She Can Heal Podcast

Ep. 38 - The Transformative Power of Spiritual Self-Care: The Path to Inner Peace

• Keila Aldea, LCSW • Season 2 • Episode 38

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 This episode breaks down what spiritual self-care truly means beyond rligious connotations and explores how these practices create profound benefits in our lives.

Through real-world examples, we examine how spiritual practices create inner peace amid chaos, enhance purpose, build resilience during challenges, and deepen self-awareness. You'll meet Sarah, a stressed single mom reconnecting with her values; Maria, finding strength amid multiple life crises; and Elena, outwardly successful but inwardly disconnected – women whose stories might mirror aspects of your own experience.

The beauty of spiritual self-care lies in its accessibility. We explore practical, simple techniques you can incorporate immediately – from two-minute mindful breathing moments that ground you between tasks, to nature walks that restore perspective, to gratitude practices that shift your focus to what truly matters. These aren't lofty, time-consuming rituals but practical tools that fit into real life.

Whether you're feeling overwhelmed, disconnected from your authentic self, or simply curious about adding a spiritual dimension to your self-care practice, this episode provides a roadmap for getting started. Next week, we'll build on this foundation by helping you create a personalized self-care plan that integrates emotional, physical, and spiritual practices without becoming another overwhelming task on your to-do list. Subscribe now so you don't miss this valuable resource to support your healing journey.

90-day Self-Growth Journal - A great companion you can use on your healing journey. For 90 days you will have daily prompts on the topics of self-love, self-care and gratitude.  This journal is great for beginners, novice and anyone that wants to dive deeper into their true selves.   https://amzn.to/4fk14sq

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the she Can Heal podcast, a podcast aimed at helping women heal and thrive emotionally, physically and spiritually. I am your host, kayla Eldia. I'm a licensed therapist and a self-care advocate that is passionate about helping women take back their power and help them realize they're important, worthy and deserve the care and attention they give to those they love most in their lives. This show is meant to help inspire you on your healing journey, no matter if you're in the discovery phase and are just realizing that you have unhealed wounds, habits and mindsets that are keeping you stuck in your life, or you've been on this journey for a while and are looking for inspiration, encouragement and or new tools to help you continue on your healing journey. My goal is to help you realize that you can heal from all that life has thrown at you and are capable of evolving into your healthiest and happiest version. On this show, I will provide you with resources, tools and insights to help you heal and thrive emotionally, physically and spiritually, because you deserve all of that. So if you're ready to ditch the guilt and make yourself a priority, then you're in the right place, because the truth is that you can't pour from an empty cup, even though most of us do this on a regular, and we really need to stop that nonsense. So get ready to be inspired, motivated and equipped to truly thrive. Hello and welcome back to another episode on the she Can Heal podcast. I am so excited for today's conversation. I hope that you've been following along in all the last couple of episodes, because today we are going to continue our self-care conversation and, as promised, today we're going to talk about our next area of self-care, which is spiritual self-care. So in today's conversation, I'm going to define what spiritual self-care is, we're going to talk about the key benefits and we will finish with learning some practices that you can incorporate into your life to be more connected with yourself. This is going to be a great conversation, so let's get into it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so we're going to begin with defining spiritual self-care, because spiritual self-care is another fundamental component to living a happy and fulfilling life. It's all about giving attention to our spirit, the essence that we truly are, because, like I say and I've heard it many times is we are more than just our body. We are more than just our mind. So let's start with the big question what exactly is spiritual self-care? Spiritual self-care is about nurturing your connection to something bigger than you. This something can be defined in so many different ways, right? For some, it's a connection to a higher power or a specific religious tradition. For others, it's also a sense of interconnectedness with nature, humanity or the universe itself. It's all about finding meaning, purpose and inner peace beyond the material world. Spiritual self-care is also defined as everything we do in order to connect to our real self and to a higher power and feel secured and safe. Spirituality also aims to connect us to our deepest real self. It's all about spending time knowing yourself and engaging in activities that provide you inner peace and mental health.

