Welcome back to spirituality and mental health. I'm your host, Don Mackintosh and we've been talking about gratitude and praise. It's been exciting, we learned that we have 60 to 60 to 70,000 thoughts every day. Fortunately, 90% of them are repetitive, maybe not unfortunately. I mean, we want to, you know, have repetitive thoughts that keep everything running. But the sad thing was that 80% of these repetitive thoughts are negative.

And so we have to have a strategy to overcome the negative with positive and we talked about daily and weekly gratitude journals and we talked about the spiritual component of that in our last time together, but I want to focus in on the second section on what's actually happening in terms of anatomy, physiology, etc. Gratitude, researchers are finding engages the Paris sympathetic nervous system, which in effect increases serotonin and produces feelings of peace and call. I think that's fascinating. By just expressing gratitude, we can increase these neural transmitters that we know are related to depression and anxiety or positive feeling states. And in fact even medications that we give called Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors are trying to save our serotonin so we won't be as depressed. So this is this is just a powerful, powerful good news.

Serotonin is not the only chemical that is addressed. Also, dopamine. Dopamine is involved in motivation, reward and pleasure. It helps you become mindful of positive social interactions so you can understand that a special experience has occurred. It is involved Initially in getting the signal that we've received a blessing or a gift, in other words when we're grateful, according to gratitude researcher Gil como Bono, it also is associated with attention regulation, so you appreciate benefits and benefactors. And low dopamine is linked both to depression and anxiety.

Thus, the experience of gratitude may give you a dopamine boost and help counter a tendency toward these conditions. So how many of you like to have more serotonin and more dopamine that's not produced by a pill that comes with a bill, but by just expressing gratitude, man, you actually are your own pharmacist. Now, when you look in the Old Testament, Hebrew Scriptures, they had a sanctuary that was set up, and people would come to the sanctuary from the lowest parts of the country, Dan, bear ceiba and they would come up to Jerusalem As they came up, they would sing songs of a cent songs of a cent. And they would sing the songs of a cent. And the songs of a cent were helping them ascend from the depressing, troubling things you might want to read those songs of a cent at some point. And in Second Chronicles 512 through 14 in the margin of his Bible, Johann Sebastian Bach wrote this in devotional music God is always present with his grace.

And he also the person writing Chronicle said this, moreover, has a chi the king and the princess commanded the Levi's to Sing unto the Lord with the words of David and ASAP the seer and they sang praises with gladness, and they bowed their heads and worshipped in other words, they kept singing until there was gratitude and rejoicing, not just joy, rejoice, rejoicing. So praise is powerful. Now who Is this individual? If you guessed Socrates, you're correct. Socrates lived a very frugal and simple life but apparently loved to go to the market. When his students asked why I like to go to the market, he replied, I love to go and see all the things I'm happy without.

So he had an expression of gratitude by going to the market kind of an interesting expression. When we're grateful look at this scan that was done by Dr. Daniel, amen. When we're grateful notice what lights up in our brain. Notice the sections there, these white look like globules. This is the section that lights up. And this is our brain on appreciation when they see the cerebellum or the back of the brain lights up when we're grateful.

Now, why is this important? What's it What's going on? the cerebellum deeply influences our thoughts and emotions. The same way the cerebellum regulates the rate rhythm. unforced accuracy of movements it relates to speed, consistency and capacity and appropriateness of mental and cognitive processes. So this mentary of movement is matched in the cognitive realm by unpredictability and illogic to social and societal interaction.

In other words, and you're your cerebellum not only coordinates, your actions, your movements as you walk, it also coordinates your emotions. So if you start walking and expressing gratitude, actually walking will actually help you be more effective at expressing gratitude. Now, here's your brain on hate. Hate would be the opposite of great gratefulness, hatefulness and gratitude. Notice it's basically shut down there's hardly anything going on. It's a negative brain.

Notice the cerebellum. There's nothing happening in the cerebellum. And here's the summary of those slides by Dr. Daniel Amen. When she thought about the things that could go wrong in her life, both her cerebellum and left temporal lobe, D activated, decrease cerebellar activity is associated with decreased motor coordination and coordination. So, when you're not walking remember in our outpatient we want to encourage you always walk. That's one of the foundational principles for all kinds of things.

But even your emotion control, people get clumsier and less able to think their way out of problems. lower left temporal lobe activities associated with dark thoughts and memory problems. You can't even remember what you're grateful for if you're not out there walking, exercising in some way now by the way, if you can't walk, you also can you can still exercise and there's different ways that you know we could help you with that but your arms or a pool or taking weight off here, if your legs when you're walking, but exercise is key negative thought pattern Change the brain in a negative way. Being grateful for the wonderful things in your life literally helps you have a brain to be grateful for. What is this a picture of? If you guess this is a picture of some women in a concentration camp, you're correct.

But notice what they did to get through the day. Notice that I even had expressions of gratitude and this setting while in prison by the Nazis, Corrie 10, boom and her sister enjoyed relative freedom in their cell, because the guards did not like the fleas that infested the cell. Every day, they would say, thank God for these fleas, gratitude expression, even in that situation. number of studies as we're concluding our study of gratitude, study number one authors replicated a cross sectional study association between prayer frequency and gratitude that had been demonstrated in previous research. What there's a connection between prayer and gratitude? Yes.

