Pave your own path to success.

Spirituality can take any form the individual chooses, from going to a church or temple, experiencing nature, meditation, or anything else that helps a person feel connected to their own faith, purpose, and compassion. Through history, spirituality has taken on countless forms, practices, ceremonies, viewpoints, traditions, customs, etc. Many religious and spiritual teachings promote emotional and physical health for individuals and teach life lessons that are believed to lead to healthy communities and a healthy world. Like many parts of life, spirituality is a unique experience. Some people devote their lives to spirituality as a sole priority, and some people live their whole lives omitting spirituality all together. Whatever your unique viewpoint and experiences are is what is right for you. There are many avenues that a person can explore to experience religion and we will share a few ideas about spirituality as it can apply to wellness.

Many spiritual teachers through history have taught lessons of faith, purpose, and compassion. When we boil these ideas down, and begin to think about how they can be applied, it actually becomes more simple than one might think. Faith is simply believing something is possible and that it will happen in it’s own time. Purpose is really just our ambition, drive, and motivation toward some specific end result or goal. Compassion can be thought of as having understanding and empathy toward others and their own unique life circumstances and also understanding and acceptance of ourselves and our own circumstances. If we were to apply these ideas to our own wellness, it might look something like this: Holding faith that we are able to make the changes that we would like to and that doing these things will benefit us. Having purpose and specific goals or end results in mind. And being accepting of ourselves for being where we are in our wellness process while keeping in mind the faith for progression toward our intended purpose and goals. In essence, faith in this case, comes down to believing you can achieve your goals. The saying, “wether you believe you can, or believe you can’t, you’re right” comes to mind.

Some forms of traditional healing are based in spirituality and the idea of a universal life energy. Practices such as Chi Gong, Tai Chi, Rieki, and many other forms of traditional medicine draw on this universal energy to provide positive effect and healing for the body.

Spirituality has similarities to understanding our emotions in that emotions are our internal reaction to our interpretation of outside world just as spirituality is an interpretation of the world around us. Keep a positive outlook, keep stress low, and have faith that you will achieve your goals. Shoot for the stars, what’s the worst that could happen?

To explore spiritually based wellness services, browse our Merchant Directory.

Author: Tony Montijo, BS Kinesiology, CPT, CES