Welcome to another episode of Lurie Breaks It Down, a podcast where we dig deeply to connect the dots on the issues that shape our world.

I'm Lurie Daniel Favors, author, activist, attorney, and the host of the Lurie Daniel Favors show on Sirius XM's Urban View, Channel 126. If you like what you're about to hear, go ahead and give us five stars and then tell everybody that you know. And if you don't like it, just, child, keep it to yourself and pray our strength. Okay? Thank you so much.

Also, don't forget to check out my YouTube page, Lurie Daniel Favor's Media, where you should subscribe, like, and share because then you'll get notified when I post videos from my show, which I do just about every single day and when I go live with my YouTube audience. So we got a lot to get to this morning. And before we get to any of it, we also have a ritual

that we use on this show. Now, the ritual is one that grapples with the reality that, frankly,

as much as we love being in Black Talklandia, baby, it's not easy. Okay, it's hard. Black Talk

Landia conversations are not for the fate of heart. And so we want to make sure that before

we begin delving into the serious topics that we deal with here and frankly recognizing that we are all dealing with in addition to the societal issue, just individual life, life in. Right. So we have a ritual called a moment of gratitude and it's one that allows us to intentionally curate a set of emotions that will allow us to tap more into a sense of joy, gratitude, and appreciation.

These three emotions in particular are important because we have learned through our lived

experience and science has confirmed that when, for example, you are rooted in gratitude,

you can't simultaneously be trapped by fear.

Now, you might be afraid before or after you're rooted in gratitude,

but so long as you're thinking about what you're grateful for, it's really hard biochemically.

It's virtually impossible for your body to hold the emotions of gratitude and fear simultaneously.

Similar with joy and appreciation, it's really hard to be trapped by loneliness and depression

when you are intentionally reaching for joy

intentionally reaching for appreciation so this ritual moment of gratitude is fairly simple it is so simple

in fact it goes a little something like a feels in just a minute you're going to hear some music

and when you hear music you are going to be invited to join the rest of us because we are going to

collectively begin taking the slowest deepest most lung capacity music, you are going to be invited to join the rest of us because we are going to collectively

begin taking the slowest, deepest, most lung capacity expanding, joyful heart, invigorate,

and troubled mind, cleansing, and weary soul uplifting. When we hear this music, we are going to take

the most amazingly juicy breath. As we kick off our most important segment of every single day,

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