First, I remove my shoes, strip off my socks, and plant myself firmly into the ground. Then, I sit down, fold my legs, and shape my hands into a mudra. A mudra is a particular way to hold your fingers together that stimulates different elements within the body. Breathing in and out, I concentrate on my breath. Finally, after my back has had enough, I stretch out upon the ground, ensuring as much contact as possible that I can tolerate with the Earth. This is part of my spiritual practices for mental health. In fact, my mental health is my wealth and part of the multi-capital that I bring to the table for every organisation I am a part of.
Meditating monk.
Source: Pexels.
Multi-capital And Mental Health
Often, we think in terms of capital as solely financial. However, it isn’t. Multi-capital considers that financial capital is not the only thing that adds value. There are other forms of capital such as human, natural, intellectual, social, or constructed. The human form of multi-capital we are discussing in this blog is that of mental health. If we look at it from a business perspective, an employee’s mental health has a direct impact on the business.
For instance, if a person has good mental health, they are able to work more productively, which saves the business money. A person with good mental health is going to bring a positive vibe to the workplace, which uplifts everybody. Have you ever noticed how motivated and happy people are hard to deny? I find that I love being around those people, and they inspire me to be my best.
Conversely, a person with poor mental health will be a downer at the workplace. Not only that, they may be absent from work more often, and when they are present, they exhibit decreased productivity, costing the business money. If the person gets fired, the business now has to retrain someone else to take their place, incurring even more expenses. It’s much smarter to invest in good mental health rather than clean up the mess.
What Are Spiritual Practices For Mental Health?
There are several spiritual practices for mental health discussed within this article. What I am going to share with you are the ones that I use on a consistent basis. It’s great to get information from big talkers, but I’m the kind of person who likes to see the stumbling, uneven walk of someone treading the path that they claim to follow, even if the path is difficult,
Grounding As Spiritual Practices For Mental Health
Did you know that humans are bioelectric fields of energy that use electricity to hold their atoms together? Like anything else that produces electricity, humans need grounding too. Grounding means removing barriers, such as socks, and connecting the feet, hands, legs, and arms to the ground, depending on preference and need. Traditionally, grounding is a spiritual practice. However, recent studies have demonstrated the viability of grounding for both physical and mental health purposes, including better sleep.
According to Oschman et al., (2015), “multi-disciplinary research has revealed that electrically conductive contact of the human body with the surface of the Earth (grounding or earthing) produces intriguing effects on physiology and health.” The paper explores how grounding during sleep assists patients with chronic pain, to sleep better. The process of grounding reduces cortisol. Cortisol is a steroid hormone. Too much stress releases too much of this hormone, which can create physical health problems later. The paper is well worth reading to find out how grounding can benefit both your mental and physical health in the long run.
Another article by Sinatra et al., (2022) delves into how grounding fights inflammation in a holistic manner, without the need for medication. In fact, studies showed that grounding improved outcomes for patients of COVID-19 during the pandemic. As a spiritual practice for mental and physical health, grounding has its scientifically proven merits.
Woman meditating.
Source: Pexels.
Meditation As Spiritual Practices For Mental Health
The image of meditation often conjures a serene Buddha face with a smile stretching across his visage, legs folded, arms outstretched, hands in a mudra, and enlightenment shining through his skull. However, that’s not all meditation is good for, and none of us have to be enlightened gurus to benefit from it.
The meditation I speak of is more related to mindfulness, which involves taking time out from thinking and doing to simply be. (Was Macbeth talking about meditating in his famous speech? It might have helped.) Mindfulness is about remaining in the present moment, which is impossible if we are always watching the time. It is akin to releasing linearity and entering eternity for a moment. Indeed, sometimes an hour of meditation feels like only a moment, or 5 minutes feels like an hour.
Meditation is another practice that reduces cortisol levels, similar to grounding. It also improves self-love and targets the regions of the brain dedicated to emotional regulation. Studies have shown that meditation also has physical benefits for reducing some chronic illnesses.
