We often refer to the eight core dimensions of wellness, and while we seem to have a pretty solid grasp on the physical and emotional dimensions, what about spirituality? Could you define spirituality if asked to? How can spirituality contribute to your wellness? This blog will guide you through a spiritual approach to wellness and how you might already be embracing spirituality in your health journey.
Clearing Up a Misunderstanding
When we think of the term "spiritual," we often call to mind one's religion or worldview. However, this is a misunderstanding and an extremely broad stroke of spirituality. In reality, spiritual wellness is composed of clusters of "," qualities held in our cultures and communities that function to separate good from bad and right from wrong. Because an individual can hold these values regardless of whether they believe in a higher power, spirituality is not restricted to a particular denomination or religious practice. The fact that spiritual wellness is not limited to people of a particular faith means that community building is more accessible to us. Let's take a look at how spiritual assets might contribute to general wellness.
Community-Building Spirituality
Since spiritual assets are used not only by people but also by communities, a direct causal link is established between them. But, interestingly, this causality goes both ways. For instance, when many individuals are committed to practicing charity, they form a community that at large promotes charitable actions. Because that community now supports charitable behaviors, it is more likely to affect all of those individuals living within it — or who might eventually live in it — to practice charity as well. By practicing individual spirituality, spiritual communities are built, and more spiritual individuals are created in turn and so on and so forth. Individuals and their communities are strongly connected, but there are definitely ways in which they employ spiritual assets differently.
Ways of Employing Spiritual Assets
The University of Kansas highlights the three main uses of spiritual assets: on the individual level, the community level and the organizational level.
Individually, spiritual assets can entail promoting justice, being humble in your interactions with other people, being hospitable to those around you (whether they are fleeting visitors or long-term tenants in your life) and practicing forgiveness. This allows for both your own well-being to flourish and the many people who are touched by your spirituality.
The community and organization-based levels of spirituality entail largely the same practices as each other. They include creating mission and value statements to encourage an environment that is committed to achieving wellness, structuring the organization to attend to each member's needs, comprehensive and sympathetic onboarding for new members and continual reevaluation of those measures to make sure they are achieving these goals.
Potential Challenges
The spiritual wellness goals that we have established so far are quite broad, so they can be very demanding as a result. One might experience spiritual exhaustion, an inability to turn their desires into action or simply not have the resources necessary to maximize their wellness. The Shaw Wellness Institute, as well as all of 91¶ÌÊÓƵ's health and wellness programs, are readily available and enthusiastic to help you on your own journey with spiritual wellness. 91¶ÌÊÓƵ's religious communities also welcome any sort of theistic journey you may be taking with wellness. Spiritual assets are a great benefit — both to yourself and those around you — so our hope is that this article has informed you of some ways that you might pursue spiritual wellness.