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 unpack today, and I'm looking forward to getting to all of it.

And we have a pretty important thing that we do on this show to get us started. And that thing

is called a moment of gratitude. And it is a ritual that allows us to do the heavy work of getting

into what we're going to be talking about in Black Talklandia with a spirit of joy,

gratitude and appreciation. The reason that is important is because Black Talk Landia conversations are difficult.

And because of that, we want to make sure that energetically, we are carrying the right energy

into these discussions because we are not trying to be sad and depressed. We got to be empowered.

We don't avoid the news. We it on and we we wrestle with it

we grapple with it and we try our best to figure out what to do with it and how how we can play a

role in making this world a better place but in order to do that we got to be empowered and so we

know both from the science and lived experience that when we are rooted in gratitude we also cannot

sit in a space of being

trapped by fear. That really matters. Doesn't mean you're not going to be afraid, right? It just

means that the gratitude biochemically prevents our bodies from also producing the emotion of fear.

And so that's a really important thing. That's a cheat code, right? If you feel a whole wave of fear

coming upon you, think about the things you're grateful for and see how long it takes for you to navigate out of that fear wave, right? That's important. Same thing with joy and appreciation when we're rooted in those things, really hard to be trapped by fear, loneliness, and depression. So we have this ritual. It's sacred, right? it is a sacred thing because you can't do the

work of black talklandi effectively if you're sad and depressed and not tapping into your power again

the ritual is called a moment of gratitude and it goes a little something like a yes in just a minute

you're going to hear music that music is going to be an invitation to you to join the rest of us

because when we hear it we are going to collectively begin taking the slowest, the deepest,

and the most long capacity expanding, the most joyful heart invigorating and troubled mind cleansing,

...