What is Spiritual Health?

What is spiritual health exactly? Woo woo, not medicine, right?

Take the other pill, for a second. This will make you healthier.

What is a spiritual health exactly? Here we explore the science, definition, different aspects, and some notable quotes regarding spiritual health. #SpiritualHealth #PersonalDevelopment #MentalHealth

First, let’s talk about why this is so hard to define. Both the words “spirit” and “health” do not have agreed upon definitions. We all know what health is, but can you define it? It’s tougher than it seems. That being said, here’s what a scientific study found:

“Spiritual health promotes human capacity”.

“Spiritual health means a purposeful life”.

“Spiritual health causes a balance between internal human possibilities”

Source

It may be easier to define it through specific examples and benefits.

Spiritual Health Examples

Still sound woo woo?

Don’t worry, you don’t have to believe in it for it to work, you just need to practice it.

Here’s an image of some of the different aspects of spiritual health to help you quantify it.

Spiritual Practice

What’s the actual practice?

There are different approaches, and you don’t have to shave your head and join a Buddhist temple.

Here’s a list of said approaches: Spiritual Practice Toolkit

Spiritual Health Quotes

If you’re wondering if this is some kind of counter-culture movement, it’s not.

Many prominent people in history and today reference spiritual health. Check out these quotes.

“These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.”

-Rumi

“People try to create an outwardly perfect life, but the quality of life is based on the inward.”

-Sadhguru

“It is through gratitude for the present moment that the spiritual dimension of life opens up.” -Eckhart Tolle

How to Improve Your Spiritual Health

How do you get started improving your spiritual health?

There are lots of avenues, organizations, gurus, …cults, and people to help you.

Here is a good place where you can start learning and doing.

How to Boost your Spiritual Health

Preventative Healthcare

If your health needs improving, you’re addicted to alcohol, or meds, Reese’s cups, or your phone…

…then you should know that preventative care doesn’t just prevent, it’s more about curing in the long run.

Natural health and medicine is about giving your body what it needs by giving your body what it’s designed to receive in order to be healthy.

Check out one of the current leading pioneers in natural health: Kelly Brogan

Interpersonal Relationships

Relationships feeling more toxic than beneficial? You’re the problem! Just kidding…but, ya know, maybe.

Spiritual health has a lot to say about your relationships with other humans.

It helps by giving yourself perspective which leads to what is called spiritual healing. Emotional trauma doesn’t go away the second you decide not to think about it.

Check out Deepak Chopra, a life coach, leader in spirituality, health and relationships: Deepak Chopra

Stress

We all have way too much of it.

Focusing on your spiritual health is a great way to deal with it.

This is also an area where spiritual health and medicine overlap. Stress is a key factor in every disease. In fact, in medicine, all disease comes from chemical, physical, or emotional stress.

Learn more here: How Does Stress Impact Your Health?

Because this is such an important cross-over, here’s a video:

Video Title: How stress affects your body – Sharon Horesh Bergquist Video Link: https://youtu.be/v-t1Z5-oPtUKk Transcript: Cramming for a test? Trying to get more done than you have time to do? Stress is a feeling we all experience when we are challenged or overwhelmed. But more than just an emotion, stress is a hardwired physical response that travels throughout your entire body. In the short term, stress can be advantageous, but when activated too often or too long, your primitive fight or flight stress response not only changes your brain but also damages many of the other organs and cells throughout your body. Your adrenal gland releases the stress hormones cortisol, epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, and norepinephrine. As these hormones travel through your blood stream, they easily reach your blood vessels and heart. Adrenaline causes your heart to beat faster and raises your blood pressure, over time causing hypertension. Cortisol can also cause the endothelium, or inner lining of blood vessels, to not function normally. Scientists now know that this is an early step in triggering the process of atherosclerosis or cholesterol plaque build up in your arteries. Together, these changes increase your chances of a heart attack or stroke. When your brain senses stress, it activates your autonomic nervous system. Through this network of nerve connections, your big brain communicates stress to your enteric, or intestinal nervous system. Besides causing butterflies in your stomach, this brain-gut connection can disturb the natural rhythmic contractions that move food through your gut, leading to irritable bowel syndrome, and can increase your gut sensitivity to acid, making you more likely to feel heartburn. Via the gut’s nervous system, stress can also change the composition and function of your gut bacteria, which may affect your digestive and overall health. Speaking of digestion, does chronic stress affect your waistline? Well, yes. Cortisol can increase your appetite. It tells your body to replenish your energy stores with energy dense foods and carbs, causing you to crave comfort foods. High levels of cortisol can also cause you to put on those extra calories as visceral or deep belly fat. This type of fat doesn’t just make it harder to button your pants. It is an organ that actively releases hormones and immune system chemicals called cytokines that can increase your risk of developing chronic diseases, such as heart disease and insulin resistance. Meanwhile, stress hormones affect immune cells in a variety of ways. Initially, they help prepare to fight invaders and heal after injury, but chronic stress can dampen function of some immune cells, make you more susceptible to infections, and slow the rate you heal. Want to live a long life? You may have to curb your chronic stress. That’s because it has even been associated with shortened telomeres, the shoelace tip ends of chromosomes that measure a cell’s age. Telomeres cap chromosomes to allow DNA to get copied every time a cell divides without damaging the cell’s genetic code, and they shorten with each cell division. When telomeres become too short, a cell can no longer divide and it dies. As if all that weren’t enough, chronic stress has even more ways it can sabotage your health, including acne, hair loss, sexual dysfunction, headaches, muscle tension, difficulty concentrating, fatigue, and irritability. So, what does all this mean for you? Your life will always be filled with stressful situations. But what matters to your brain and entire body is how you respond to that stress. If you can view those situations as challenges you can control and master, rather than as threats that are insurmountable, you will perform better in the short run and stay healthy in the long run.

Thought

Brain endlessly beating you up or won’t shut up?

Spiritual health practices can quiet that down and help you retrain your thoughts. I know I know, now we’re getting woo-woo… said the doubt in your mind.

Meditation is a big one. Let’s cut out the “spiritual” part of meditation and define it by describing what it does.

Meditation is just mental discipline. There are many different methods, but it’s all about getting ahold of the powerhouse in your skull. You can control you. It’s how to stop your mind from overflowing with every social media post you’ve seen over the course of your lifetime.

Affirming thoughts are big. If you don’t think so, then please explain how you’re going to be happy and successful in life if your brain is telling you that you’re a sad loser all the time.

Learn how to talk to yourself in a helpful way here: Using Affirmations

Spiritual Health and Archetypes

An interview with Beth Martens reveals how she uses the King Hero Archetype in her life coaching business.

mentalhealth spiritualhealth

September 27, 2019 by BeApp Blogger

BeApp Blogger

#BeDiscoverable #BeApp

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What is Spiritual Health?