knows better!
In the spirit of practicing behaviors—like self-compassion in iAwake’s The Freedom of Forgiveness, here with The Gift of Gratitude, we provide you with specific skills for daily gratitude practice. You can, by practicing these meditations, redirect the “ship”—in actuality, your very life—in a radically more positive direction.
Dr. Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, has done more research on gratitude than virtually anyone else on the planet. Across his findings is one, highly consistent theme: gratitude reduces stress. You can perhaps now begin to imagine just how powerful this daily practice of consciously reminding yourself of things for which you are grateful can be.
In The Gift of Gratitude we suggest concrete guidelines for your taking just a few minutes each day to “fight the power” of shame and other stressors by displacing them with heartfelt gratitude for who you are, and for all the blessings you have in your life.
You will learn here how to say to yourself:
“I am grateful on a physical level for my overall health, exercise, wholesome diet, sleep, and all other ways I have for reducing stress in my life, including this exercise!
I am also grateful for all forms of material security, including a roof over my head, food to eat, and those personal possessions which bring me the most enjoyment.
I am grateful, in terms of relational security, for those that love me most, and with whom I share my most heartfelt closeness.
I am grateful, in terms of self-esteem, for all those opportunities today which help me express my gifts; for those individuals in my life who offer the strongest support for my expressing these gifts; and for my experience of pride and satisfaction at being able to manifest genuine competence in exercising those gifts.
Finally, I am grateful for the ongoing opportunities in my life to grow, to build new skills, and to change ever for the better, including the chance to live to my very highest potential, to truly express my deepest sense of life’s purpose and meaning.”
Having once tried the above instructions for gratitude practice, we encourage you wholeheartedly to adapt and modify them at will to fit you best—and then come back to them tomorrow, and the next day, giving less than 10 minutes a day to intentionally pause and take personal stock, giving thanks. After just 7 days of consistent, daily practice, if you still don’t find any use in it, then…simply…stop.
We doubt you will.
Amor Fati: How the Stoics Inspired Dr. Bob Weathers’ Gratitude Practice [04:24]
The Story of the Development of The Gift of Gratitude from the Creator, Dr. Bob Weathers
Owing to my first-hand acquaintanceship with personal shame, and the huge impact it had on my life (including feeding and fueling a mid-life, active addiction), I felt impelled to find deep-level antidotes that might be effective for managing, and hopefully, reducing, the over-achievement and placating of others which seemed to plague me. In other words, I needed skillful means for accepting myself as I was, not as I imagined others needed me to be, that is, in order that they then might love me.
My previous project for iAwake, The Freedom of Forgiveness, summarizes the self-compassion practice that serves as one central support for gradually lifting the burden of shame and unrelenting self-expectation which had driven me for an entire lifetime. But as valuable as that practice proved to be for me (and still is), I realized something more was needed. This is where The Gift of Gratitude comes in.
What I discovered, quite organically and over time, was that when I stopped to “count my blessings” every morning, there grew for me a second significant counter to the shame and self-judgment which had been my daily companion deep into adulthood. You see: I began to put together, from the inside out, that anyone who experiences as many blessings as I do, and intentionally notes them—even through thick and thin—could not be so bad or flawed or unworthy after all!
Psychology talks about cognitive dissonance, where we come to believe something that we practice owing to sheer repetition. The old saying, “Garbage in, garbage out,” comes to mind. And I was, in many ways, quite expert at that by the time I finally encountered gratitude practice as an alternative. In fact, I might replace the earlier saying with an updated version, after over a decade of daily gratitude practice: “Grace in, grace out.” What do I mean here?
Our brains are wired to be on the look-out for trouble. (Evolutionary biologists call this our built-in “negativity bias.”) But what if, at least in the case of those suffering from chronic shame or low self-esteem, this is a case of a potentially good thing taken to a not-so-good extreme? Namely, my negative mindset ended up being too heavy a burden to bear; hence, I fell into regularly numbing out and/or getting high to escape such pain. Can you relate?
Whether you have suffered as severely as I did, or not: might it serve you to consciously train your mind (and change your brain!) to counterbalance any over-negativity with a healthy dose of positivity? If so, gratitude may be just the ticket for you. It surely has been for me.
A daily dose of gratitude helps reduce stress, certainly reduces shame, and increases joy and engagement in life. I can vouch for it, and hope that you might find the same out for yourself. Blessings to you as you move forward in building this orientation more deeply into your own life!
Dr. Bob Weathers on Gratitude’s Pure Grace [01:13]
How to Use
Download the iAwake App
First, download the FREE iAwake App, login with your email and all your tracks will be right there. You can stream them, but we’d advise downloading them (from within the app) to ensure an interruption-free experience, and to be able to listen offline.
How to Use The Gift of Gratitude from the Creator, Dr. Bob Weathers
I recommend setting aside just 10 minutes a day to initially apply, then deepen into this transformative practice. Just as doing a single push-up, or practicing five-finger piano exercises for one day only, will not build your strength or musical ability significantly, so dipping into this gratitude practice for a time or two will scarcely make a difference. You might in fact enjoy your first experience of it, and that’s a good start. But what will make all the difference—in fact change your entire life—is dedicating regular time (I recommend daily) to the practice.