Speaker 1:

Practicing spiritual self-care helps nurture both the mind and the body. Spiritual self-care is not about dogma or rigid rules. It's about creating space for introspection, reflection and connection with your own inner wisdom. I truly believe it's such an important area that we need to give attention to, because it is really connecting to your authentic self. Now let's talk about the benefits of incorporating spiritual self-care into your life and why we should prioritize it. So I'm going to go over a couple of key areas and I'm also going to take it a step further and I'm going to give you scenarios and examples so that you can actually see how spiritual self-care actually can be helpful to specific situations. Our different lives Just give you like a little hint of what this can look like.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so one of the key benefits for practicing spiritual self-care is that when you're meeting your spiritual self-care needs, you increase your inner peace and calm. So when we connect to our spiritual selves, we often experience a sense of tranquility that can help us navigate life's challenges with greater ease. Imagine someone facing a high pressured work environment with tight deadlines and demanding clients. By engaging in daily meditation, they can cultivate a sense of inner stillness. When faced with a particular stressful moment, they can draw upon that inner calm, allowing them to respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively. This connection to their spiritual self provides a sense of grounding. It allows a person to access a place of peace within, even through the most difficult days. This inner sanctuary acts as an anchor, provides stability and clarity. Okay, and what it's really saying is that, no matter what's happening around us right, we're all having demanding lives. Sometimes we have a lot of stress that may come and go. No-transcript. Actually stay more present in our day-to-day and not let those bad moments, the stress of life, actually overwhelm you.

Speaker 1:

Number two is that spiritual self-care enhances meaning and purpose, so spiritual practices can really help us clarify our values, discover our passions and live a life aligned with our true selves. Through practices like journaling and reflective meditation, you can explore your core values. This process helps you identify what truly matters to you, such as compassion, creativity or justice. This is going to help you clarify your values so that you can take action and behave in ways that are aligned with what truly is important to you. This creates a compass for our life. Once these values are clear, they can align their actions and life choices with them, leading to a stronger sense of purpose. These practices create a compass for life, guiding decisions and actions in accordance with those deeply held principles. And that's what journaling can really do, because it's all about that self-reflection piece, so that we can identify, number one what is important to me, right, what do I value? And then it can help you look at your patterns and say are my actions, are my behaviors, aligned with what's truly important to me? So let's look at an example.

Speaker 1:

Sarah is a single mom of two young children. She juggles a demanding job. She deeply values patience, presence and creating a loving, nurturing environment for her kids, but the constant stress and lack of time are making her values very weak. She finds herself snapping at her kids, feeling resentful, and she's constantly distracted by work during her family time. She feels like she's failing as a mom and is deeply disconnected from her own sense of peace. And I'm sure that if you're a mom or if you have a demanding job, you can totally resonate with Sarah and why she's feeling the way that she feels. So the struggle that she's having is that her core values of patience and loving presence are constantly being undermined by her daily reality. She experiences guilt, anxiety and a sense of failure. She's feeling distant from her kids and herself, which is really creating this lack of sense of inner peace.

Speaker 1:

And so let's talk about how can spiritual self-care help Sarah. First, she can start journaling each weekend, reflecting on her day. She notices patterns of frustration and she can identify her specific triggers. She begins to ask herself what truly matters to me in this moment and how can I realign with my values? She can also reflect on her childhood and realize she wants to break the cycle of stress that she grew up in right. So giving herself those moments of reflection can be really helpful so she can clarify what is it that she truly needs values and help her to start taking action and behaving in ways that are more aligned with that, because that can really stop her from feeling connected to herself.

