DMS Parent Newsletter
November 2021
Gratitude
Gratitude and the Brain
4 Ways to Train Your Brain to Practice More Gratitude
1. Take time to notice what’s around you
Practicing mindfulness helps you tune in to the present moment. It is possible that if you are a grateful person, you are more mindful of others’ gestures. The more often you tune into your awareness, the greater the chances you will notice all the good that’s around you to feel gratitude for, which can then bring satisfaction and happiness. Our ability to pick up on the beauty of nature, kindness from one another, the chance to make a living via a job, all require our ability to be cognizant of ourselves and our surroundings. Being mindful of help in the kitchen, or the color of the sky allows us to generate gratitude by simply noticing them.
2. Practice gratitude for the little things
We often remember to be grateful for big events, like graduating from university or getting married, but it can be more difficult to feel grateful for the small things we do every day. Reminding yourself that eating a meal, for example, is in itself special can be very powerful. Your immediate awareness of the food in front of you, combining flavors while removing hunger, is a great way to enjoy gratitude as often as you eat! Another example is feeling grateful in the morning for being able to comfortably sleep at night. We gain comfort, satisfaction and peace by practicing mindfulness and gratitude in this repeated fashion.
3. Share your gratitude for your loved ones
Most of us are a little bit guilty of taking our loved ones for granted. The next time you notice a kind act by a loved one, why not show gratitude by simply saying ‘thank you’ , or giving a hug? We ought to show appreciation and not let kind acts go unnoticed. Training yourself to show your gratefulness for loved ones can strengthen your relationships with others.
4. Spread gratitude via your social media platforms
Social media can feel so negative at times, but using it to share your gratitude can help create a more positive online atmosphere. For example, share an uplifting moment from a recent event or a lesson you learned from a book you read, or a photo of a place near you that you’re grateful for. Spreading good, and in a unique and uplifting way, is one way we each can do our part in this digital age to remind each other that we have a lot to be grateful for. Let us each inspire one another in this way.
Training our minds to practice gratitude more often is possible if we are mindful of ourselves, each other and our environment. Let us widen our circle of appreciation. Please share your ideas for reminding yourself to be grateful.
3 Ways Gratitude Benefits Our Brains
- It can help relieve stress and pain. The regions associated with gratitude are part of the neural networks that light up when we socialize and experience pleasure. These regions are also heavily connected to the parts of the brain that control basic emotion regulation, such as heart rate and arousal levels, and are associated with stress relief and thus pain reduction. Feeling grateful and recognizing help from others creates a more relaxed body state and allows the subsequent benefits of lowered stress to wash over us. (We recently published a scientific paper elaborating on these ideas.)
- It can improve our health over time. They are also closely linked to the brain’s “mu opioid” networks, which are activated during close interpersonal touch and relief from pain—and may have evolved out of the need for grooming one another for parasites. In other words, our data suggest that because gratitude relies on the brain networks associated with social bonding and stress relief, this may explain in part how grateful feelings lead to health benefits over time.
It can help those with depression. Perhaps even more encouraging, researcher Prathik Kini and colleagues at Indiana University performed a subsequent study examining how practicing gratitude can alter brain function in depressed individuals. They found evidence that gratitude may induce structural changes in the very same parts of the brain that we found active in our experiment. Such a result, in complement to our own, tells a story of how the mental practice of gratitude may even be able to change and re-wire the brain.
Creamy Butternut Squash Pasta with Sausage and Spinach
Ingredients
Roasted Butternut Squash
- 2 cups butternut squash , peeled, seeded, and cubed
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- salt and pepper
Sausage
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- ½ lb sausage , crumbled, without casings
Creamy Pasta Sauce
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 4 garlic cloves minced
- 6 oz spinach
- 1 cup heavy cream
- ⅓ cup Parmesan cheese shredded
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Pasta
- 8 oz farfalle (bow tie pasta)
Instructions
Roast Butternut Squash
Preheat oven to 400 F.
In a large bowl, toss cubed butternut squash with olive oil, salt, and pepper.
Spread the squash on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet in one layer, without overcrowding.
Roast in the preheated oven at 400 F for 30 minutes. Remove from oven.
Cook Sausage
In a medium skillet, heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil on medium heat.
Add crumbled sausage and cook for about 10 minutes, regularly stirring, until the sausage is cooked through. Remove from heat and set aside.
Tip: Cook the sausage while the butternut squash is being roasted.
Make Creamy Sauce
In a separate, large skillet, heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil together with minced garlic and spinach over medium heat. Cook, occasionally stirring, for about 5 or 7 minutes until spinach starts to wilt.
Add heavy cream. Bring to a brief boil, then immediately reduce to simmer (boiling but not intensely). Add shredded Parmesan cheese. Keep stirring the sauce with the Parmesan cheese on low to medium boil (simmer) until the cheese melts. Remove from heat.
Season with salt to taste, about ¼ teaspoon of salt. No salt might be necessary if the sausage is very salty.
Tip: Use your judgment about whether to add salt or not based on how salty the sausage is. Make the cream sauce while the butternut squash is being roasted.
Cook Pasta and Assemble
Cook pasta al dente in boiling water according to package instructions. That usually means cooking pasta in boiling water for about 7 to 11 minutes. Drain.
To a large skillet with the creamy spinach sauce, add drained cooked pasta and cooked sausage. Stir. Season with salt and pepper, if desired.
Top the pasta with roasted butternut squash. Stir the squash in, or leave it on top.
DMS Counselors
6th Fabiana Fischer fabiana.fischer@gcpsk12.org 678-407-7266
7th Tara Tanner tara.tanner@gcpsk12.org 678-376-8542
8th Monica Garcia monica.garcia@gcpsk12.org 770-338-4842