Gratitude Meditation
Gratitude is a state of mind where one exudes the feeling of thankfulness, to express appreciation for someone or something and eventually to return such kindness. And to impart gratitude into your daily meditation, you will learn how to be thankful for both the good and the bad experiences you had gone through in life.

“I would like to encourage you to adopt gratitude meditation into your daily meditation routine
as I found that it is a very powerful tool that can uplift my emotional, mental and spiritual
well-being.”
Today, I would like to share with you what gratitude is about and how we can impart gratitude into our daily meditation.
First, gratitude is a state of mind where one exudes the feelings of being thankful, readiness to express appreciation towards someone/something and to return kindness.
In my perspective, gratitude is a form of consciousness that is expressed through the feelings of appreciation felt by and/or similar positive responses shown by the recipient of kindness, gifts, help, and favours towards the giver.
Hence through gratitude meditation, it will cultivate your state of mind where you’re consciously mindful and focus on all the positive that life has bestowed on us , while bringing forth the feeling of being thankful, appreciation and ready to return kindness.
Having said that, we must first be grateful for all things that life has bestowed on us, even with negative and unpleasant experiences. As for my initial journey towards self-realization, I noticed it was easy to express gratitude to all positive things that have been given to me in life.
Each time I perform my daily meditation, I visualize all the positive that I have, starting by appreciating the present i.e. home, family, and material things. In addition, when I dwell on the gratitude state of mind into my meditation, slowly my state of mind and visualization will expand to the beautiful memories of my childhood and growing up days.
In the moment of gratitude, I can never be thankful enough to my grandmother and my parents who have loved me and looked after me when I was still a child.
The memories of my beloved grandmother were the most intense when I first began gratitude meditation as I felt the intense love and care from her since I was a child.
At times, the intense energy generated from these memories through the feelings of intense gratitude made me weep but I would feel so much love and joy pouring out of my heart. And in this state of mind, I am contented, happy and blissful. I am grateful for the life experiences and the love and care that had been given to me.
Moving into the first year after I began my journey towards self-realization, I found myself being able to meditate and contemplate deeper in my life experiences – the gratitude meditation had changed me to become grateful even towards negative and painful life experiences which include failure, loss and arguments.
However, don’t get me wrong as I am not saying I want more negative experience in my life, but a state of mind where I am able to contemplate negative life experiences and turn them into wisdom and knowledge where they allow me to gain a deeper understanding of life as whole. With deeper understanding, love and compassion will naturally arise and that was when I could understand why I had gone through the negative experiences. Again, without pain and life’s challenges, I wouldn’t be able to understand what true love and compassion are.
And without the negative experiences, I will not be able to learn the wisdom of forgiving, letting go and understanding. In that sense, I am grateful for the negative life experiences bestowed on me in this journey to realize once again who I truly am.

As an example, there was a time when my mother and I were constantly clashing due to ego, and through the heated arguments, her words were very hurtful. And prior to my self-realization, I would often react with words that will pinpoint her wrongdoings and attitude
which only resulted in more arguments and hurt.
However, upon picking up gratitude meditation, I was able to shift my mindset and started to focus on my mom’s positive attributes – her love and care and how she had nurtured me as I was growing up. That said, the more I delved deeper into meditation, I realized why my mom reacted in such a manner that would hurt my feelings.
This is because I had never shown her enough gratitude for all the love and care she gave me. Her feelings of not being appreciated birthed the pain and ego clashes. Today, I do not react in ways that would end up in another argument but instead I am more conscious and
mindful to show appreciation through words.

I would like to encourage you to adopt gratitude meditation into your daily meditation routine as I found that it is a very powerful tool that can uplift my emotional, mental and spiritual well-being. As a result of positive emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being, I realized that
my physical body also transformed to be lighter and healthier resulting in lightness of body and clarity of mind.
Through deep gratitude meditation, one can also cultivate the seed of wisdom and knowing through understanding, appreciating, forgiving, and letting go. Gratitude Meditation can heal my inner wounds, and detox toxins out of my body-mind-soul.
At the same time, I realized also that the more I was thankful over small and every little thing, the more kindness I received as well. It is utterly amazing!
Here are some tips to practice and cultivate gratitude meditation:
1. Sit in meditation with the right posture and mindful of the diaphragmatic breathing
2. Turn on calm, light, and easy music
3. Close your eyes, continue with mindful breathing, and total relaxation
4. With total peace, visualize all the good that you are experiencing that gave you a sense and feeling of gratitude
5. Continue to dive deeper into the gratitude feelings by saying “Thank You, Thank You”
and “Thank You” while visualizing all the gifts and good that you are receiving or have received
6. Relax, smile, and open your eyes when you are done
Michael Teh, 10th October 2020.
Michael Teh is a meditation coach devoted to a personal mission of awakening more people to higher consciousness. He teaches self-realization through meditation, qigong, yoga and philosophy. Michael Teh Signature Workshop: The Essence of Life Series explores meditation as a powerful tool to realize our true potential. Michael has designed multiple workshops in this series to support his participants’ self-realization journey. Workshop Series 1 is currently running every few months on-ground in Kuala Lumpur, titled “Knowledge of The Self and Fundamentals of Meditation. Be sure to follow Michael’s social media channels and website for more updates: FB: https://www.facebook.com/