In this episode, we’re talking about so much more than just how to be grateful. We’re exploring how gratitude is fundamental to happiness and health. We’re taught that when we’re sick, we take medicine.
Today’s guest shares his knowledge on how practicing immense gratitude can prevent diseases. Alberto Villoldo is a best-selling author and the founder of the world-renowned Institute of Energy Medicine.
Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
- The frequency of gratitude is the highest vibration we can access.
- Western medicine is abrasive, aggressive, and dissecting. Our medicine is about antibiotics that kill things and chemotherapies that attack.
- Indigenous communities have a view on wellness that’s participatory. Their traditions were founded on the practice of immense gratitude.
- Gratitude is what takes you to that place of grace.
- When we practice gratitude, it becomes a cellular physiological, biochemical, and neurological experience.
- Most of our interactions with the environment and with the world don’t happen through our eyes. They happen through our gut, through the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe.
- We have over 10,000 different species of good bacteria that live inside of us.
- We’re made up of the stuff of nature, so we’re never separate from nature and each other.
- If you create the emotional, spiritual, the nutritional conditions for health, then the disease goes away. You don’t have to treat the disease.
- Humans are a colony organism.
- We have about a hundred trillion cells in our body, and 90 trillion of them do not belong to us.
- Our microbiome, which is in our mouth, skin, and other parts of our body, is 90% of who we are.
- When you practice gratitude with our microbiome, they’re grateful, so they create health for you because they want to keep the colony healthy.
- Understanding you can change everything if you change your internal map is an incredible realization.
- All you perceive is a projection of an internal map, and you confuse that with reality.
- Then, you can take part in dreaming and dream that
- We only practice gratitude when we’re feeling good, but it’s so important to practice it when you’re feeling like crap.
Bring more appreciation into your relationship with the Appreciation Game.
Transcription: How To Be Grateful – Alberto Villoldo
Luis Congdon
If you’re experiencing any illness or disease in your body or discomfort in your life, today’s episode will give you the magic recipe to help you turn all that around and start creating the life that you would like and start creating health. We’re here to talk about how to be grateful.
Our guest today is a certified doctor as well as a shaman, so we’ve got some magical tips for you.
Kamala Chambers
Today our guest is a best-selling author, the founder of the world-renowned Institute of Energy Medicine, The Four Wind Society, and an integrative doctor. He’s here to share about how to be grateful.
Luis Congdon
All right. We are here with Alberto Villoldo.
Exciting to be here. He has got some magic to share with us about how to be grateful.
Alberto, are you ready?
Alberto Villoldo
Yup. I’m ready. Let’s go. Let’s talk about how to be grateful.
Luis Congdon
Beautiful.
One of the things that you talked to me about, which has connected with me and made me feel so good, is what you do every day. You say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” It promotes how to be grateful.
For you, being in a state of gratitude and appreciation is super important. I want to know why is that so important. When you talk to students across the globe, when you’re doing your shaman work, and all the work that you do to help people across the world, why is this “Thank you, thank you, thank you?” and this gratitude so important?
How To Be Grateful And Why It’s So Important
Alberto Villoldo
We are so comfortable practicing gratitude when we get a great gift from the universe or when somebody smiles at us or does something nice to us. But when we get a challenging, difficult test, when the universe gives us more than we can chew, those are the times that are important to practice gratitude even if you don’t understand the lessons yet.
Alberto Villoldo
I like to pay my gratitude forward. Every morning I say, “Thank you. I feel so blessed to be in a body in this beautiful word.” Then I look around to see the world that we’re living in, and it gives me a perspective and ability to become an agent of positive change, and not get my ordain what’s wrong.
Kamala Chambers
If we just do a little practice right this moment and we say to ourselves, “I hate you,” and then we tell ourselves, “I’m grateful for you.” Just that alone, you can physically feel it in your body the difference between those two things. We start to learn how to be grateful.
I think what you’re saying is so important, and so many of our guests talk about gratitude because it is that highest vibration. It’s one of the highest vibrations that we can access.
Can you tell me a little bit more about your practice around gratitude and how to be grateful?
A Practice For How To Be Grateful
Alberto Villoldo
Well, my training is with the shamans. I spent many years as a medical anthropologist in the Amazon and in the Andes Mountains working with indigenous communities that had no contact with the church or with the state or with the Western methodology. They taught me a lot about how to be grateful.
The Western method is a very masculine one. It’s a very abrasive, aggressive, and dissecting. Our medicine is about antibiotics that kill things and chemotherapies that attack, and they have a very feminine worldview that’s very participatory.