Speaker 1:

She can also incorporate short mindfulness practices in her day even just a few minutes of deep breathing before picking up her kids from school or during her lunch break. She can begin to practice mindful listening, putting her phone away and truly engaging with her children at playtime. All right, so by engaging in these mindful moments, that can be a way for her to slow herself down and to be a little more still so that she can truly connect with herself. She can also connect with nature. Right, she can start taking her kids to her nearby park on the weekends, even for a short walk, which I truly love and connect with a lot, and she can notice that being in nature makes her feel calm and more grounded. She can begin to appreciate all the little things, like the way that the light flickers through the leaves. I can resonate with that, because I love looking at the sky when the clouds are just real puffy, or seeing the sun peeking through the trees, which can be really grounding if that's something that really you connect with. These practices can really help her feel more calm, feel at peace, by utilizing presence and stillness. Okay, so, as you can see, the practices that she connected with or practiced really weren't anything big or major, right? They're really simple practices that can help her to feel more grounded and more connected to herself.

Speaker 1:

Let's move on to number three. Spiritual self-care improves resilience, so connecting with something larger than ourselves can provide a sense of strength and support during difficult times. So, when you're faced with adversity, having a strong sense of meaning and purpose can act as a powerful buffer. Spiritual practices can help you connect with your values and your beliefs, giving you a why that helps you get through difficult times. This sense of purpose can help people to reframe negative situations, finding lessons and opportunities for growth.

Speaker 1:

Let's look at a scenario. So Maria is a woman in her late 40s who's experiencing a variety of challenges. She recently lost her job, her long-term relationship ended and she's dealing with increasing health concerns of her aging parents. She feels overwhelmed, hopeless and like her life is just falling apart. She's struggling to find motivation to even get out of bed. So these are the challenges that she's facing. She's facing financial insecurity and a blow to her professional identity. Right, she lost her job that she's had for a really long time. Emotional pain and a sense of loss of her support system because she just ended a long-term relationship. Worry, stress and added responsibilities because now she's caring for her parents. Feelings of hopelessness, anxiety and depression. Right, because, if you think about it, she's dealing with three major things and that can really feel very heavy. So let's see how spiritual self-care can help Maria increase her resilience.

Speaker 1:

Number one is that Maria can start practicing guided meditations focusing on releasing negative thoughts and cultivating inner peace. This can help her to quiet the noise in her mind and find moments of calm during all the chaos. This practice allows her to regulate her emotions and avoid being swept away by the negative feelings. Meditation can be really, really helpful in that area. Two, she can connect with nature for perspective, so she can go on walks in a nearby park observing the beauty of nature and feeling the rhythm of the seasons. This can help her gain a sense of perspective, reminding her that life is cyclical and that even in winter, spring will come. This connection to nature can help her see that her problems are not the entire world and that there is beauty still to be found. Another practice she can do is she can start journaling for self-reflection and emotional processing. So she can start journaling each evening, writing down her thoughts, feelings and fears. This can help her process her emotions, identify patterns and gain insight into her situation. She can begin to write about things she is grateful for, even the small things, and this can begin to shift her mindset. So those are some great practices that Maria can utilize to help her during these very difficult times.

Speaker 1:

All right, and now we have one more. So spiritual self-care can help you have greater self-awareness. Spiritual self-care encourages introspection, leading to a deeper understanding of our thoughts, feelings and beliefs. It encourages us to look inward, to explore our inner landscape and to gain a deeper understanding of who we are. It creates space for honest self-examination, helping us to uncover hidden beliefs and motivations. Spiritual self-care can promote self-acceptance and compassion. So by learning to treat ourselves with kindness and understanding, we can reduce self-criticism and create a more positive self-image. Spiritual practices like gratitude, journaling and mindfulness can encourage us to appreciate the beauty and wonder of the world around us.

Speaker 1:

All right, so now let's talk about our scenario. Elena is a successful professional and from the outside she appears to have it all she has a good career, a comfortable home and a really good social circle. Elena is a successful professional and from the outside she appears to have it all she has a good career, a comfortable home and a really good social circle. However, inside she feels a profound sense of emptiness and disconnection. She's lost touch with her passions, her intuition and her authentic self. She feels like she's living in a life dictated by external expectations rather than her own inner voice. She often feels numb and has a hard time identifying what she is feeling. So let's talk about her challenges. She's living a life that doesn't align with her true self. She's disconnected from her feelings and intuition. She feels a void and lack of meaning in her life. She has lost touch with the things that she used to really enjoy. So she's just feeling really disconnected overall. She's lacking purpose. She's disconnected from her passions. She feels a loss of authenticity.

