Norway's greatest Yoga Festival brought yoga practitioners from all over the world together for a week of joy, reflection, and connection. With more than 30 inspiring instructors, the program was bursting with activities all circling around the topic of gratitude. What you’ll read is just a small glimpse into an indescribable depth that was created through both movement and meaningful dialogue.
Photography by Gloria Jimenez
Discussions on Thankfulness
What does it mean to be thankful? The question, thrown like a fishing line into the sea of curious yoga participants. Scott Johnson, cofounder of Stillpoint Yoga London, and Daniel Simpson, author of the book “he Truth of Yoga, lead today’s gratitude dialogue and are eager to see what surfaces.
“To say ‘thank you’ and ‘please,’” someone in the crowd says. “It’s a practice,” someone else chimes in. “To write daily into my gratitude journal that contains everything I’m thankful for,” a third voices. The discussion leaders nod in unison. “Those are definitely forms of expressing gratitude,” Johnson agrees. The brain does, after all, create our reality through the filters we look through.
The more we sharpen our senses to focus on moments, people, and things that make us thankful, the easier it is to cultivate gratitude. “But if I’m always searching for the good, doesn’t that start to feel a little too forced?” asks another yoga student. “Isn’t there a fine line between gratitude and toxic positivity?”
Photography by Jenny Kostoglacis
Daniel Simpson strongly agrees. “Especially in the world of yoga, where feelings of kindness and openness are promoted, a sense of pressure can arise to always be thankful,” the author clarifies. “We need to carefully differentiate between what gratitude means and what forced positivity is. So, let me ask you again. What is gratitude at its core?” Once more, voices echo through the sunny shala as the crowd brainstorms until they come to a conclusion.
More than words, more than a practice or a checklist, gratitude is a feeling.
A sensation that one experiences and not just a word. It involves genuine appreciation, recognition of the positive aspects of life, and active consciousness of acknowledging the efforts of others. Robert A. Emmons, the world's leading expert on gratitude, defines gratitude like this:
“The positive and warm emotion we feel when we consciously perceive something good in our lives and the realization that the source of this goodness lies outside ourselves.”
Photography by Gloria Jimenez
What Prevents Us From Gratitude?
The world spins too fast.
Or too slow.
We’re stressed, we’re bored.
Nothing to be grateful for.
“Our ego plays a significant role in preventing us from feeling gratitude. Especially that sense of entitlement that something should be a particular way,” one of the yoga instructors shares before her Yin class. Maybe we struggle with feeling thankfulness because we forgot how to look for gratitude in simplicity. Nowadays, there’s always something to improve, always something that could be better, and the current state? That’s just not enough.
So when is enough enough?
What does enough even mean to us? Is it measurable? With us being such dynamic beings, “enough” struggles to be a firm concept. What was enough for us five years ago might not even come close to enough today.
“All I ask of you is to hold this question during your practice. Do you really need to push to the maximum of an asana? Why do you force yourself to do that? Because it ‘should’ look a certain way? Let your ego go and arrive where your body needs you to be. ”
Photography by Gloria Jimenez
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