This I can promise: if you develop a sturdy foundation in regular gratitude practice (ideally, 7 days a week; though with grace for when you might miss a day), then you will have built into your brain and body a network of responses that will serve you reliably, day-in and day-out, as well as be forevermore accessible when you run into any specific negativity in your life, whether outer or inner. You’ll then be able to apply the technique PRN: as needed. And with certain success.
If you are in this for the long haul, and I surely hope you are, your investment in this practice, building patiently over time, will return long-term dividends beyond your wildest dreams. Guaranteed!
Final note: Repetition here does not equal redundancy. Feel free to repeat whatever arises organically inside. Go where the energy is on any given day. You are in no hurry here, nor is there any reason to move the various components of daily gratitude by rote. One key, then, is to allow yourself to truly feel each gratitude you express.
My long-term supervisor, mentor, and friend, Bonnie Badenoch taught me years ago: “Bob, you can change your brain’s neuronal pathways with consistent practice.” I took her advice to heart—and you can, too! Imagine that you might, yourself, create a brand-new default network in your brain and mind, one that orients ever more toward genuinely felt positivity…and gratitude.
Blessings on every step of the way…
Adapt and Customize: How to Use The Gift of Gratitude Tracks [04:05]
Technology
Brainwave Patterns Targeted
Leigh Spusta has targeted the lower alpha frequency of 8 Hz, matching the Schumann Resonance, which is one of the primary fundamental Earth frequencies. When in resonance with this targeted rhythm, the listener can experience a sense of connectedness, in the flow of and in balance with life, from which a natural feeling of gratitude can emerge.
Alpha waves can amplify your clarity and imagination and boost your performance and creativity. They are even said to be the “artist brain waves,” where new ideas and solutions are sparked and you connect to your inner playful state of clarity and wisdom. Alpha helps you become fully present in a state of multidimensional awareness, which increases problem-solving capacity, and you may even experience a sense of deep connection, belonging, and flow.
Soundtrack Details from the Creator, Leigh Spusta
The sounds and melodic/harmonic choices that I made are a reflection of Bob’s soothing energy and kind personality, that I intuitively used as a guide to work with. I knew that the music for this meditation needed to encourage an openness of heart and a calm mind. It was my goal that the music and Bob’s meditation should work synergistically to deliver a powerful experience, ushering the listener into the feeling state of gratitude.
I used a combined approach to create the entrainment music for these tracks. I relied heavily on psycho-acoustic methods, the choice of tones, textures, and melodic phrasing, in order to elicit the psycho-emotional state of resonance with gratitude. The music is tuned to match the Schumann Resonance – approximately 8 Hz, a low alpha brainwave target, and this effect is doubled by the occurrence of natural binaural beat rhythms. This music is designed to guide the listener into a feel good – at home – at rest – yet alert – state of being, and of course this experience is much further elicited by Bob’s fantastic guided meditation.
Creator
Dr. Bob Weathers is a highly regarded addiction educator, recovery coach, author, and public speaker.
Over the course of his professional career, “Dr. Bob” has provided tens of thousands of hours of therapeutic counseling and recovery coaching to satisfied clients. He has also committed over four decades to teaching, training, and inspiring graduate-level mental health providers at several southern California universities, including helping to develop their nationally accredited addiction studies certificate and mindfulness-based clinical training coursework. His two most recent books on addiction recovery are currently in press with Cambridge University Press.
Leigh Spusta, creator of Alpha Arising, Forgetting Not to Remember, Gamma 40, Deep Delta, Deeply Theta, iAwake Mini Meditations, Solar Infusion, and the sound/entrainment tracks for The Gift of Gratitude – Recovery Edition, The Gift of Gratitude, Morning Ritual, Call of the Heart; In, Out & Through Vol. I; Kundalini (In, Out & Through Vol. II); and Deep Recovery, is a composer, hypnotherapist, and Certified Therapeutic Imagery Facilitator, specializing in the use of sound frequencies to produce deep, relaxing trance states.
His work has become internationally recognized and is enjoyed by thousands around the world. Leigh has worked with several therapists in Los Angeles, producing a variety of therapeutic audio CDs, and has been hired as a consultant and producer working with companies in the United Kingdom. He also works with the HMI College of Hypnotherapy and the American Hypnosis Association as Director of Media Production.
Leigh combines his talents as a musician and his knowledge of hypnosis and related states, in an effort to pioneer new approaches to creating rich, resonant soundscapes for greater efficacy in healing and meditative products. Leigh is the developer of the proprietary PsimatiX™ therapeutic approaches and technologies.
Dr. Bob has very skillfully infused gratitude practice with depth right from the start. The experience has been most excellent due to his absolutely brilliant presentation on the extended track. From the opening line he sets a tone that this is indeed serious, yet his style of presentation is very relaxed and comforting. Dr. Bob has an abundance of healthy blue-meme energy that is so lacking within the US today. It’s very refreshing and inspiring. Dr. Bob’s got a real talent for delivering a message in a pleasing, gentle way that cannot be taught. – Brian Romine
The program helps build a very pervasive and habitual sense of gratitude and focus on gratitude. The process has at least two major influences on my emotional state: First, after finishing, I experience a profound calm and happy state of gratitude and appreciation. This lasts for longer and longer periods as I continue daily practice. Second, during the day I find after stressful events I reorient my thoughts toward gratitude and appreciation. It is like a homeostasis reset wherein an expanded state of gratitude is my habitual default pattern. – Michael