Intro  0:09  
This recording is an offering of Networks for Training and Development's Online University.

Jessica Stover  0:19  
Hi, everyone. This is Jessica Stover with Networks for Training and Development and welcome to our monthly Healing Circle Call, the August edition. And man, on the east coast, in Central Pennsylvania is it a hot one today - we hit 96 degrees.

And truth telling time, I'm actually sitting in my car at a lovely amusement park in the middle of nowhere. It's fantastic. So I have the air going very gently, very quietly, so hopefully there's not a ton of background noise. 

Additionally, we are recording this and hopefully the recording will turn out fantastic. And we will get that uploaded to Dropbox so you can listen to it again at your leisure at a future time. 

So more truth time, I didn't do a ton of planning for today's call. I volunteered to lead because the one thing... it kept coming back to my brain over and over is gratitude and noticing. 

And I just, it didn't feel like something I really wanted to spend piles of time researching and finding meditations. But just talking about it, talking about gratitude, and talking about you know, noticing these finer, smaller things. 

Noticing what you notice is something you may have heard us at Networks say from time to time or many times, actually. 

I and some others of us recently returned from a retreat in Maui, where we spent several days together at Hale Akua. Just really doing a lot of amazing things together: yoga, sacred dance, really thinking about who we are, is what it turned out to be happening. And just other amazing things. 

Someone asked me, actually this morning, well, "Jess how was it?" I said, "I don't know how to answer that". 

I said, "it was amazing". 

They said, "well, how is it amazing?" and I still don't know how to answer the question in [sic] in more ways that I could probably ever come up with words for and then they asked, "well, what did you do?" I stumbled on that too because there were so many things that we did. 

But the biggest for me was, you know, kind of digging into myself and doing some of that sometimes really hard work of digging in and sorting through the shifting the way we may be experiencing, if you will. 

And just having so much gratitude was oozing out of my ears, and I still have it. 

So in thinking about the call today, kind of getting back to circling around the barn the long way here and someone just honked their horn, my apologies. 

But you know, thinking about how we have gratitude in our lives and what we're grateful for. 

So, we hear this talked about quite a bit, having gratitude. You know, everything in life we should be grateful for and have all this gratitude and absolutely we do, but sometimes they wonder we don't dig deep enough of gratitude of, you know, being in wonderment of the world around us and the gratitude of experiencing each and every day.

When when we were at the retreat, many of us tried to spend the mornings kind of in silence, if you will, or as quietly as we could. 

So during those times, and other times a day, kind of walking around Hale Akua, walking around the farm there, and kind of being in nature, which is really important to do, I think, for everybody at some point in their lives, but to you know, get your feet on the earth, be one. 

And I remember one morning in particular, I was out, sitting in the grass, admiring all the plants and foliage around me and having a deep sense of gratitude, but then I'm thinking okay, so there's more to this. What else can I have gratitude for?  And, you know, [I] really started to observe you know, the little ants crawling on the blade of grass. And the dew still sitting atop some of the leaves of the tropical foliage near me. The wind, as it gusted, in that I could feel that wind on my face having gratitude for that. 

So I'd encourage you if you can, and as you're comfortable... I'm not gonna, like I said, we're not going to do a meditation, I'm not gonna do a meditation tonight, I'm not gonna ask you to do any type of meditation. 

But I want you to sit with this idea for a little bit and see if you can do it either later today, or tomorrow, or whenever is comfortable for you. Maybe need to simmer on it for a little longer than that. 

But next time you're able to be in silence or in a quiet area or taking some time for yourself during a time of meditation or what have you, if you're able to get out in nature or just whatever around you. 

And you're practicing the work of gratitude because you know, we forget sometimes. Notice what's around you. Notice what your body feels like. Notice maybe the little tiny ants on the tip of the grass of the blade of grass near you. Notice the wind on your face, feel it fully. Hopefully notice the sunshine hitting your back or maybe the lightness coming from the clouds above and see what that gratitude feels like does it feel any different? And sit with that for a little bit. I encourage you. 

So this isn't any kind of new, wild, wacky idea. But it just occurred to me of let's break down our gratitude even more deeply. Let's notice these tiny things and practice some gratitude there if you're not already and I'm sure so many of you are. 

With all of this said, this isn't going to be a long call tonight by any stretch it's not intended to be because again, I'm sitting in my car here, which is super comfortable.

But we're gonna, I'm gonna end it for this evening. So, you know, almost 10 minutes, but I think this is a nice one.

Like I said, have a brief conversation about, about gratitude and kind of digging in more deeply noticing what you notice, which beautifully this [sic]  this ties in some of the things we talked about at Networks, some of our Wholistic Practices work, for one and noticing what you notice. 

We say that a lot when we're doing works surrounding assistive technology or really just being with people. What do you notice? What do you feel? 

With all of that said, thank you all for listening, joining in, having your open hearts here, joining me tonight. I can feel y'all. And I'll see you next month.  Take care.

Outro  8:13  
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