self-nurture
Spiritual Practices To Improve Your Mental Health
Mental health has become a critical focus for many in recent years. While traditional methods such as counseling, therapy, and medication are essential in addressing mental health issues, the mental health benefits of spirituality are often overlooked.
Everyone’s mental well-being is affected at some point by the challenges of modern life. It is common to feel out of balance when our world seems to be spinning out of control, or when it seems that we are not getting the things we most want in our lives.
Most people don’t realize that spiritual connection is essential to our mental health and facilitates well-being on all levels. Because mental health issues have such a low and heavy vibration, they make it difficult and sometimes impossible to feel the presence of God, Source, Spirit, the Divine in our lives.
But by working daily to establish a strong connection with your spirit guides and higher source, you are taking a powerful step toward freeing yourself from the grip of these inner demons and dark energies.
Spirituality in its various forms is a powerful way to connect with yourself and the world, fostering a deeper sense of inner peace and purpose for a more balanced and fulfilling life. Research clearly shows that various spiritual practices can significantly improve mental health. These practices offer complementary benefits to traditional mental health treatments, promoting emotional resilience, stress reduction, and overall psychological well-being.
Personally, I have found that spiritual practices such as prayer, meditation, and journaling give me greater access to guidance and support from the spirit realm and my guides. Our guides are a wonderful source of healing, guidance, and direction. Getting in touch with our guides can actually help us get out of a funk because they have the ability to set us free and empower us on every level.
Substance Abuse Destroys Relationships And Families
We all put a lot of time, effort, and resources into our relationships. From dating to marriage and parenthood, each stage comes with its own mix of joys and challenges. But amidst these milestones, it’s natural to ask: Is our relationship nurturing our spiritual well-being?
Think about the impact your partner has on your mental health and spiritual well-being. Is your relationship deepening your connection with God, Source, Spirit, or the Divine? Is it nurturing and protecting your children and loved ones? Or do you feel a subtle drift away from what really matters?
It’s a common scenario — an intimate relationship starts to fade as priorities shift. Maybe your partner chooses time with friends over quality family moments. Perhaps hobbies or habits take over, eroding intimacy and trust.
This isn’t just a personal story; it’s a broader reality with serious consequences. Children left wondering where a missing parent is, while the other struggles alone as a single parent, trying to juggle too much. This absence of care and nurture affects children’s personal and spiritual growth, leaving lasting echoes into their adulthood.
Alcohol and drug abuse often sneak into many of these situations, silently corroding relationships and families from within. In my spiritual work, I’ve met many souls grappling with failing marriages and domestic chaos overshadowed by substance abuse and addiction.
If you’re stuck in such a relationship, ask yourself why you’re staying. Love shouldn’t coexist with self-destruction. If your partner’s commitment wavers, consider where your spiritual path meets theirs. Sometimes, the toughest choices lead to healing.
Raise Your Vibration With Humor, Fun And Laughter!
I recently completed the first of two months of practice in a year-long advanced psychic development course that I am currently taking. The practical tests were quite challenging, even for an experienced psychic, but overall I am happy to say that it went quite well.
One of the tests required us to do a psychic reading for a stranger via video call, with the goal of perceiving details about the person at different stages of their life. In other words, we had to sense significant details about them when they were children, teenagers, in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and so on.
Before my test reading, I prepared by mentally focusing on the lady I was to read for and I did this while walking my dogs. I have found over the years that this daily time outdoors with my beloved pets is great time to receive psychic information.
It also helped that we were sent a photo of our randomly assigned subjects in advance, so I could also visualize her in my mind’s eye, which makes the process easier.
So, by the time I called her on FaceTime for the reading, I had already written down a lot of information about her younger years before the session began. For example, I had seen that she had a fairly happy childhood and even had a vision of her blowing on daisies to make a wish.
Our Priorities Are The Moral Of The Story
I have always loved thought-provoking stories. One of my favorites I heard when I was only seven years old. It’s profound wisdom has stayed with me all my life. It goes like this:
An old lady of about 85 years of age lived alone in an old, dilapidated log cabin in the woods. Due to her advanced age, daily life was a struggle, but this feisty woman knew she had to keep going to survive.
