What is Spiritually Integrated Therapy?

When you think of wellness, what do you think?

Do you think of the food you eat, or the movement you enjoy? You might think of taking your medicine, or tending to your stress before it overpowers you. Maybe you even consider the frequency with which you get outside amongst nature. 

Do you consider your spiritual wellness?

Spiritual wellness asks us to explore our beliefs, our values, and how we connect with and interact with the world we live in. It asks us to think deeper than the present moment, and find a larger meaning to pursue. Being spiritually well can mean feeling in alignment with your beliefs and actions, and aid in reducing feelings of depression, anxiety, listlessness, or an overall lack of purpose. 

To engage with spiritual wellness, you don’t have to be religious. While religion is one pathway to spirituality, it is not the only one! Spirituality is simply a sense of connectedness to something greater than yourself, and it means different things to different people. For some it might be connecting with a higher power, for others it might be connecting with their community. Others may find their spirit fulfilled in nature, or through music. 

Other ways spirituality can be present in your life can include: 

• Meditation

• Prayer

• Yoga 

• Community gatherings

• Volunteer work

• Journaling

The purpose of spirituality is to help you connect with and make sense of your world. It helps to guide your path, to figure out what your values are and how to act with them in mind. Basically, spirituality is how we make sense of the world and the time we’re given in it. 

The mind, body, spirit connection

It’s commonly accepted (and well researched) that our thoughts (mental wellness) and our bodies (physical wellness) are connected. When one ails, so does the other, and vice versa. The wellness we feel overall can’t simply be split between mental and physical wellness, because they’re so intertwined. This helps us understand our wellness as holistic–we can’t just pick a single spot to treat when we aren’t well. We’re whole, complicated beings, and we need to honor that in ourselves. 

The mind, body, spirit connection then helps us understand that this connection, this symbiotic relationship doesn’t only exist between what we think and what we experience in our bodies–but it also includes our spiritual wellness.
Feeling empowered, alive, and connected to the world you exist in is a key part of what spirituality provides us–and it’s also a cornerstone to mental health. In understanding this connection, we can find new ways to care for ourselves by caring for our spirituality. 

What is Spiritually Integrated Therapy?

Within Spiritually Integrated Therapy, your therapist will make use of your spiritual beliefs and incorporate them into your care. Rather than being rooted in a single expression of spirituality or religion, spiritually integrated therapy will draw on your connection to your spirituality, to work within your core values and beliefs to help facilitate your growth and healing.

Spiritually integrated therapy can help you: 

• Find and feel a sense of love and compassion toward yourself

• Explore your sense of meaning and purpose in life

• Connect more deeply to your beliefs and values to heal old wounds

• Depend on spirituality as a source of strength and comfort

• Make space in your life to connect to something larger than yourself 

At Hope+Wellness, we believe in the healing power connecting with your spirituality and its potential to enhance your mental health and well-being. By incorporating spirituality into your life, you can find balance, reduce stress, and foster a deeper connection with yourself and the world around you. If you’re seeking additional support or guidance, our therapists are here to help you navigate your path to wellness. Contact us today to get started with one of our clinicians. 

Well Rounded Wellness: Exploring the Health Benefits of Spirituality

What is well-rounded wellness?

We’ve talked a bit before about the link between physical and mental wellness. And research is now showing that there is a significant mind-body connection; meaning our mental health can influence our physical health, and vice versa. 

So we know that health isn’t just one or the other. It’s not physical or mental, it’s a combination of caring for all of the different aspects of ourselves. But within this mind body connection, there’s another aspect often left out of the conversation: spiritual wellness. 

This aspect of wellness asks us to address our beliefs, our values, and our connection to the world we live in. It is often linked very directly with our mental health; spirituality can help with feelings of anxiety, depression, stress, listlessness, lack of purpose, etc. And in being so linked with our mental health, we see that a well rounded sense of wellness has to include the whole picture: mind, body, and soul. 

What is Spirituality?

For some, spirituality might be religion. Whether Judaism, Catholicsm, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sihkism, etc, religion, no matter the denomination, is an expression of spirituality. 

