What is Spiritual Self Care?
For all intents and purposes, this post is a safe space to think about what comes up for you and your spiritual self-care needs. The intentions of this post are to support and explore if/how this type of self-care could be helpful to you.
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Many of us believe in some type of spirituality.Our spirituality can be a belief in formal religion, having a connection with elements of energy, faith, and/or a higher power or a mixture of both. Our beliefs, faith, values and our understanding of the world is connected to our feelings about spirituality.
Spiritual self-care is taking care of yourself and your connection or relationship with your spiritual beliefs and/or your belief in a higher power.
There are a few things to consider when thinking about this type of self-care. Spiritual self-care could include your thoughts, feelings and practices with formal religion, communities of worship and/or exploring your spiritual identity. Spiritual self-care could include looking into energy-healing, using crystals, learning your chakras, Reiki healing, ways to manifest and more.
This kind of self-care can also involve looking into spiritual identities, such as exploring being agnostic, atheist or just having questions about what your spiritual identity is.A lot can come up for folks when thinking about their spiritual self-care needs. For some, spirituality may be a source of trauma, pain or unpleasant memories. For others, exploring outside of formal religion may seem unfamiliar to what they know or what they have learned growing up.
Take some time to self-reflect on what your values are around spirituality. What does spirituality mean to you? What does your relationship with your spirituality need? How would you know if your spiritual self-care needs are being met?
There are a variety of ways you can practice spiritual self-care. Like many self-care options, there are no right or wrong ways to go about meeting your needs. Instead, focus on your emotional safety, your spiritual needs and what feels right for you.Here are a of couple ideas to get you started:
Learn about different spiritual practices, religions and faiths
Practice rituals associated with the religion(s) you identify with, such as prayer or traditional ceremonies
Research and/or talk to your family to learn about familial spiritual practices and traditions
Build relationships with people from your spiritual community
Schedule time to visit and/or attend a place of worship, participate in ways that you feel comfortable
Read literature on your faith or spiritual community
Implement spiritual practices into your self-care plan
Strengthen your existing spiritual self-care by deepening your knowledge or updating your current spiritual self-care needs
What does spiritual self-care mean to you?