Meditation can be done in any situation, though I will admit that living close to a mechanic, next to a police station, and beneath a flight path, with a fire alarm going off every minute, often presents challenges to reaching nirvana. In these cases, I recommend using earplugs and earmuffs (and using both) to reach that blissful state. If you find meditation is your thing, and you want to get specialised or fancy, there is plenty available on the internet for inspiration.
Yoga As Spiritual Practices For Mental Health
“Yoga is a form of mind-body fitness that involves a combination of muscular activity and an internally directed mindful focus on awareness of the self, the breath, and energy” (Woodyard, 2011). It’s a physical activity geared towards creating a balance between the body and mind. Yoga is easy enough for even ancient old ladies, such as me, to participate in.
There are several positive benefits of yoga that spread across both the mental and physical systems of the human body. When it comes to mental health, one study showed that “during this 12-week intervention of yoga plus coherent breathing, depressive symptoms declined significantly in patients with MDD in both the HDG and LDG” (Streeter et al., 2017). Another study demonstrated that cortisol levels are reduced in people who practise yoga.
With yoga, there are several types to choose from, such as asana or kundalini. Yoga can be done in a group setting, or you can watch a free YouTube video. As they say, the choice is truly yours.
Kindness As Spiritual Practices For Mental Health
Scriptures from Christianity to Buddhism promote being kind to others. It isn’t about paving your path to heaven with gold. What the wise sages of ages past couldn’t divulge in plain language to their followers was that acts of kindness are brilliant spiritual practices for mental health. Back in the day when physical crucifixions and public stoning were the gigs over cancel culture and doxing, they didn’t have the concepts, words, studies, or scholarly articles to impart what we now have solid evidence of. What these wise sages had was intuition.
“Physiologically, kindness can positively change your brain by boosting levels of serotonin and dopamine” (Siegle, 2023). Dopamine receptors are the feel-good receptors in the brain. In fact, if you can get these firing off, you can walk through life with a smile on your face amidst the chaos and destruction. Random acts of kindness, especially to strangers or even people you don’t like, do wonders for these receptors. It works especially well if you don’t expect anything in return. I do this daily. As a person dealing with a lot of struggles, I find random acts of kindness win.
A peaceful image of balanced stones against the backdrop of a sunset on the ocean.
Source: Pexels.
moving forward
As you can see, what impacts the mind, impacts the body. Furthermore, when something improves the mind, it improves the body. We aren’t talking about the big Bible miracles like turning water into wine but more of the minor modern miracles, which can and will improve each of our lives.
Three of the spiritual practices for mental health (grounding, meditation, and yoga) involve reducing cortisol. The final practice (kindness) gets the dopamine moving in the head. Less pain chemicals and more happy ones will have an astonishing effect on your overall mental health and well–being.
Anyone, including agnostics and atheists, can participate in spiritual practices for mental health. You don’t need to be a guru or attend church regularly. The practices for mental health I’ve spoken of stem from the spiritual. However, adding in the spiritual component is optional and not necessary.
I’ve found that embracing spiritual beliefs from various systems has enhanced my mental health and well-being. I guess, sharing this with you, is my random act of kindness for the day. I may never meet you andI don’t track analytics, so I won’t know if you’ve read this. Still, I have shared my thoughts online, hoping they’ll somehow reach someone who needs them and make a positive impact in their life.
Why is it essential that we focus on Spiritual Practices And Mental Health?
Good mental health builds resilience that enables us to cope better with day-to-day challenges, including major stressors. It doesn’t mean we escape without injury; it simply assists in ensuring that any injury is kept to a manageable level so that we can continue to participate in life to the best of our ability. All practices for mental health, whether spiritual, social, or physical, are essential for keeping our emotional–self healthy.
achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and how they link to Mental Health
“The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries – developed and developing – in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.
The SDGs build on decades of work by countries and the UN, including the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.”