But spirituality doesn’t have to be expressed through an organized religion. 

At its core, spirituality is about connecting with your world. It’s about finding your values, and finding ways to live your life with them in mind. It’s about finding your purpose, your connection to others, your connection to the world around you. Spirituality, whatever form it shows up in, is how we make sense of the time we’re given in this world. 

What is spiritual wellness?

Spiritual wellness is just like any other type of wellness: recognizing and meeting needs. The variance lies in what those needs are. You might need a structured religion, a holy text. Or you might need something more fluid, a spiritual connection to the earth or your own intuition. 

Spiritual wellness just means that you are asking yourself the question “What does it mean for me to be spiritually fulfilled?” and then doing your best to incorporate practices that help you achieve that fulfilment. Those practices might include things like: 

• Meditation

• Prayer

• Yoga 

• Community gatherings

• Volunteer work

• Journaling

When finding what feels right for you, please remember to be culturally sensitive. While mental & physical health do benefit greatly from spiritual exploration, it’s important to remember that while some spiritual practices are meant to be shared, others are intended as a sacred part of a closed culture. Please do your research if you are exploring spirituality or religion outside of what you are familiar with. 

How does spirituality improve our overall wellness?

There are many ways spirituality helps our overall wellness. A few include: 

Improved Sleep

Because most religions have some sort of mindfulness practice (prayer, meditation, yoga), the health benefits of mindfulness are also true of the health benefits of spirituality! And research has found that those with a steady mindfulness practice get better, more restful sleep than those without. 

Boosted Physical Health 

Spiritual practices not only help our mental and emotional health, but our physical health as well. Having those steady practices helps give us a regular mindfulness routine which not only improves the quality of our sleep, but has also been shown to lower blood pressure, and strengthen our immune system. 

Improved relationships

Spirituality often centers on the idea of connection, and often requires (or benefits from) some sort of community involvement. And when we are committed to a community, that means we are attuning ourselves to be mindful of others wants and needs, as well as strengthening our own skills in communication–simply through practice! And these skills aren’t restricted just to your own spiritual community. They become habit, and make it easier for you to handle conflict and communication with other people in your life. 

Decreased symptoms of anxiety and depression

When you explore and commit to your own spirituality, you feel a stronger sense of connection. To yourself, your friends and loved ones, your community, your environment, etc. This feeling of connection helps to lower the risk of depression. And spiritual practices like meditation, prayer, and yoga help to increase our mindfulness, and in doing so decrease our stress and anxiety levels. 

Improved coping skills

When difficult life events occur (sudden illness, relationship trouble, death of a loved one, etc.) spirituality helps to give us a guidebook on how to manage what seems unmanagable. Take, for example, the death of a loved one. While traditions vary across religions and spirituality, the thing that links them all is that there is some sort of tradition or ritual that accompanies grief and loss. This can help facilitate the grieving process. Rather than pushing those difficult emotions to the side and ignoring them, spiritual or religious traditions help us to face them. And the traditions or rituals that go along with those occurrences helps us to feel like we are in control of our own grieving, or emotional journey. Without these traditions it would be much more difficult to grapple with uncomfortable emotions (like grief) and the feeling of being untethered and out of control would just make things worse. 

Incorporating spirituality into your life is a great way to round out your wellness practice. Keeping a holistic view of wellness (mind, body and soul) reminds you to take stock of your needs, and find enjoyable ways for you to fill them, without sacrificing your health in other areas.  And, in fact, can help you to improve both your mental and physical health! 

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therapist in falls church, mclean, tysons corner, merrifield, arlington and vienna, va

Hope+Wellness is a psychotherapy practice serving the Falls Church, McLean, Great Falls, Vienna, Arlington, Alexandria, and the greater Washington DC region. We provide compassionatecare to children, teens, and adults with stress, anxiety, and depression. Our practice is in-network with BCBS and provides Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), mindfulness and acceptance based therapies, and other top, premier evidence-based treatments. Call, email, or schedule an appointment with us online today. We’re happy to help!