Study number two prayer frequency predicted gratitude six weeks later, even when controlling for initial gratitude and religiosity so if you haven't prayed before you start it actually is going to predict increased gratitude going forward. Study number three, they replicated this longitudinal relationship this time controlling for socially desirable responding. In other words, trying to take out everything that would make the study not be you know, something we would look at a study number four, the participants were randomly assigned to prayer versus other conditions in a journal study that spanned four weeks, but at follow up those who randomly assigned or randomly assigned to pray every day, reported higher gratitude scores than the control participants. Together these studies provide evidence that Prayer actually increases gratitude. Now when I pray, and maybe you want to do this, try this yourself, as I many times start with praise. What do I have to be thankful for?

I asked myself that question, What do I have to be thankful for? Because I know that God inhabits the praises of his people, and I start praising because I know that's going to bring God near. Then what's coming between me and you, God? The second question I might ask myself, because I don't want to do anything that would come between me and God. And then I claim that promises first john, one nine, if we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us. I'm grateful for that.

Are you grateful that he can take care of the negative things? What's coming between me and others? I asked that same question again. And same things come up and I claim the same promise. I'm grateful that he can clear things up between not only myself and him but myself and others. And then, you know, I go next in my prayer, say Wait, what is it that you want me to replace these negative things with?

There's many negative things in our life. And you can look at this in Galatians chapter five, it has the fruits of the flesh versus the fruits of the Spirit. And I say, okay, instead of having hate or anger, what do I want to have? I have gratitude expressing some joy. And then finally, what do you want me to do right now? That way, my mind is grateful, it's filled with everything, all the junk is taken away, and I can go forward gratefully.

Now, maybe you'd like to, you know, write those things down, we'll actually have them for you. And you can actually have gratitude, lead prayers. Man is obviously made for thinking therein lies all his dignity and his merit. And his whole duty is to think as he said past call me think that's true. Really. If our thoughts are right, our feelings will be right and our thoughts and feelings will be Make up our character or characterize who we are.

And if we're positive, thankful, grateful people. Oh man, not only we we have joy, but so well others. How do we like to choose gratitude? Now, I told you that I was gonna read more of a statement from that powerful book The Ministry of healing. And I want to show you the statement as we close and the science with it, the electric power of the brain, the what? electric power the brain promoted by mental activity vitalizes the whole system and is thus an invaluable aid in resisting disease.

This should be made playing the power of the will, the importance of self control, both in the preservation and recovery of health. It takes willpower to choose the right thoughts, but if you choose them and grateful thoughts, it can lead to preservation and recovery of health. Those are pressing and even ruinous effective anger discontentment, selfishness and impurity and On the other hand, the marvelous life giving power to be found in cheerfulness, unselfishness, and gratitude should be shown. I hope we've been doing that in this presentation. But let me show you listen into a National Geographic presentation that I think might interest you. But in order for us to listen in to those impulses, we have to put electrodes up very close.

But those impulses are the message of movement. So what I'm going to do is let you listen in to recording in which a technician is telling, in this case, it's Cathy. He's telling her to imagine opening and closing. So this is the electric power of the brain. So just listen in for a second. Hear that See it shuts off, relax.

So this is the basis of the device that we've created not only recording from one cell but taking the pattern of many, many neurons, and trying to relate what the person is thinking about. This fascinating the electric power of the brain, you think something, it sends electrical impulses to whatever your pinky, your thumb or whatever, and we just got to listen in to the electric power of the brain. Now, low dopamine is linked to both depression and anxiety and the experience of gratitude may in fact, give you a dopamine boost and counter the tendency towards these conditions. So Let's hear what he says about dopamine in this whole realm of things. And remember, dopamine is not really given effectively in medication form, they do have some stuff that they give. But this is something you can do yourself expressions of gratitude.

Now listen to what he says about dopamine. And there's a very important chemical in your brain called dopamine that comes from the bottom of the brain in the brainstem. And it comes up all over your brain and your brain is taking a bath and dopa me, in some cases, degenerate they die. In fact, at all of us, we lose a little bit as we age. But if these neurons die, the circuits don't work properly and you get something that James Parkinson described an 1817 as those shaking palsy, and what happens here is you can see this lady who has lost many of her dopamine neurons, she has the shaking palsy, you have a tremor you Can't move, you're rigid and you're having difficulty initiating movement. It's a severely debilitating disease.

And it's because of the loss of built for me. And we can't put doesn't mean back in the brain very well, we can, there are some pills, but it doesn't work exceptionally well in all cases. But what we can do is we can put a stimulating electrode about the size of a small soda straw that has the ability to electrically stimulate at the end. And we can, by turning on the stimulator, we can tickle these brain circuits and make them act as if they had dopamine back again, so they work again. And as a consequence, we have a very remarkable result when we turn on this stimulation. So after the electrical stimulation Amazing, isn't it?

Wow. So look at what happens physically when doping comes back into the system or Those nerve cells are excited. Now, what happens then emotionally when we get the dopamine back and the serotonin back and how do we get that back we learned by expressions of gratitude. Perhaps you're having a mental experience like this lady was having a physical experience where you're not able to really motivate you're shaky, you're not going through life in an effective way. But if you choose gratitude, and you choose to have it come into your thoughts every day with that daily gratitude journal in that weekly gratitude journal, and that focusing on you know what God has done for you that prayer life. In all these ways, in your exercise program, many different things you've learned in our outpatient program, you are going to not only you know, improve yourself physically, emotionally, mentally, you also improve yourself spiritually.

And your gratitude will then stimulate others to gratitude and God will be horrified and your day will be great as well as your life.