During the season of Thanksgiving in the US, we get to pause, slow down, and consider all of the things for which we are thankful. This natural break in the rhythm of everyday life allows us to reflect and come back to what matters.

Researchers have found significant mental and physical health benefits in practicing gratitude.

A psychology study had participants journal about one of three topics — daily gratitudes, daily irritations, or neutral events. After 10 weeks, those who wrote about gratitude felt more optimistic about life. They also exercised more and had fewer doctor’s visits than those who focused on irritations.

Another gratitude study found that daily practice can help relieve some symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Physiologically, a 2017 study of heart patients found that practicing gratitude journaling could potentially reduce inflammation and other biomarkers.

Adding gratitude as part of your Health Coaching programs can clearly offer significant benefits to your clients’ overall health. MBODY360 makes it easy to incorporate gratitude as part of your nutrition plans and protocols.

When you assign a nutrition plan to a client, you can customize several features within the plan to help clients focus on their gratitude practice.

  • Daily Messages — these messages appear as a daily notification in the morning. They are pre-written messages that can be updated with provoking thoughts or questions that can help clients focus on gratitude. A simple reminder question could be “What makes you grateful today?”
  • Daily Reminders — these messages pop up throughout the day as gentle reminders. You can customize one or more for each day to prompt your clients to remember what makes them feel grateful.
  • Videos — you can add any links to your own videos (or other people’s videos) from YouTube or Vimeo that talk about gratitude, mindfulness, and feeling joyful in the present moment.
  • Documents — if you have PDF handouts or articles on practicing gratitude, you can upload them to this section of the plan. You can also put together gratitude journaling prompts in a PDF and upload them to your documents section.

You can have your clients practice gratitude journaling right in the MBODY360 app. The notes section can serve as a quick and easy journal that contains your client’s daily thoughts on what gives them gratitude.

They don’t need to write a whole essay every day — just one or two sentences or points can help cultivate gratitude. When they jot down their thoughts in the app, you’ll be able to check in on their journaling through your practitioner portal.

Practicing mindfulness brings clients into the present and helps support a feeling of gratitude. You can have clients commit to a short, daily mindfulness practice using the meditation timer built into their app.

As little as 5 minutes per day can help clients feel more present and calm. It can also help them feel more joyful and connected to the whole world, which can bring up more thoughts and feelings of gratitude.

While Thanksgiving is the annual reminder of gratitude, cultivating appreciation and an attitude of gratitude can nourish you and your clients all year long. No matter where your clients are in their health journey, a gratitude practice can support them in mind, body, and spirit.