United Nations
Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3) is “good health and well-being”. Good health brings well-being. Mental health is part of health and good mental health brings well-being to the person. It doesn’t mean their life will be easy, however, it does mean they will have a better internal quality of life. Improving the quality of life for everybody on this planet is the aim of the 17 SDGs. In fact, using spiritual practices for mental health is a way of achieving good mental health and well-being, as an SDG, for yourself without depending on a government, an organisation, the World Health Organisation (WHO), or even the United Nations to deliver on promises.
A Thrivable Framework
Welcome to the THRIVE Framework. If the SDGs are the goals, the Framework is the path, the strategy, to which team humanity can score points for the future. The THRIVE Framework, otherwise known as the “Systemic Holistic Model“, is made up of 12 Foundational Focus Factors (FFFs), of which I’ve already introduced you to a couple. Together, along with back-casting, this Framework works together to send humanity hurtling towards thrivabililty. Back-casting is setting up your goal and then working your way backwards to find the steps to achieve your outcomes.
THRIVE also offers businesses and people a tool they can use to calculate how sustainable they are. This is called the THRIVE Platform. If you want more information on how to access and use this, please contact us.
The THRIVE Framework’s original target audience was business entities. However, once you familiarise yourself with the FFFs, you will see that these principles can be used at the microcosmic and individual scale, also. Some of the FFFs we touched on in this article were Multi-capital (shared at the beginning), Entity Model, Complex Wicked Problems, and Values Based Innovation.
Complex Wicked Problems
A complex, wicked problem refers to a social, cultural, political, or economic problem that is difficult to solve. The term wicked refers to the fact that many problems are hard to define, complicated, and defy conventional thinking or simple answers. Many complex wicked problems also become exacerbated by climate change. Often the solutions to one problem causes difficulties in other areas.
Good mental health and well-being is not a problem. Neither are spiritual practices for mental health. Mental health becomes an issue when it deteriorates. This, could then become a complex, wicked problem in a variety of ways. For instance, a person with deteriorating mental health may turn to addictions (legal or illegal) as a way of dealing with them. In turn, these addictions ultimately exacerbate the mental health issues. Or, there may be no addictions and the person may lose their job or quit school, to ease the issues, and then face problems reintegrating into the social world later.
Entity Model
Entity models aim to navigate what entities can do. An entity can range from a small, single-celled organism to the entire cosmos. These models shape the boundaries that outline their limits. THRIVE’s logo, a ciambella chart, outlines two important boundaries for humanity to adhere to so that it can achieve thrivability. One is a social floor, denoting the minimum requirements for an entity’s survival. The other is an environmental ceiling. This environmental ceiling is where the environment can no longer recover from the damage, potentially depriving entities of what they need to survive.
Good mental health and well-being keep an individual above that social floor. What a person needs to survive isn’t only money and food. The internal world also needs care and attention.
Values-Based Innovation
Values-based innovation considers the values we hold dear. These values encompass aspects such as human life, thriving societies and ecosystems, fairness, social justice, and other initiatives aimed at creating a thrivable world. It is these values that drive the innovation process, shaping the development of solutions for many intricate and challenging issues facing us.
Using spiritual practices for mental health is innovating based on values. After all, good mental health is valuable. The spiritual practices you use don’t necessarily need to belong to one belief system or another. You can create your own spiritual practice based on what you’ve learned, what you need, and what you are comfortable with.
The THRIVE Walk
THRIVE stands for The Holistic Regenerative Innovative Value Entity. That is our name and that is our game. We aim to walk the talk and we invite you to join us. We have nothing to sell, but we’d like to share with you our way of thinking so that our planet and species has the chance to go beyond surviving and actually thrive.
If you’re interested in joining us, there are a variety of avenues you can take. One way of keeping us with us is via social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Facebook. However, you could subscribe to our YouTube channel, listen to our podcasts, sign up to our newsletter, stay up to date with our blogs, attend our free webinars, or even join us as a volunteer to make an even bigger difference in this world.