The way you get to participate in creation is by creating, and gratitude is what takes you to that place of grace of being able to take on the stewardship for everything that you see around you.
For the earth, for all living beings, and a moment, a moment that sometimes may feel that it’s very out of integrity, but as you hold that presence there of beauty and co-creation, then the truth emerges out of that situation. I think that we’re all called to that practice today.
We have to stop looking for truth or beauty and begin creating beauty and bringing truth to every moment and every circumstance in which we find ourselves.
For the ancient earth keeper traditions, the aboriginal cultures of this world, and remember that we’re all aborigines. We are all native peoples of this planet. They teach us how to be grateful.
These ancient shamanic and feminine traditions were founded on the practice of immense gratitude. When you do that, it becomes a cellular physiological, biochemical, and neurological experience. It’s pretty wild.
Frozen Water Can Teach Us How To Be Grateful
Luis Congdon
One of the things that I love about what you’re saying reminds me of the work of Dr. Emoto, who did this research where he took water, froze it, and took pictures at different stages of the water.
He would put words in this little container where the water was held, and they would be in various languages so that the people taking the pictures wouldn’t know what the word said, therefore, eliminating the impact that we have as researchers in our biases.
He noticed that when we had words like “I love you” and “I care about you,” these beautiful crystals would form. It’s an amazing way to see how to be grateful. They’d be complete and unique.
Then, when he put words of hatred or anger, they would never actually ultimately form into these beautiful crystals. Even some of the colors would change when they took the photos.
It had a significant impact, and if we translate that into our bodies being 75-80% water or so, then we see that what you’re talking about is we are affecting the cells in our body.
What else can you tell us about how to be grateful? What is this practice, this gratitude according to the shamans and The Four Wind Society, your work? What is this practice of gratitude? How does it impact the world outside of you, the world that we’re looking at?
How To Be Grateful As a Practice
Alberto Villoldo
Okay, Luis, let me take you back a little bit.
My most recent book is One Spirit Medicine, which is exactly about these practices; How do we create the world with beauty? How do we create our health with beauty? How do we take our health span to equal our lifespan?
That requires certain practices. At the very next level, certain dietary, eating real food, organic, healthy, wholesome, practicing forgiveness, forgiving yourself, forgiving others, and then, understanding that we are a colony organism. They teach us how to be grateful.
We have about a hundred trillion cells in our body, and 90 trillion of them do not belong to us.
They belong to the bugs, the bacteria that we have a symbiotic relationship with that are in our gut, what we call our microbiome that is in our mouth, in our skin. They’re 90% of who we are.
So when you practice gratitude with them, they’re so grateful that you love them that they create health for you because they want to keep the colony healthy to keep the parasites away and to keep the viruses away. They have such a crucial job. And if we follow how to be grateful, we help them.
Most of our interactions with the environment and with the world don’t happen through our eyes. They happen through our gut, through the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe.
So, it’s helpful to think of ourselves as a colony organism like a beehive or an anthill. When we do that, we realize that we are made up of everything that’s involved in creation.
We have over 10,000 different species of good bacteria that live inside of us. Not 10,000 bugs, 10,000 species numbering 90 trillion in total.
The Internal Practice For How To Be Grateful
Alberto Villoldo
We begin with our inner practice of bringing harmony to our colony and recognizing that we are made up of this stuff of the cosmos.
For example, iron is essential. When it’s in your blood, it’s what gives blood the red color. It all comes from exploding stars. None of the iron that we have is created on Earth. It comes from exploding stars. We’re made up of the stuff of stars and the stuff of nature, so we’re never separate from nature, from each other.
We’re breathing the same breath that Christ breathes and the Buddha breathes. So, this understanding is very much of the shamanic cultures, of the ancient cultures and reflected in their healing practices.
For example, their healing practices are founded, which I talked about in One Spirit Medicine.
It’s so important to learn how to be grateful. If you create the emotional, spiritual, the nutritional conditions for health, disease goes away. You don’t have to treat the disease.
If you create the emotional, physical, and spiritual conditions for peace, then conflict goes away. You don’t have to deal with conflict. It goes away because you created peace.
In that way, you take part in completing the process of creation that the Great Spirit charged us with. Maybe a little bit off-subject here.
How To Be Grateful Down To The Microbes
Luis Congdon
No. You’re totally on the subject for me, and I follow you.
Recently, we interviewed Donna Schwenk, who talked about probiotics and all these different little things that are in your body. She was saying a lot of the same stuff that you are. She was talking more specifically about how enzymes, probiotics, and microorganisms help you.