Speaker 1:

So let's see how spiritual self-care can help Elena gain some self-awareness. Number one is she can start journaling for inner exploration. So she can start journaling every day, focusing on exploring her inner thoughts and feelings. She begins to ask herself deep questions like what are my true desires? What brings me joy. What are my core values? She can begin to write about her dreams and notices, patterns that help her to understand her subconscious, and through this process she can begin to peel back the layers of self-deception and uncover her authentic self.

Speaker 1:

Another practice she could use is mindful meditation for inner listening. She can incorporate daily meditations into her routine, focusing on quieting her mind and listening to her inner voice. She practices mindful awareness so she can pay attention to her thoughts and feelings without any judgment and she could begin to recognize the difference between her inner voice and the voice of her inner critic. And she can also practice creative expression for self-discovery so she can rediscover her love for painting, a passion that she had abandoned years ago. She can allow herself to express her emotions, her inner world, through her art without worrying about perfection, and she can discover that the creative process really is something that can help her to access parts of herself that she has forgotten. Those three practices can really help Elena really connect with who she truly is and connect to her. You know her authenticity.

Speaker 1:

So those are the four different examples that I want to share with you. So, in other words, I'm trying to help you see that when you practice spiritual self-care. There's a lot of really great benefits. That helps you with peace and calm, with your meaning and purpose, with building resilience and also helping you to have greater self-awareness with yourself, especially if you're like Elena, who feels pretty disconnected. Okay, so now what we're going to do is we are going to move forward. So I really hope that these examples helped you to truly see how having a spiritual practice can help you gain clarity on what you truly, who you truly are and what is important to you. Now I want to help you identify some spiritual self-care practices that you could begin to incorporate into your life and, as you've heard, most of these practices are pretty practical right, there's nothing, unless you choose to. Of course, you can always take it to another level, but most of these are daily practices that you can do very easily and you can incorporate them into your life.

Speaker 1:

So the first area of practices is mindfulness and meditation, and mindfulness emphasizes being fully present in the now, observing your thoughts, feelings and sensations without any judgment. This practice allows you to step away from the constant mental chatter and connect with our inner selves on a deeper level. So by focusing on the present, we can reduce the influence of past regrets and future anxieties, which often really obscures your true self, and meditation provides a space for introspection, enabling us to observe our thoughts and our emotions with greater clarity. This increased self-awareness can help you understand your patterns, your beliefs, your values, fostering a more authentic connection to your inner self. Through this practice, we can become more attuned to our inner wisdom and intuition. So here are some examples that you can use for yourself.

Speaker 1:

The first one is mindful breathing, and mindful breathing, basically, is a very simple practice that you can do just to bring a little more stillness into your day, to get off of that autopilot and to really give yourself the space to just connect with your true self. And mindful breathing is very simple All you're going to do is you're going to focus on your breath and your only job is to just observe each inhale and exhale. And this can be as simple as a two minute mindful breathing break several times during your day. It could be maybe in the beginning of the day, so that you can start your day giving yourself that mindful time. I would recommend also doing it in between your task of your day, maybe if you are feeling really tired, overwhelmed, or maybe you just need that little break again. This is very simple. One of the things that I actually have on my desk is a stand timer and that is a reminder to give myself that little mindful break. And it's a one minute timer and I would just flip it over and I would do something like this where I would just focus on my breath. You can close your eyes to go more deeper into it and all you're really doing is you're focusing on your breath, so you are just inhaling, exhaling, and the whole purpose of this is to bring just a little bit of stillness, a little bit of calm to yourself, to take care of the true person that you are, like your body, your mind, your spirit.

