The Gift of Gratitude – Recovery Edition

About

*The CD version is now available.

Track Details

01 Complete Guided Recovery Meditation [34:24 minutes]

This longer version provides you with a complete introduction and is most useful early on.

02 Core Guided Recovery Meditation [23:01 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 [29:27 minutes]

The brainwave entrainment music creates a deeply calming space to relax and integrate the guided meditation.

03 Music and Brainwave Entrainment – CD Version [21:31 minutes]

The CD music-only track is 8 minutes shorter than the digital version, simply so all 3 tracks can fit on 1 CD. It will still provide a wonderful, calming space in which to relax and integrate the guided meditation.

Full package includes:

• 3 tracks (total of 86:54 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 a hugely practical key to increased self-esteem as well as an effective antidote to shame, which lies at the very core of our impaired self-esteem and so much addictive behavior. Simply put, shame is one of the most painful human emotions, and virtually all forms of addiction have this shame as a common root source. The implication is clear: increase self-esteem by reducing shame, and strengthen the essential resources required for a successful life and lifetime recovery—physically, psychologically, and spiritually.

Which brings us to this current project, The Gift of Gratitude – Recovery Edition. Just as in practicing forgiveness (of oneself and others), so with dedicated gratitude practice, self-esteem can be significantly improved. As the chains of shame begin to loosen, we find we can experience deep self-forgiveness and also move towards forgiving others. This does not happen overnight, but is a lifetime journey that is filled with profound love and gratitude.

And just as shame cannot coexist in the presence of gratitude, neither can addiction. Active addiction and its accompanying shame would have us believe that we are not deserving of happiness, owing to the perception that we are essentially flawed, broken, and defective. The daily practice of gratitude shows us a new way, transforming not only our prior attitudes, but our very life at its core.

In the spirit of practicing behaviors—like self-compassion in iAwake’s The Freedom of Forgiveness—here with The Gift of Gratitude – Recovery Edition, we provide you with specific skills for daily gratitude practice. By practicing these meditations, you can redirect the “ship”—most importantly, your dedicated recovery—in a radically more reliable and positive direction.

Dr. Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, is a leader in the field of gratitude study. Perhaps the number one thing Dr. Emmons has discovered is: gratitude reduces stress. And what do you think the number one trigger is for relapse in addiction? If you guessed “stress,” you’re spot on! Perhaps now you can begin to imagine just how powerful this gratitude-directed recovery practice can be, reducing our physical, spiritual, and emotional stress on a daily basis. 

In The Gift of Gratitude – Recovery Edition, we suggest concrete guidelines for your taking just a few minutes each day (no more than 10-15 minutes, to be precise) 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. Is our personal recovery worth that small investment in time each day? We surely believe so. The palpable emotional and spiritual benefits which accrue with this daily practice are definitely their own greatest reward!

Is this gratitude practice worth your time and effort? Absolutely. Because at this stage in your life, your recovery is your number one focus. More important than your job, your career, your relations, your family, etc. If this sounds radical, remember: if you do not embark on this journey of sustained recovery, you will, guaranteed, lose all of the above.

Put your recovery first, be grateful, and the other issues and dimensions of your life will be greatly improved and enriched and become another subject of your daily gratitude practice.

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 fueling an active mid-life 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 plagued me. I needed skillful means for accepting myself as I was, not as I imagined others needed me to be, in order that they 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 forgiveness 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. 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, so often including our various attempted antidotes via addictive behaviors? Speaking personally, my pervasively negative mindset ended up being too heavy a burden for me to bear; hence, I fell into regularly numbing out and/or getting high, through alcohol and other drugs, 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. The “cherry on top” is that this practice, which includes a daily inventory of all recovery-oriented behaviors and attitudes, may serve you, as it has me for over ten years now, as a valuable foundation on your own path of committed sobriety. I can vouch for it, and hope 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, including your working it creatively into whatever recovery program you currently are engaged in.