What is the premise of Body ThankYouology? When you think about it, our body OUR life possible. Our dreams, our creativity, our hopes, our feelings, our thoughts, our abilities, our gifts, our memories. Without our body, we could not enjoy all of the feelings and experiences. SO, the question is, how well are we taking care of this body that gives us life? How much attention do we give it? How much appreciation do we express directly to our body. We may say “thank you” for our health or “thank you” for our well-being. What about getting specific? Have you said “thank you” to your thumb lately? It does a lot you know.  

It is my belief that with a conscious practice of telling your body thank you, you can benefit in many ways:

• Reduce mind chatter
• Decrease pain, depression illness and disease
• minimize doctor visits
• Increase happiness and joy
• Enhance productivity at home, work and play
• Live life more abundantly

Here are five favorite ways to tell your body thank you:

Thank You Body Talk

Imagine you are comforting a child. Your voice is soft. You are offering soothing words. You are gentle. Use this same approach with your body. Feel the preciousness of your body. Admire its strength, its fragileness. Be sensitive to what your body likes and doesn’t. Feel compassion. Encourage it to succeed. Celebrate enthusiastically your body’s accomplishments such as maintaining a new exercise routine or diet program.

Thank You Thoughts–Make a list from A– Z of adjectives that begin with the same letter as each part of your body. For example: adorable arm, beautiful brain, and lovely liver. Once you have created your A – Z list of adjectives, use it to praise your body with thank you affirmations. A simple example is: thank you happy heart. Recite your customized affirmations during any activity such as walking, climbing stairs, driving the car and doing household chores. Sing your thank you affirmations if you are so inclined. If you enjoy writing poetry, try thank you rhymes like this one: Thank you to my exciting eyes and thank you to my precious pancreas—you are such a prize!

Thank You Words–Saying thank you to your body also means paying
attention to what you say about it such as the phrase, pain in the neck, bad back or
that makes me sick. Another worth omitting in conversation is: I would give my right arm to have (fill in the blank). I won’t trade my body parts for anything and I prefer to live for something rather than to die for it. Even though these may be figures of speech, your body responds to what it hears.

Thank You Actions–Two of my favorite thank you actions are laughter yoga (see video on Coaching page) and skin brushing. Use your A—Z adjectives to say thank you—up close and personal—to each part of your body when you gently scrub your skin with a soft, dry brush before showering. Or, say thank you to your body as you lovingly pat yourself all over from head to toe. Do this daily and see what happens.

Thank You Living–Lifestyle choices provide many opportunities to express appreciation to your body. Are you eating a nutritious diet, taking daily walks and drinking lots of water? Is there a balance between the demands of your day to keep stress, fear and anxiety out of your mind, body and spirit? Are you conscious of your breath and do you take time to simply breathe? “Spiritus” means breath in Latin. Slow, deep breaths are the ultimate in saying thank you to your body.

How does drinking water relate to the art of saying thank you? Let me count the ways. For starters, there are four:

• Drink 2 glasses of water after waking up to activate the internal organs.
• Drink one glass of water 30 minutes before a meal to help digestion.
• Drink one glass of water before taking a bath to help lower blood pressure.
• Drink one glass of water before going to bed to avoid stroke or heart attack.

Imagine saying thank you to your internal organs, digestion, blood pressure and heart with the simple act of drinking water. Imagine how your body will react with regular consumption of water. Imagine feeling improved health and well-being. Imagine that!

In Pete Egoscue’s book, Pain Free PC, he talks about the importance of water to lubricate the muscles particularly anyone who uses a computer for any length of time. He likens it to a manufacturing plant and how water is used to reduce the friction. That is how it works in the body. You can better manage those long hours at the keyboard with regular intake of water. He claims water to be a major preventative for carpal tunnel and other ailments caused by repetitive use. Now we have five reasons to say thank you to our body with water.

There are of course obvious reasons to drink water–to avoid dehydrating and to keep the kidneys flushed out. Easier to drink plenty of water than to have a kidney transplant!