It’s just really cool how there’s this circling back and how complete you are and your explanation of why this practice of gratitude is so important.
I know that in my life when I practice gratitude, I start to notice that the world changes. If I change, the world changes. This is not a one-time thing where you just find this gratitude, and you are there, and you never have to come back to the practice.
One great teacher that I was studying at one point said, “Enlightenment isn’t a destination. It’s a way of life. It’s something that we do consistently.” Once we reach enlightenment, then we keep practicing enlightenment. To me, that’s what you’re talking about. If we learn how to be grateful, we move closer to enlightenment.
I wanted to share a story. Yesterday, Kamala and I were in a coffee shop, and I got somewhat upset. I was in my head, and I was getting frustrated, and I was creating tension within myself.
Then, the man sitting across from me got into an argument with another guy who was outdoors. Somehow, they looked at each other from inside to outside. The man from outside came in, and they started arguing and threatening each other with a physical altercation talking like “Hey, I’m going to beat you up” and “Yeah, let’s take this outside.”
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The Shaman Way For How To Be Grateful
Luis Congdon
In a way, I felt like, “Wow. The only reason that I’m witnessing this and I’m so close to it is because that’s what’s happening inside me. I felt that there was a fight inside me happening, and I wasn’t in a good state. That was a good reminder. Those people outside of me, they go “Wait, is this the world that you want to be in?”
Alberto Villoldo
Luis, now the task of the shaman and I invite you to practice how to be grateful next time is to heal it immediately within you and notice these two guys shaking hands and hugging each other.
We have to internalize the practice of creating peace. The world always will mirror you back, but that mirror is an invitation to take action. Otherwise, we become caught in the mirror itself.
This is what happened to Narcissus. We start to believe that the world is all about us when it’s all about creating. As you shift that very quickly, not just imagine the world mirroring back an inner condition, I think that this is the great challenge that we have. It’s the best way we can see how to be grateful.
All of us who were raised in a counter-culture looking for a new spirituality and that will eventually lead us back to the old-fashioned feminine ways of saying, “Wow, I’ve created this drama. Now, let’s change it.” Finally, we can modify the world. We can create world peace. We can create clean rivers and air.
Alberto Villoldo
Today for me, our spirituality and our inner practices have to become political in some way. We have to understand the impact that we can have in the world and that we’re having even unconsciously as this argument that you so sweetly created.
A Story On How To Be Grateful
Alberto Villoldo
I want to tell you a little story. I was driving with a friend of mine, and we were driving to my office. My office, where we do all of our enrollment in our training programs, is in an area where there’s no parking.
My friend said to me, “Look, I’m going to manifest the parking spot.” “I do this all the time,” he told me. Every day, I can create a parking spot, and it’s there waiting for me.
And he created this beautiful parking spot right in front of my office. I turned to him and said, “If you’re so good at this, why do you have to keep doing it every day? Why don’t you do it today for the rest of your life?” He said, “Hmmm.” So if you are grateful, you can find parking more easily. Ha.
We have to accept the invitation the spirit is making to us right now to step beyond the immediate. Native American traditions speak about seven generations.
Every action and every thought that you have has an impact on seven generations into the future. That’s what my work is about today is about training modern shamans that we can begin by changing our health and our health care systems, and to create health, which is founded on creating inner peace and light.
The more light you have, the healthier you are.
But we know that don’t we?
Kamala Chambers
Yes.
I appreciate your perspective that instead of looking at it as the whole world is about me just mirroring my internal experience, it’s about what we’re creating.
I’d love to hear a little bit more about that from you.
How To Be Grateful And See The World As A Mirror
Alberto Villoldo
The mirroring is such a discovery. When you discover what Luis was saying, “Wow, the world is mirroring my internal state perfectly.” Some days, you just don’t see the flowers all around you, and sometimes that’s all you see, and sometimes you manifest in front of your inner conflict, or you manifest inner beauty.
Discovering how the world mirrors back to you the condition of your love and your intent is such an awakening. Mirroring teaches us how to be grateful.
For the shaman, the second awakening happens when you understand that you can change the dream, dream the world into being differently and that you heal it within. You change it within.
Suddenly, the flowers have always been there. Suddenly, there’s peace at the moment. The conflict ceases, and that’s an incredible realization where you understand that you can change everything if you change your internal map. You change the map, and the world changes.
The way that I like to describe it is that in the West, we are people of the precept. We get precepts. Precepts are rules. We get the Ten Commandments, and we get laws. We elect lawmakers, and legislators to make more laws.