Speaker 1:

You can also do guided meditations and these can be really helpful and you can find them that they can be as short as five minutes to as long as an hour, but who has an hour to do this Most of the time? Like doing a five minute, a 10 minute mindful meditation can be really helpful. So you can use an app like Calm there's Inside Timer, there's a lot of really good ones on there or you can go to a recording on like YouTube, which is what I usually will go to. There's some really good meditation channels. A channel that I usually love to do is called Declutter the Mind, and he has a variety of different meditations on there. The ones I usually gravitate towards are more about mindful awareness, so it's more about being mindful of your moment, your breath, your body. It's a very easy one that you can do for several minutes, so that's one that I would recommend, and I'll definitely link it for you guys. If you're interested.

Speaker 1:

You can also do walking meditation. I know meditation is not for everyone, and so you can do mindful movements, and so walking meditation is another really good one. So, basically, what you're doing is you're paying attention to the sensations of walking and you're connecting your body and your surroundings. So you can do something as simple as pay attention to the different senses. So you can pay attention to sound, you can pay attention to how you feel, how the sun feels on your skin or the breeze feels on your skin. Focus on all the different things that you're seeing. So using all your senses could be a great one. You can also do one called loving, kindness meditation, and really it's cultivating feelings of compassion and kindness towards yourself and others. So that's a really good one to connect with yourself, connect with people that you love, but also connect to the bigger world, and so these are some really easy examples that you can do on a day-to-day basis, every single day.

Speaker 1:

You can pick something to do. You can pick one of these practices and they can be really, really helpful in helping you to bring more stillness, bring more calmness into your day. And again, they don't have to take a long time, they are very simple and very accessible. All right, so the next one is connection and reflection. So reflection allows us to step back from the busyness of life and examine our thoughts, emotions and behaviors. This introspection leads to greater self-awareness, which is essential for spiritual growth. So by understanding our inner self right, we can identify patterns, beliefs and values that really shape our experiences. Okay, so let's go over some different practices. One of them is gratitude journaling, and so regularly writing down things you're grateful for will really help shift your focus from the positive aspects of your life and can enhance your appreciation for the present moment. So consider expanding beyond materialistic things to include gratitude for experiences, relationships and inner qualities.

Speaker 1:

I would also say gratitude is a practice that you can also use outside of journaling as well. Something that I usually do is when you wake up in the morning. You can have gratitude for waking up. You can say thank you for helping me have a good night's sleep. Thank you for another day. You can have gratitude when you're eating your meals I'm so grateful for this food that I'm about to eat. Sometimes, gratitude can be really good if I like to do it at the end of the day, when I get home, and I just say thank you for allowing me to get home safely. So really, a lot of gratitude can be embedded into your day.

Speaker 1:

You can take pauses, pause throughout your day and just give yourself gratitude for your health, give gratitude for the health of your family, and that is a really great one, especially when you're really working on what's important to you, right. So if your health is important to you, your family is important to you, right. The little things in life are important to you. Those are great ways to pause throughout your day. You can use this in meditation, but using gratitude can be a really, really powerful practice to really help you connect to something bigger than just you. You can also do prayer or intention journaling so you can write down your prayers, your intentions, your affirmations, and this is another really great tool that you can use to clarify your desires and focus your energy on what you wish to manifest. So this is a really great one. Intention setting is really powerful, so maybe having a journal every morning where you set those really powerful intentions helps to connect you to the bigger world around you.

Speaker 1:

Another practice that can be really helpful, too, is using religious or spiritual texts, and that could be like the Bible, or it could be different books. Like I know. Some of the books that have really helped me to connect spiritually have been there's the Power of Now, which is really good. There's A New Earth, and these are by Eckhart Tolle. There's the Untethered Soul. These are books that I have used for myself that have really helped me. A lot of these books also have accompanying journals. I know that the Untethered Soul has one. I think the Power of Now has some, and I'm sure that there's other ways. There's Bible journaling. You can use affirmation cards or different decks that you connect with, such as oracle cards, affirmation cards.

