How Spirituality Affects Your Mental Health

When you pursue a life of optimum holistic health, you realize that your overall wellness is derived from the interconnected nature of your physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual components of health. Each aspect of your health impacts the others. In today’s blog, let’s look at how your spiritual health impacts your mental health, and how Spiritual Healing Practices can lead to improved mental health and wellbeing.

The Connection Between Spiritual Wellness and Mental Health

Spiritual wellness means being connected to something greater than yourself and having a set of values, principles, morals, and beliefs that provide a sense of purpose and meaning to life, then using those principles to guide your actions. Mental wellbeing refers to emotional, social, and psychological wellness. Your thoughts, feelings, and actions all fall under the category of mental health, including the choices you make, the ways you interact with others and treat relationships, how you handle stress, and the moods and behaviors associated with them.

Spiritual wellness and mental wellbeing are distinctly different but deeply integrated with one another. Spiritual wellness is about seeking a meaningful connection with something bigger than yourself, which can result in a positive mental state of peace, awe, contentment, gratitude, and acceptance. Mental wellness is about cultivating a positive state of mind, which can broaden your outlook to recognize and incorporate a spiritual connection to something larger than yourself. A solid foundation of spiritual wellness can support better mental health — making your decisions and choices clearer, grounding you during periods of change, and giving you the resiliency to survive with grace and inner peace in the face of adversity. The bottom line is, strong spiritual wellness decreases depression and anxiety, enhances your positive sense of self, helps you develop healthy coping skills, encourages you to find meaning in life, and develop human connection — all hallmarks of good mental health.

What are Spiritual Healing Practices?

When your spiritual wellness is neglected, it can deeply impact your mental health. Spiritual Healing Practices are practices you can incorporate into your life that can will bolster your spirituality, which in turn will support better mental health. Spiritual Healing Practices can help you find meaning and purpose in life, which can give you a sense of hope and bolster your mental state.

Spiritual Healing Practices can improve feelings of acceptance, decrease negative emotions, find meaning, and deepen your relationships with others. Spiritual Healing Practices can address mental health issues including poor self-esteem, low confidence, lack of self-control, and fear of daily tasks and challenges. For these reasons, Spiritual Healing Practices can be a way of keeping your mental health strong.

Spiritual Healing Practices to Boost Your Mental Health & Wellbeing

Spiritual healing is a very personal journey. There are a wealth of Spiritual Healing Practices available, but not every practice will be meaningful for you. Find the ones that speak to you, and you’ll be on your way to spiritual healing and stronger mental health:

• Mindfulness: Mindfulness teaches you to be aware of what is happening in your body and mind in the present moment and open to it with curiosity and kindness. This allows you to explore beliefs, perspectives, and experiences in a new way that might lead to new insights around spiritual questions, which in turn leads to new insights around the state of your mental health.
• Meditation: Meditation is the practice of focusing your mind for a period of time, fostering a connection with a higher power. That spiritual connection results in positive feelings of relaxation and inner peace and helps you manage negative emotions such as anger and fear, all of which can improve mental health.
• Yoga: Yoga is an ancient practice that involves physical poses, movement, concentration, and breathing techniques that can reduce stress, anxiety, and depression, and stimulate feelings of inner peace. Yoga is designed to cultivate mental focus and expand spiritual energy.
• Prayer or taking part in organized religion: Deepening your spiritual health by becoming a member of a close-knit religious community can provide structure, support, and a sense of acceptance, all of which are beneficial to mental health. Enhancing your spiritual health through prayer often facilitates a sense of peace, which supports a calmer and accepting mental state.
• Journaling: Journaling is simply writing down your thoughts and feelings to understand them more clearly. A journal is an excellent tool for discovery to explore your spirituality. It also helps you manage overwhelming emotions, so you can better manage anxiety, reduce stress, and cope with depression.
• Volunteering: Helping others is a selfless act of kindness that boosts your spiritual wellness by making you feel like you are positively contributing to the universe. It also increases your sense of empathy, raises your self-esteem, and creates a sense of gratitude, all important elements of better mental health.
• Spending time in nature: Nothing inspires a sense of awe like spending time in nature. It’s a global canvas that bears witness to the limitless power of the divine, who creates without bounds. And spending time outdoors has been shown to enhance your mental health by lowering stress and anxiety and boosting your mood.
• Appreciating music and the arts: When you immerse yourself in art or music, you increase your connection to the world and to other people by appreciating the divine found in creativity. That’s a wonderful spiritual way to support better mental health.
• Creative practices: Whether you paint, sculpt, write, dance, sew, knit, or scrapbook, when you invest your heart and soul in creating something original, you are tapping into divine inspiration. That sense of accomplishment and pride in your work boosts your mental health.
• Cultivating compassion and forgiveness: When you look inward to examine your own biases and thinking patterns, you cultivate a sense of acceptance of the world and of yourself. That spiritual approach to personal growth ultimately supports better mental health.

Spiritual Healing at OHI

How are spiritual wellness and mental health connected? The practice of spirituality makes and holds room for compassion for self, others, and the world, and that is the very foundation for better mental health. Strong spiritual wellness decreases depression and anxiety, enhances your positive sense of self, helps you develop healthy coping skills, encourages you to find meaning in life, and develop human connection — all hallmarks of good mental health. There are many Spiritual Healing Practices that you can adopt to put you on the path to spiritual healing and stronger mental health, including mindfulness, meditation, stretch/yoga, journaling, volunteering, and more.

At OHI, we offer a wealth of classes that will teach you spiritual healing practices. Our Alpha I & II classes teach you Alpha meditation techniques to quiet the mind, manage stress, and release tension. Our Vocal Toning class teaches you a powerful technique for reaching a meditative state to improve your spiritual health and wellness. Our Emotional Detoxification class helps you learn to feel, process, and understand your emotions and discover the healing power of forgiveness. Our Mental Detoxification class teaches you how to cancel negative thinking and develop a mindfulness practice for maintaining a positive attitude — affirmations, visualization, journaling, sharing gratitude, and living in the present. Adopt an array of Spiritual Healing Practices that bring meaning to your life, and your solid foundation of spiritual wellness will work to support better mental health.

Give yourself the gift of a healing retreat at OHI and jumpstart your holistic healing journey. Book your next visit to OHI today. Call OHI at (800) 588-0809 to learn more about our holistic approach to health and wellness.