Body ThankYouology is the term I use for saying thank you to the body. I believe when we have a more intimate relationship with our body through gratitude and appreciation, we develop greater awareness and sensitvity to its needs. Just this morning I poked my thumb with the point of a knife…ouch! My immediate reaction was to stop and apologize to my thumb, request forgiveness and express my appreciation and love for my thumb. This afternoon there is NO pain.

Give some thought to ways you can say thank you to your body. If you haven’t been a big water drinker in the past, see if you are up for an experiment. Let me know what happens. Thanks so much!

Stephen Paletta is the founder of Give Back, a non-profit organization conceived and built around the idea of empowering people to start their own foundation and then giving them more money to give back to the causes they care most about. GiveBack was launched in 2010 with the help of star athletes and Mission Skincare co-founders Serena Williams and Steve Nash, who wanted to be a model for doing good on and off the field of play. GiveBack was built to make everyone a big giver.

I have always been a big fan of non-profit organizations, especially since I worked for years as a fund development director. It was always my goal to create giving opportunities that offered win-win and even win-win-win outcomes. The concept of Give Back has that kind of thinking behind it. Anyone can register their own personal foundation. Mine is called the StarHeart Foundation in honor of my book, The Story of the StarHearts. I can put money in the account any time, and donate it to a charity, any time. Other people can make contributions as well.

An added feature of the organization is that there are registered businesses and retailers who will give a portion of your purchases to your foundation. Also, a couple getting married can set up a foundation and receive donations in lieu of gifts. Imagine school children learning about giving back through this opportunity.

Give Back is a new organization with plenty of potential for implementing more great ideas especially with the power-house possibilities social media can provide. I may not be able to come up with them, however, I sure appreciate the creative thinking to date.

If you like the idea of having your own charitable foundation without all the red-tape normally required to set up a non-profit, check out Give Back and see if it is a match for you. I think it’s another super way to say thank you!

Here is a Top Ten list of easy-to-teach thank you’s for children of all ages:

1. To be thankful for their home–a place to live, to be safe.

2. To be grateful for their family–to express that gratitude on a daily basis with verbal thank you’s and written thank you’s to each other.

3. To appreciate the weather, whatever shows up.

4. To say thank you to their body with good exercise, eating healthy food and getting enough rest.

5. To appreciate those who teach them–teachers at school, neighbors, a relative, parents and others in their lives.

6. To be grateful for the big and little things–spend time talking about them such as appreciating the breeze, acknowledging simple conveniences and how wonderful it is to hear and see.

7. To express their appreciation for what they have with service to others–around the house, at school, in the neighborhood and for their community.

8. To say thank you to strangers when a service is provided for them–the bus driver, the clerk at a store, the server at a restaurant.

9. To be grateful for the people who provide the food they eat–the farmers, the truckers, the grocery store employees.

10. To keep a thank you journal.  Click Here for sample page.

ThankYouology offers two items to acknowledge children for their efforts to be a ThankYouologist–certificates and buttons.

Have fun and thanks for being a ThankYouologist!

She suggests imagining what the headlines would say in three months or six months as a prompt to help people consider new possibilities and give substance to their dreams. Todd emphasizes the importance of being specific, to include details in the headlines and to visualize photos as well.

Well, you can bet where my mind went with that idea. Yes, indeed…I was picturing headlines online and in newspapers across the country announcing how townspeople, companies, churches, schools and businesses were saying thank you to others. I pictured headlines tabulating the number of thank you’s. I saw the media tracking and interviewing ThankYouologists to find out their latest acknowledgment activity. Can you picture it? Can you see the interviews on You Tube? I can!

Next week I am meeting with an elementary school teacher to see what kind of ThankYouology campaign she can incorporate in her classroom this year. Knowing that teachers are required to follow the state standards for their lesson plans, I am visualizing some of my classroom thank you activities matching those requirements. I see a headline that reads: Bathgate Elementary School Teacher Inaugurates First Classroom Thank You Campaign. I picture students awarded ThankYouologist buttons and certificates. I visualize parents grateful for the Thank You themes in their child’s classroom. All this and more.

Another friend told me how her minister is going to use ThankYouology as the book of the month for November. I see headlines there too. I picture churches across the nation reading about the success of the program at this church. And I say thank you for all the awareness that is happening with expressing gratitude and appreciation.