The Greeks were not people of the precept. They were people of the concept. They knew that there was nothing as important as an idea whose time had come, like democracy, for example. That originates from the Greeks.
Well, the shamans are neither people of rules. They don’t have laws. They don’t have too many ideas or concepts, but their people love to perceive them. They believe that whatever you perceive is a reflection of an internal map of reality that you carry, that there’s no inherent truth to it, and that all perceptions are projections.
How To Be Grateful And Perception
Alberto Villoldo
All that you perceive is a projection of an internal map, and then you confuse that with reality when it’s that world that you’re dreaming into being.
Then, you can take part in dreaming the world into being more creative. Not just living out the dream or the nightmare, for example of the genetics that runs in your family that tells you how you’re going to get sick and die, or of the emotional dramas that our mothers and fathers had that tell us what our emotional landscape is going to be.
We can dream that differently then, and this is a huge empowering discovery for the shaman. Because then you begin to co-create. You begin to take part in creation with the Great Spirit.
Luis Congdon
My question here for you brings us back to the beginning because we talked a lot about what will happen to your world and the importance of this gratitude practice. We just really open it all up as to why gratitude is the seed of living a beautiful life, why it’s so important for the shamans, why it’s so important to you, why it’s important in the work that you teach, and it brings me back to the very beginning. How do we practice this and do so authentically?
I know that sometimes, I will get into a state where I am feeling grateful and appreciative. And I feel like I know how to be grateful. Genuinely, my whole being is involved, and there are other times when I want that feeling, I’m going back and mimicking the practice, or I’m mimicking the state, the emotions. I’m trying to put myself in that space, but it doesn’t feel quite the same.
How To Be Grateful And Experience Flow
Luis Congdon
What do you recommend so that we can experience this or hit that place or that flow more often with more ease?
I know that this is just the nature of life. It shifts. It unbalances us. It changes, and we have unexpected things arise like, “Oh my God. My dog died,” or “My mom died,” or “This person just hit me in traffic and was a total jerk.” And now, I’m out of that state, and I’m upset about something. I’m feeling the pain of all this stuff, and it’s not easy to get back in that state.
What does that say about how to be grateful? What do you say about that? So that we can have some daily practice or way that helps us.
Alberto Villoldo
You know Luis, I have two dogs. I have two German Shepherds, and I feed them in the morning and I feed them in the evening.
Now, some evenings, I’m just not feeling like it, and I don’t find the feeling, but I go feed them anyway. That’s why we call it a practice because they’re time. So, you’re going to feel horrible, or you’re going to feel angry, and it’s in those times when you bring your palms together and pray your pose, and you bow your head, and you go, “Thank you for this moment, for this breath.”
You find something to be grateful for. The breath teaches us how to be grateful. The breath is an excellent one, and if I happen to have a cold that day, I’ll just feel for my heart rhythm or my pulse and go, “Oh, thank you for this great drummer inside my chest.”
How To Be Grateful When You’re Feeling Down
Alberto Villoldo
Once you can find something you can be grateful about, you can let that blotch of color begin to take over the moment and the landscape and not make it dependent on a mood. Otherwise, we’re only practicing gratitude when we are feeling good.
It’s the most important to practice gratitude when you’re feeling like crap.
Alberto Villoldo
That’s at the heart of the practice. It’s when it’s difficult, but your spiritual practice comes in, and this will be tremendously helpful when you’re crossing over or when we’re all making our journey beyond death. When we get to that gateway, are we going to be able to practice gratitude for this amazing gift that life is giving us?
Dogs Can Teach Us How To Be Grateful
Alberto Villoldo
It’s helpful to develop a practice beforehand, and I particularly look forward to those moments when I just don’t feel like feeding the dogs, and I go over there and feed them, and they wag their tail, they rub against me, and I go, “Oh, thank you.” That’s the reason why it’s practiced.
Kamala Chambers
Luis is smiling so big because he’s got his dog beside him, and he relates.
We’ve been here with Alberto Villoldo.
Alberto Villoldo
Try telling your puppy you’re not going to feed it today because you just don’t feel in the mood. He’s going to look at you with such big eyes and so full of love. But yeah, thank you.
Luis Congdon
Yes. I cannot ignore my dog when he wants something because he is persistent, and he is persistent with love and affection, which always reminds me of the few things that are vital to him. One of those is food.
It’s been a real pleasure to have you here, Dr. Alberto Villoldo talking about how to be grateful. It’s been awesome to have you here. Thank you for joining us and sharing how to be grateful.
Alberto Villoldo
Thank you so much for having me here talking about how to be grateful. Being with both of you is great. Blessings to you and your listeners.
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