Soul Matters – November 2026

NO, I’M NOT talking about my local, neighborhood hoodlums: the ones with feathers who brazenly stop traffic on Third Street with bold displays of avian bravado.

I’m talking about gratitude.

Gratitude is a big deal. Bigger than the conversations you don’t want to have with family over the cranberry sauce. Bigger than Black Friday. Bigger than, well, bigger than almost all other emotions we can experience. (Except bliss. Bliss is really big.)

Gratitude is an emotion, and emotions are, quite literally, energy in motion. They are a vibration. We know this instinctively; we know how it feels being next to an angry person, or someone who is joyful because emotional energies are visceral. They provide our bodies with important information and they communicate important information to others. (“Stay away from mom: she dropped the turkey and she’s mad!”)

Gratitude is an elevated emotion, meaning that its frequency is fast and it emits a very powerful electromagnetic field. (Which is what we feel around that joyful person.) It has a lot of energy, and this energy can, quite literally, change your life.

In a study done by researcher and author Dr. Joe Dispenza, saliva samples from 117 participants were taken at the beginning of a four day workshop, and again at the end, to measure their immunoglobulin A (IgA), a marker for the strength of the immune system. (IgA is an incredibly strong chemical; when activated, it is the primary internal defense system for the human body. When stress [cortisol] goes up, IgA goes down, compromising and down-regulating the immune system.)

They asked the participants to enter into elevated emotional states (think: love, joy, gratitude) for 10 minutes, three times a day for four days. The result? Average IgA levels increased 49.5% and cortisol (the survival/stress hormone) decreased 16.3%. Dispenza writes, “Something as simple as moving into an elevated state [i.e. focused thought and emotion] for five to ten minutes a day can produce significant epigenetic changes in your health and body.” (Becoming Supernatural, p.44)

Gratitude changes your brain and it changes your body. Because of the electromagnetic field it creates, it also changes what we attract to us (another topic for another day). But at its core, gratitude just feels good. It makes us nicer people to be around. It helps us through the really rough times; you simply cannot be negative if you are connected to and practicing gratitude, and there’s always something to be grateful for.

Always.

Five minutes a day to experience more joy, better health and greater peace is really a no-brainer.

Kinda like those Third Street turkeys.

KATE INGRAM MA, CSBC, is an award-winning author, counselor and holistic coach who is incredibly grateful for the gift of each day. Find out more at kintsugicoaching.com, or write kate@kintsugicoaching.com