What are the benefits of gratitude meditation?

The reliable finding across the research is a modest lift in positive mood, and it is more modest than the popular claims suggest, so it is best approached as a practice rather than a treatment. What people describe most consistently is a physical rather than a cognitive result: warmth, a sense of lightness, and for some an effect that persists into the following day. The sitting form has one advantage specific to it, which is that it does not require you to produce or evaluate anything, so it avoids the comparison and self-marking that make written gratitude turn punitive for a lot of people.