You’ve probably heard it all: Supplements that make you grow 10 pounds of muscle in three weeks! Special workout routines to blast that belly fat! Super exclusive fruit that will cause you to lose 30 pounds in three days for only five easy payments of $199.99! Yet in all of these ads, there’s never anything about spiritual health, a key part of your health.
The National Wellness Institute says that spiritual health or wellness is the striving of harmony with oneself and others, while working to balance the inner needs of the rest of the world through invoking values and beliefs that serve a purpose in your life. In other words, people achieve spiritual health by balancing the responsibilities of society and self and by following their personal beliefs.
Everybody has a different idea of what provides meaning in our lives. Some people may turn to religion, others to physical activities. Some may choose to live a simpler lifestyle while others choose a rich lifestyle to drive their personal sense of spiritual wellness.
In any case, it’s almost universally agreed upon that spiritual health is an important part of holistic health and wellness. Studies have shown that people with strong spiritual convictions tend to live longer and have lower levels of a cytokine called IL6, which has a tendency to cause disease in older people.
Your health goes beyond just physical wellbeing.
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In addition to its direct effects on prolonging life, strong spiritual convictions are also more likely to allow people to recover faster from injuries and operations. In a 1995 study, heart transplant patients who participated in religious activities and claimed their faith was an important aspect of their lives did much better in follow up treatments than those who said that they did not. Furthermore, Dr. Herbert Benson, Director Emeritus at the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital, says that the main reasons for many primary care visits is related to stress, and that meditation techniques or other spiritual relaxation techniques have proven to reduce followup visits by at least 10%.
So, how do you improve your spiritual health? Unfortunately, spiritual health is not like physical health, which is easily quantified and improved through diet and exercise; it is a far less precise science that varies from person to person.
Don’t know where to start? Going outside more is a common way to get in tune with your spiritual side and with nature; it also helps your physical health through more exposure to sunlight, which improves your Vitamin D levels.
Another useful technique many people swear by is meditation; by relaxing every day and forgetting about daily stresses, individuals can easily reduce their stress levels and improve their spiritual health significantly. Here is a good source for a beginner. May your nirvana be with you!
