Rita Watson: Salve Regina professor teaches gratitude
Published on 24 February 2014
Gratitude has been in the health news because of scientific research looking at ways one might behave in a grateful manner, even if we are not feeling grateful.
Paula Martasian, Ph.D., has been teaching a course on gratitude for close to seven years at Salve Regina in Newport as well as heading a charity for her late father, Nick Vuono, a Jefferson Award winner who helped people with special needs. Her guiding principle is loving-kindness, wishing blessings to others. Martasian says, “I see loving-kindness as the practice of keeping hearts open for compassion. When we do this, it opens us to live with gratitude even for those people we may not like.”
Recalling the Dalai Lama’s visit to Salve Regina in 2005 she exudes so much excitement that he might have been there yesterday. “He is mesmerizing. It was a grand event, and the Dalai Lama talked directly to students, emphasizing that they should become the peace that the world needs and to bring that peace out into the world.”
With regard to her work, she said: “When practicing the attitude of well-being there is a shift in consciousness — and two key components are compassion and gratitude.
“I start each day with 20 minutes of loving-kindness. One does this by first focusing on yourself, then to those closest to you. Next onto the world. Then you even send blessings to those who annoy you.”
Martasian, an associate professor of psychology, has been collecting books that students and colleagues have suggested for her through the years. Of the first books to influence her were those by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.
She said: “My courses are based on the works of people such as Martin Seligman and his books, “Flourish” and “Flow” and the Dalai Lama’s “The Art of Happiness,” and loving-kindness authors Sharon Salzberg and Pema Chodron.”
She began teaching the course at the suggestion of her department chair. “I gave students two choices. They could write out three things that went well in their day and explain why. Or they could keep an Attitude of Gratitude Journal and write five things each day for which they were grateful,” she explained.
“Students have told me that by ending their day listing five things for which they are grateful or three things that went well, even on their worst days, peace and harmony was restored.”
While she is unable to give specifics due to confidentiality, she said, “Students dealing with personal challenges — health concerns of their own or a family member, or financial issues — told me that when they listed what they were grateful for, they could actually smile and felt better able to deal with their challenges.”
Martasian believes that the spiritual journey is entwined with daily life and one must keep learning to in order to grow.
“A new idea that I am incorporating into my work is based on the “Naikan: Gratitude Grace and the Japanese Art of Self-Reflection,” by Gregg Krech. I went though this entire book and did a summer workshop at Grace Yoga Studios in North Kingstown. It was one of the major influences in my ongoing development of living with grace, gratitude, compassion and happiness.
“Judy McClain, the director and founder, created a space to advance people’s awareness of mind, body and spirit,” she continued before explaining her nightly ritual.
Ironically, her nightly ritual reminds her that she is doing too much and overbooking herself between her commitment to students, heading up her late father’s charity, and volunteering to cook for the North Kingston Community Meal Program.
She said people come for meals to the FirstBaptistChurch in Wickford or the NorthKingstonUnitedMethodistChurch and also doing the cooking are volunteers from the First Baptist Church of North Kingston and St. Bernard’s Roman Catholic Church.
Each night she follows three steps, assigning five minutes to the first two and 10 minutes on the third, answering these questions:
1. What did I receive today?
2. What did I give today?
3. What trouble did I cause?
She said, “For me, the trouble I cause others is from overbooking. I’m on a cook team in which one of four churches cooks every Sunday. Sometimes I find myself in conflict because in addition to teaching and volunteering, I am president of the Nick Vuono Charity fund. He was my father and won the Jefferson Award for his work in providing adaptive toys, equipment and computers.”
In many ways it seemed her father lived the message of the Dalai Lama, who has said, “The highest good one can do with one’s time is to serve others.”
She added: “There is a service component to our Salve Regina curriculum. Our students and all those who maintain an attitude of gratitude and serve others are answering the Dalai Lama’s call — Be the peace the world needs.”
Rita Watson, MPH, is a regular contributor to The Providence Journal and a relationship columnist for The Providence Journal’s “All About You” section.