Each morning, my yoga practice begins by caring for the beings around me. It's not the placid cushion-sitting or chanting you might expect. My first act of devotion is feeding the cat. My second act of devotion is feeding the dog. In the third act, I put on the coffee for my spouse.

If you were to pass a morning with me, you probably wouldn't notice any outward expression of yoga until I turn to gratitude, which is usually around the time when I’ve got my granola and fruit in my favorite bowl. I look at the array of life-giving food, and that’s when I thank the ground.

Say it like you mean it

I think most of us were taught that if someone does something for us or gives us a gift, we should thank them. This is a marker of polite society.

That’s all well, but gratitude goes deeper than thanks. In gratitude, there's often the sense that someone has gone above and beyond for us without us having to ask. Saying "thanks" sends a positive message, but gratitude feels so much more visceral.

The best public display of gratitude I can think of requires us to time travel back to 1997, when Mister Rogers won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Emmy Awards. Before we hop in the time machine, you might want to grab a tissue… If you're so inclined, you might follow the instructions he gives to his audience.

You can get the video of Mister Rogers talking (skip to 1:25) or check out the pertinent section of the transcript:

So many people have helped me to come to this night. Some of you are here, some of you are far away, and some are even in Heaven. All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, 10 seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are? Those who have cared about you and wanted what was best for you in life. Ten seconds of silence. I’ll watch the time.

As the camera panned through the crowd, it was hard to find a dry eye.

Mister Rogers wasn't just giving a thank you. This was, Thank you, and now we’re going to have an experience in which we tap into our deeply-held and often unacknowledged connection to one another. There's some pretty profound teaching in there.

Gratitude when things are rotten

For the new readers out, I have to reiterate that spiritual bypassing (refusing to acknowledge the challenges that people face in the name of being "spiritual" or positive all the time) isn't a thing we're into over at Union Yoga. The yoga that happens here involves real people with a full range of experiences. We are practitioners who can recognize when things are difficult and cultivate a practice of gratitude at the same time.

In Paths to God: Living the Bhagavad Gita, Ram Dass describes an instance of gratitude carried out by another man named Ram Dass. In the story, Swami Ram Dass was thrown out of a temple and spent the night by the side of a river being eaten by mosquitoes. The swami said to Rama, “Oh thank you, Ram (the Hindu deity), for sending the mosquitoes to keep me awake so I can think of you.”

Adversity still existed, and undoubtedly, the mosquito bites were still itchy and miserable, but they also offered an opportunity for gratitude. In this case, this was a chance for an expression of faith, but how it looks for you may be different.

Gratitude is the tie that binds

We’ve thought about thankfulness, and we've considered gratitude in adversity, but gratefulness isn’t a thing relegated to the extremes. It’s a thing we can access all the time. Just like anything else, it gets easier with practice. The more you practice, the more you'll be able to conjure up the feeling and reap all the goodness gratitude can offer. The more you practice gratitude, the harder it is to believe you're alone.

That’s why I thank the ground when I eat my breakfast. The plants that feed me each morning sprang from the earth. There are things in the ground that help plants metabolize sunlight and water into something that becomes the fruit, nuts, and oats in my bowl. When I thank the ground, I am really thanking all of those beings and energies that are not the granola.

Then, I think of the midwifery that’s involved in plants producing food for us. Sometimes Nature provides all by herself, but sometimes it's the hand of a farmer or gardener that helps food come into the world. I thank the growers, the harvesters, and the haulers. I thank whatever forces gave me the means to get these items.

Then, my body has to do its thing with whatever I consume. I thank my body for letting me convert food into energy and energy into action. I use the energy to work, to take care of my home, to practice all these limbs of yoga, and to write to you. There’s all this connection to the world around me right in my bowl of granola before I’ve left my house or meditated or moved. I’m bound to the sun and the soil and to all of you when I allow space for gratitude.

How do we make it a practice?

The gratitude journal is a gateway into understanding the impact gratitude can have on your life. I started recording gratitude during my yoga teacher training in 2016. Teachers asked the trainees to think of three things we were grateful for at the end of each day. I found it to be a grounding exercise. It may be a thing for you to try if you're curious.

When you take class or practice at home, you might center your intention around gratitude. If you like to use affirmations, you might repeat to yourself over and over, “I am grateful.”

What about those of us for whom this sounds really inaccessible? Maybe you’re in a dark place, or maybe you’re just not the journaling/ affirmation type. That’s okay, too.

If all else fails, find gratitude in your breath. When we breathe, we’re immediately marking ourselves as being among the living. The ideal proportions of oxygen and carbon dioxide are brought into being by the way we inhale in relation to the way the trees exhale. If we’re in with the trees, then we’re pretty much in with all those other things outside of our breath that make our breath possible, and since we all breathe, we’re all alike in this way. Start with this: I am thankful for my breath.

As a closing, I just wanted to let you know that I am so grateful for all of you. You each bring light into this world, and whether you've practiced with Union Yoga just once or if you're with us every day, you've brought your energy into this community. Much gratitude to you, my friends.