Speaker 1:

Anything that helps you to connect to your true self, to your spirit, to do that deep inner work, can be very helpful and you can create these practices really simple, they're practical, they're easy and you can do them daily. There's also practices that you can do, such as being in nature. Nature is another really great way to connect with the earth and to create to the universe and create to you know everything that's beautiful around us, and so spending time in nature, observing its beauty, feeling its energy I know for a lot of people going into nature and just taking a mindful walk or going into nature and just walking and listening to the birds and feeling you know everything that nature brings to us. You know going into nature and just walking and listening to the birds and feeling you know everything that nature brings to us. You know going by water and being by a stream. I know that's something that's very healing and powerful. For myself, anything like that that can help you connect with nature can be really, really helpful. So I know like going for nature walks, going on hikes or just having a picnic in nature, just sitting in earth and really just connecting with nature, can be also very grounding and helpful in connecting with the earth and just helping you to be in reflection. Just some really great practices that you can also also add into your daily rituals, and I'll give you one more area of spiritual practices because I could be here all day because we can. This is just endless, right, it really just depends on what you connect with.

Speaker 1:

But the last section I'll talk about is service and connection to others. Okay, some practices that you could do is volunteering, especially to things that you are really passionate about, that are really important to you. Really helping to offer your time and your skills to others in need can be very healing and could be a great way to connect with your community, to connect with a value or something that is truly meaningful to you. Doing random acts of kindness or performing little acts of kindness to spread positivity and to really just put like your positive energy. I know this can be really helpful because it could be. Someone is just having a rough day, maybe something bad happened to them, and just having this little random act of someone doing nice for you can just feel very grounding and you can really connect with your true self and it can be really healing for you.

Speaker 1:

Another one is and community involvement. So connecting with other like-minded individuals joining different groups, like a Bible group, with other like-minded individuals joining different groups, like a Bible group, a reading circle, a woman's group that can really help to make you feel connected to whatever it is that you are truly passionate about, or connect you to a spiritual practice could be another great practice. Okay, I'm sure that out of all the different rituals, all the different practices that I've shared today, you can identify with some that you really connect with. Like for some of you, that might be meditation, I know for me, mindfulness and intention studying is really something that I truly connect with. So just being mindful and practicing gratitude every single day, and just remember that spiritual self-care is a personal journey. There's no one-side-fits-all approach. Experiment with different practices and find the one that resonates with you. Be patient with yourself and allow your spirit to guide you.

Speaker 1:

And I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode, and I want to remind you that next week I will be sharing an episode where we're going to put all this information together. So we're going to talk about, now that we have all this information, how do we put this all together without being overwhelming, without like? This is not about stressing you out. It's about really understanding yourself so that you can create some rituals and some strategies that can help you every single day, right. So it's not about being overwhelming, because I know I threw a lot of information at you in these past couple episodes and if you're feeling overwhelmed I will caution new to you if self-care sounds like a really big and hard thing, because there's a lot of things to do, I'm going to help you next week to really find a place where you can start.

Speaker 1:

So we're going to talk about where do we start from if we're just starting out, or I know, doing these episodes, I have learned a lot more as well from you know doing software practices. So even if you've been practicing along the way, I'm sure that you're going to be able, I'm sure you've learned something, either you've gained some insight into some area, and so what we're going to do is we're going to you know, put it all together. We're going to identify right now, now what? Now that we know this information, now what? So now I'm going to next, I'm going to help you to put all this information and create your very own self-care practice, your own self-care plan, so that you can holistically right it's really meet our emotional, our physical and our spiritual needs, so that we can be resilient against all the stress that life throws at us. So please come back next week and we're going to put it all together and I'm going to teach you how to create a self-care plan and I will have a freebie in there for you. So I hope that you come back next week.

Speaker 1:

So thank you so much for joining me on today's episode and I'll talk to you again next week, take care. Thank you so much for joining this conversation today. I hope this episode was helpful to you on your healing journey. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode packed with valuable tips and insights designed to empower you. If you found value in this episode, I'd be so grateful if you left me a review wherever you're listening from and share your thoughts and feedback. This really helps me to reach more women, just like you. Thanks for listening.