Why Spiritual Wellness is Vital to Your Holistic Health
Holistic health, as the name implies, means a comprehensive health and wellness system that takes the whole of you into consideration. Rather than focusing solely on physical health, holistic health practices promote a range of areas. These include mental, emotional, social, and even vocational health, as well as spiritual wellness. It’s this ‘whole’ that works together to achieve proper health and well-being.
Spiritual health plays a vital role in holistic health, but sadly, it is often neglected and seen as much less important than physical or mental health. It’s also usually equated with religion, although this isn’t entirely true.
What is spiritual health?
Spiritual health is the part of you that’s closely connected to your emotions and perspectives. It’s the source of your inner peace, sense of self-worth, and fulfillment. It can take many forms, including:
- Religious faith and prayer.
- Seeking self-awareness and self-acceptance.
- Finding meaning in life and recognizing your purpose.
- Living according to a set of core values and ethics.
- Fostering positive qualities like forgiveness, tolerance, love, and compassion towards others.
When you understand what spiritual wellness is, it becomes very clear that its impact on your overall health can be transformative.
Spiritual health creates mental stability and emotional security. It keeps you grounded and resilient in hard times. It keeps you purposeful, positive, and motivated, all of which foster and promote better overall health.
Tips for fostering your spiritual health
There are no specific rules or practices for improving spiritual health. This is a very personal process as it involves your emotions, beliefs, and personal experiences. Therefore, the ideal methods and practices differ from one person to the next.
Experiment with different methods until you find the right one (or even several). You’ll know you’ve found what works for you when you begin feeling calmer, uplifted, and more at peace with yourself and the world. You’ll experience greater mental clarity and focus, increased stamina, and feel more positive and motivated.
Here are some suggested practices to try:
- Spending time in nature and contemplating its wondrous beauty is an amazingly uplifting spiritual experience.
- Sitting in solitude can be your personal grounding force. Take time for quiet self-reflection. Spend this time of solitude journaling or simply thinking.
- Prayer is a powerful source of emotional grounding and healing.
- Meditation is historically known as a source of spiritual nurturing and fosters not only inner tranquility, but myriad positive emotional,
- Advocating for a cause that you’re passionate about will give your life more meaning and purpose.
- Fostering forgiveness, tolerance, and compassion for others.
The benefits of spiritual health
Enhancing your holistic health depends on nurturing your spiritual well-being. Your spiritual wellness contributes to your overall health in the following ways:
- Research has found that contemplative practices like meditation, self-reflection, and prayer boost concentration and focus.
- Good spiritual health boosts physical health by regulating and balancing hormones and other vital bodily processes, and by strengthening the immune system.
- Good spiritual health ensures better sleep.
- Being spiritually grounded relieves stress.
- Practices like meditation and mindfulness exercises have been found to reduce aches and pains.
- People with strong spiritual health are less likely to become smokers.
- Spiritual health reduces anxiety and depression.
If your goal is to foster your overall well-being with a holistic health lifestyle, congratulations! You can expect to see some truly amazing changes in your health. But don’t forget the vital role your spiritual well-being plays in this journey.