See what happens when I read something that ignites my mind and heart? I am grateful for the positive spirit that takes one simple idea and expands it, customizes it, and incorporates it into my thoughts, words and actions. I am grateful to Shawna Todd for what she does and that she wrote about it–spreading her message. Now I am sharing an idea triggered from hers. See how it works?

What can you ignite around you with your thoughtsd, words and actions? If nothing comes to mind, just say thank you for inspiration. I know…picture a headline about it!

I know, I wrote a book entitled ThankYouology so this awe at the moment may sound odd.  Believe me, I have times where recognize I can beef up my gratitude and appreciation bank account.  I remind myself that we have more than 60,000 thoughts each day and we don’t always put them to the best use.

This afternoon I picked up my 85-year old friend from the hospital after spending the day getting a blood transfusion.  She does this every 2 – 3 weeks to stay alive.  She goes in feeling like a dying flower and comes out 5 – 6 hours later blooming.  We sat and visited a bit.  ”There is so much I want to learn,” she said.  I marveled at her appreciation for life especially when her hearing and vision require mechanical devices.   Walking is also a challenge with severe spinal stenosis.  Still, she is telling me how grateful she is to live each day.

Earlier in the day, someone told me about a book, Appreciation Marketing. Here again, ThankYouology has many suggestions for incorporating the art of saying thank you in a business setting.  Yet, I am always grateful to other writers for their efforts to spread the good word about gratitude.

And so it goes, as I sit here on this lovely Friday afternoon, I am grateful for the opportunity to write my thoughts about appreciation.  To remind me, and anyone who reads this, how there is so much around us for which we can be grateful.  Just take a moment and think about it.  I know you will come up with your own list.  That’s what I am going to do right now.  Thanks for joining me!

Sunday morning bright and early I put a load of clothes in the washer.  It consisted of an assortment of towels–hand and bath–and wash cloths that were given to me.  The colors ranged from marine blue to light yellow and white.  Without thinking, I “added” a few pairs of undies, a pair of capris and two t-shirts one of which is my favorite from Cabo San Lucas–a colorful screen-printed hummingbird on a flower splashed upon a WHITE background.

I think you know where this is going and it is.  The blue towels must not have been washed before because everything came out “transformed” by the blue dye.  Oh my…definitely most everything had a new look to it…light blue undies, the yellow hand towels turned green (that’s actually a good thing) and the white hand towels and washcloths are a light blue completing the “blue bath towel ensemble.”  However, the favorite tank top was now sporting a blue background. Upon a closer look, at least it was evenly dispersed and livable if necessary.  Still, I wanted it back to the original state my neighbor so complimented the day before.  So, it was the art of saying thank you to the rescue!

Yes, indeed.  I just said thank you to get my mind in the present moment.  Then, I called my downstairs neighbor who is my “go to household guru.”  Even though she was in Big Bear, she responded to my call–first with laughter at my faux paux and then a suggestion to use hot water and Oxiclean.  I had one out of two so I ran the hot water in a bucket and added some biodegradable all purpose cleaner figuring it couldn’t hurt.

When I returned to the sink a couple of hours later, to my great joy the tank top with a white background had returned!  My thank yous were profuse!  I rinsed the tank top several times and then hung it out to dry.  Could help but think, “tank you” as I did!

Over the weekend I was putting a couple of plumeria stalks into pots.  As I took the plants out of their original container, I thought about how I was “uprooting” this plant and what it must be feeling about the experience.  I thanked the plumeria for being patient while I transplanted it.  In the past, I just don’t think I was that conscious of the depth I could go in recognizing the “feelings” of a plant.

What does this little story mean?  It’s just another example of connecting.  For me, that is the essence of life–to feel connected to self, to others.  With all of our modern technology, we certainly can connect digitally, and that’s great.  Someone in France can read my thoughts.  However, I still like the good old fashioned “hands on” connections.  That’s why I wanted to write about saying thank you to the plumeria plants over the weekend or to the daisies I cut for a bouquet.  Each time I did, I felt more connected to the plants.  In my world, I like feeling connected.