Awaken the Power of Gratitude with Dr. Bob Weathers and John Dupuy

Dr. Bob Weathers, celebrated addiction educator and recovery coach, shares his passion for daily gratitude practice and the story behind the creation of the guided meditation, The Gift of Gratitude (both Volume I and the Recovery Edition). Eleven years ago, Bob realized that gratitude was the missing piece in his integral practice and created a practice, loosely based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, that has been foundational in leading a life of successful, sustained recovery. As he says, “Give it eleven years, and you are a different person at a molecular level.” Together with John Dupuy, iAwake’s CEO and author of Integral Recovery, Dr. Bob illuminates the power of gratitude and how it leads to amor fati—the capacity to embrace our life and our fate. Bob tells a powerful tale of grace and grit with his unique fervent openness, honesty, and integrity, informed by his wide breadth of psychological, integral, and spiritual knowledge. 

“The result of [gratitude practice] is liberation—how can liberation be burdensome?”

• Introducing recovery coach Dr. Bob Weathers, creator of iAwake’s guided meditation The Gift of Gratitude Vol I & The Gift of Gratitude – Recovery Edition (00:26)
• Dr. Bob’s own history with addiction and realizing the need for a gratitude practice to complement shadow work and forgiveness work (02:16)
• How Bob’s gratitude practice became the bedrock of his recovery practice and the relationship between gratitude practice and stress (06:43)
• How the contemplative practice of meditation came about for Bob (12:04)
• On shame, the Stoics, acceptance, and amor fati (19:39)
• “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” – Meister Eckhart (25:38)
• Psychoanalyst Melanie Klein on moving beyond victimhood to grief, then to acceptance (32:27)
• A daily practice of moral inventory and inviting the shadow elements into our gratitude practice (37:36)
• How do we do this gratitude practice? (42:07)
• This life of ours doesn’t belong to us yet we are fully responsible: grace and grit (50:15)

Resources

• Dr. Bob Weathers, recovery coach: https://www.drbobweathers.com
• The Freedom of Forgiveness (Bob’s guided forgiveness practice combined with iAwake’s’ brainwave entrainment technology)
• Noah Levine, Refuge Recovery: A Buddhist Path to Recovering from Addiction
• Carl Jung and the individuation process of becoming a whole self
• James Finley, contemplative and psychotherapist (see Deep Transformation podcast Sacred Psychotherapy)
• Psychologist/researcher Robert Emmons, Gratitude is Good Medicine
• Ken Wilber, What Are the Four Quadrants (on the Integral Life website)
• Amor fati
• Melanie Klein, psychoanalyst specializing in child psychiatry
• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
• Ken Wilber, Grace and Grit
• John Dupuy, A Revolutionary Approach to the Treatment of Alcoholism and Addiction

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A highly regarded recovery coach, public speaker, staff trainer, business consultant, as well as author and educator, Dr. Bob Weathers holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, with an M.A. in religious studies. Over the course of his professional career, “Dr. Bob” has provided tens of thousands of hours of therapeutic counseling and recovery coaching, working collaboratively with his countless, satisfied clients. He has also committed the past 35 years to teaching, training, and inspiring hundreds of graduate-level mental health providers at several southern California universities. Visit Bob at www.drbobweathers.com.

John Dupuy is CEO of iAwake Technologies, co-host of the Deep Transformation: Self-Society-Spirit podcast, and founder of Integral Recovery^®. His book, Integral Recovery: A Revolutionary Approach to the Treatment of Alcoholism and Addiction, won the 2013 USA Best Book Award. John travels internationally to teach and inspire on the subjects of Integral Recovery, Integral Transformative Practice, and the use of brainwave entrainment technology to deepen one’s meditation practice and in the treatment of addiction, depression, and PTSD.

This blog was created by Heidi Mitchell, John Dupuy’s longtime assistant and project manager/editor of the Deep Transformation: Self-Society-Spirit podcast. John introduced Heidi to Integral practice and sound tech-enhanced meditation in 2007. Heidi is also a freelance editor of nonfiction books, blogs, and websites. She can be reached at www.heidimitchelleditor.