Nourishing the Spirit: An Often-Overlooked Dimension of Wellness

I hope that wherever you are reading this, you are able to take a moment to pause and tune into the present moment.

What setting are you in? How is your body positioned? How is your breath?

I am currently on a wellness day for myself.

I acknowledge that having the ability to take a day like this is a privilege. For many people, stepping away from work, caregiving, or other responsibilities simply isn’t an option.

At the same time, I’ve learned that even when the opportunity to rest is available to me, choosing to take it isn’t always easy. I can give myself many reasons why another task, obligation, or deadline is more important than spending this time on myself.

If I am being honest, the last year stretched me.

Due to personal and professional obligations beyond my normal baseline, I felt myself approaching burnout. The obligations themselves were largely my own decisions, and for the most part, I enjoyed them. It wasn’t any one thing that was necessarily too much. It was the culmination of everything together, leaving me with very little time to recharge amidst the busy weeks.

During times like this, I notice myself falling into certain habits. I become very task-oriented. I get a little impatient. And, as if trying to compensate for the lack of true rest, my body starts craving constant stimulation.

Netflix. Entertainment. Distraction.

Because sometimes sitting quietly means actually noticing just how tired I am.

Earlier this year, I made the decision to spend a week on a mindfulness retreat at Plum Village in France. This particular retreat marked an important anniversary in the Plum Village tradition, which made the opportunity especially meaningful to me. Most years, my retreats are much closer to home, at local practice centres and monasteries.

The decision did not come lightly. I was in the midst of projects coming to an end, and I needed to coordinate care for my son. Perhaps this is something other parents can relate to: I also felt guilty stepping back from my parental responsibilities to participate in a retreat for myself.

Fortunately, I received support and was able to make the necessary arrangements. I recognize how fortunate I am to have that support in my life. Not everyone does.

A little about me: I have been a practitioner of Zen Buddhism in the Plum Village tradition for over 10 years.

Thích Nhất Hạnh was the Vietnamese Zen master who founded this tradition. Often described as the “Father of Mindfulness” for his influence on the modern mindfulness movement, particularly in the West, he helped make ancient Buddhist teachings accessible and applicable to everyday life.

These are the teachings I draw on and return to: paying attention to our breath, our steps, and our meals. Paying attention to the body and creating space for the myriad of sensations and emotions that may not always receive our attention as we zoom through our busy lives.

My own spiritual practice happens to be rooted in Zen Buddhism. Yours does not need to be.

When I speak about spirituality here, I am not necessarily talking about religion, nor am I suggesting that anyone needs to subscribe to a particular belief system. Spirituality can exist within religion, but it can also exist outside of it.

Plum Village was established in southwest France in 1982 by Thích Nhất Hạnh and his community after years of exile from Vietnam following his peace activism during the Vietnam War.

I stayed in Lower Hamlet, a small village-like sanctuary among the hills and fields of southwest France.

Waking up every morning, I was greeted by the sound of songbirds, the swaying of tree branches, and soft currents of wind drifting through the French countryside.

I stayed in a simple room with only a bed, side table, and a shelf shared with my roommate. Our glass-screened wall faced the fields.

We followed the rhythm common to Plum Village retreats: sitting meditation in the morning, physical activity, mindful meals, walking meditation, mindful working together, circle sharing, evening meditation, and Noble Silence.

Over the years, I have come to view retreats as creating the conditions for me to deepen my practice and reacquaint myself with the foundations of what I know leads me toward a calmer, more joyful, and intentional life.

It’s a little like taking a car in for a tune-up.

On retreat, I take my mind, body, and spirit in for a tune-up.

And that brings me to the dimension of wellness I really want to talk about: spirituality.

As a naturopathic doctor, I was trained in a variety of approaches to supporting a healthy mind and body. Both are important.

But over the years, I came to recognize that, for me, there was another piece: the spiritual dimension of wellness.

So what exactly do I mean by spirituality?

Have you ever stood somewhere in nature—among trees, beside the ocean, underneath a night sky—and experienced a sense of awe that was difficult to put into words?

Have you ever held someone you love and, for a moment, felt profoundly connected to another human being?

Perhaps you’ve been creating art, writing, playing music, or dancing and become so immersed in what you were doing that, for a little while, your usual sense of time and self seemed to disappear.

Maybe you’ve experienced a moment of complete stillness when everything simply felt…quiet.

These experiences don’t have to be religious. You don’t even have to call them spiritual.

For me, however, they point toward something that I understand as spirituality.

When I speak of spirituality, I mean our capacity to experience connection—to ourselves, to one another, to nature, to the universe, to the sacred, or simply to something larger than our individual selves.

There is an inward dimension to this connection as well.

Beneath our roles, responsibilities, productivity, fears, expectations, and the constant stream of thoughts running through our minds, there is an opportunity to become deeply acquainted with ourselves.

For me, spirituality exists in both directions: inward and outward.

It is a connection to something larger than myself while, at the same time, a deeper connection to what is within myself.

Admittedly, it is hard to put into words.

Interestingly, researchers have struggled to define spirituality too. A systematic review of definitions used in healthcare literature found that two of the most common dimensions were connection and meaning or purpose. Definitions included connection with oneself, other people, nature, the transcendent, or the sacred. In other words, spirituality does not necessarily have to mean religion. It can describe something much broader about how we experience meaning and connection in our lives.[1]

This is also why, when I create space for deeper processing with clients, my role isn’t to impose my understanding of spirituality onto someone else. Rather, I try to create space for people to slow down, ground themselves, notice what is happening within them, and connect more deeply with themselves.

What arises from that space belongs to them.

Perhaps this is why quieting the mind can be so valuable. We cannot always predict what will arise when we create enough space to listen.

And sometimes, trust is required.

Of course, we also exist in physical bodies. We need food. We need sleep. We need movement, safety, shelter, healthcare, and connection with others. Those needs matter.

But I also think modern life makes it remarkably easy to become disconnected from ourselves.

We can spend so much of our lives in our heads.

Thinking. Planning. Working. Scrolling. Consuming. Achieving. Moving from one task to another.

Sometimes we are so busy getting through our lives that we barely notice ourselves living them.

Perhaps one of the simplest spiritual practices, then, is simply to pay attention.

Pause.

Pay attention.

Pay attention to the sensations in your body.

Pay attention to your breath.

Pay attention to the sunshine warming your skin, the ocean waves washing over your body, or the embrace of someone you love.

To be fully alive in the present moment is to nourish the spirit.

To create, play, write, dance, make music, and express yourself is to nourish the spirit.

To sit beside a lake, tend a garden, walk through a forest, pray, meditate, make art, hold your child, or participate in a community that reminds you that you belong can nourish the spirit.

To sit quietly enough to hear yourself again can nourish the spirit.

To trust, count one’s blessings, and honour one’s needs wholeheartedly can nourish the spirit.

To rest—truly rest—can nourish the spirit.

And to love, and experience that perhaps we are not as separate from one another as we sometimes believe, is to nourish the spirit.

What nourishes your spirit may look entirely different from what nourishes mine.

For me, sometimes it looks like a retreat. On this particular occasion, it looked like a week at a monastery in France.

But it doesn’t have to.

Sometimes it can begin exactly where we started.

With a pause.

With a breath.

With paying attention.

It is a lifelong practice.

Source

[1] Sena, M. A. B., Damiano, R. F., Lucchetti, G., & Peres, M. F. P. (2021). Defining Spirituality in Healthcare: A Systematic Review and Conceptual Framework. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 756080. Available through PubMed Central.