One day, while out gathering wood for a fire, she was approached by a mysterious wizard.
“Good morning,” said the wizard. “I have great news for you. Today is your lucky day! ” He then explained that he was the Wizard of the Forest, and that he would grant her any wish her heart desired.
The old lady paused to consider this generous offer. But before she could make up her mind, the wizard interrupted her thoughts. “I could turn all the wood you have into solid gold. Imagine how rich you would be!” he suggested.
“Oh, what good would that do?” replied the old woman. “I could hardly carry it back to my hut, for the gold would be much heavier than the wood!
“Well, then perhaps I could turn all the water in your house into wine,” said the wizard with great enthusiasm.
Always Feel Free To Own Your True Feelings
Has anyone ever told you that you are too happy? Or has anyone ever told you that you smile too much? My guess is probably never.
So, why is it that whenever we experience negative emotions, be it grief, despair, or depression, we are often told that there is a time limit to such feelings and that we need to get over it. In today’s society, it is essentially also taboo to express feelings of loneliness, sadness, fear, or simply being unhappy.
My brother died at the tender age of 12 and left such a void in our lives that my entire family grieved his loss for decades. Fortunately, we were raised to accept this as a perfectly normal and natural process for us. We all understood that we would work through our feelings of grief and loss in our own way and at our own pace. We did not grieve according to a schedule or set of societal rules.
I find that a useful way to think about feelings and how to process them is to think of our emotions as being processed by our heart and mind like food is processed by our body. Just like food, we need to break down, digest, and assimilate the lessons and insights in our emotions to serve as growth “nutrients” for the soul.
Replace Nighttime Overthinking With Morning Clarity
As night falls and the world quiets down, our minds often do the opposite. Many of us find ourselves caught in a relentless tide of overthinking as we replay the past and stress about the future. This mental whirlwind of worry can leave us feeling mentally foggy and emotionally drained, far from our true selves.
But within all this turmoil lies a powerful opportunity for personal growth and empowerment. How is this possible? Well, the key to ending the constant spiral and realigning ourselves with our highest good lies in cultivating greater intuitive awareness and mental clarity.
Overthinking at night is a common problem for many of us. In the silence of the night, after being on autopilot all day, our overactive minds become a breeding ground for worry, fear, and regret. Over time, this leads to a vicious cycle of anxiety and insomnia, which leads to more stress the next day, which leads to more anxiety and insomnia the next night, and so on.
The results are not only that we feel constantly tired and energetically drained, but we also lose our sense of self and connection to our soul purpose. Feeling energetically drained and disconnected from our authentic selves, we begin to question our choices and direction in life, leading to increased anxiety and decreased self-esteem. It becomes a very toxic spiral that is devastating to our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being!
Finding Your Silent Space Within
Finding our silent space within is the essential spiritual practice. Cultivating a sense of inner stillness, mindfulness, and presence is crucial to any spiritual, metaphysical, or esoteric practice, as it allows for a deeper connection to your higher self, the universe, and the divine.
The silent space within is the inner connection point to our spirit or soul — the part of our being that is eternal and transcendent. This relationship is fundamental to most spiritual, religious, and esoteric traditions, which often describe the silent space within as a portal or bridge to a deeper understanding and connection with the soul, the divine, or the universal consciousness.
In many traditions, cultivating the silent space within is considered essential to achieving enlightenment or spiritual liberation — the realization of one’s true nature as soul or spirit, beyond physical and mental limitations. This realization of inner silence is our awakening to the eternal aspect of our being.
A concept used in various spiritual, meditative, and mindfulness practices, the notion of a silent space within symbolizes the inner sanctuary where one can retreat to find inner peace and strength, clarity, and a sense of centeredness, regardless of external circumstances. It is where we feel a deeper connection to something greater than ourselves, which is central to any spiritual path.