Invitation to Thrive
Intro to Thriving: A Practice of Becoming
Thriving isn’t something we achieve—it is the fullness we experience from a daily practice of investing in our spiritual health. It happens when we create space to slow down and open fresh eyes to the people and world around us.
Decades of research reveal immense psychological benefits available through spirituality and faith. By putting knowledge into practice, we learn to pay attention to our deepest human needs, strengthen our connection to transcendence and community, and grow from healing to whole both for ourselves and for the sake of others.
Join us in exploring what follows and find how spiritual practices create breathing room for thriving to become possible.
What does it mean to truly thrive?
Begin your journey
From healing to whole
We have developed a research-backed, six-part framework using our name, Thrive, that encapsulates categories, or “facets,” that have emerged as important components of healthy spirituality. The THRIVE facets are an invitation to explore what it means to grow and thrive.
Transcendence & Spirituality
Awareness of and connection to a source of invigorating love inspires purpose. For many this is God, for others it may be a higher power or nature.
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Habits & Rhythms
Healthy spiritual practices and regular rhythms allow us to slow down to gain insight, connect to love, and energize into purposeful endeavors.
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Habits & Rhythms
Healthy spiritual practices and regular rhythms allow us to slow down to gain insight, connect to love, and energize into purposeful endeavors.
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Relationships & Community
Connections provide a space of belonging where we can be fully known to ourselves and others and learn to give and receive love.
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Identity & Narrative
Growing in clarity about who we are as a beloved, unique, embodied person and how we are related to others and the greater world.
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Vocation & Purpose
Contributing our strengths to the world by living out our response to love.
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Ethics & Virtues
Our beliefs about love and how we live out love through values, views of right and wrong, and cultivating virtuous habits.
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Transcendence & Spirituality
Awareness of and connection to a source of invigorating love inspires purpose. For many this is God, for others it may be a higher power or nature.
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The Thrive Center Podcast
With & For
A Podcast on Spiritual Health, Wholeness, and a Life of Thriving
We’re eager to grow into a life of fullness and discovery. Conversations with experts that plumb the depths of psychological science and spiritual wisdom to offer practical guidance towards spiritual health, wholeness, and a life of thriving.
A Practice: Dr. Cynthia Eriksson Body Scan for Awareness
Dr. Eriksson guides you through a practice of scanning the body to cultivate awareness of sensation present there. This technique is an important first step – regulation – of building a resilience practice.
A Practice: Dr. Lisa Miller on Closing Doors so Others Can Open
Dr. Miller leads you through a practice where you imagine two doors – one red and one yellow. The red door is closed to you and the yellow door is open. How can you use this practice to understand opportunities and direction for your life? How can you identify how you have been guided along the way?…
A Practice: Dr. Richard Davidson on Gaining Insight
Dr. Davidson leads a brief meditation on gaining insight into a struggle present in your life. Envision how things might be different with a different set of beliefs and expectations about the situation.
A Practice: Dr. Lisa Miller and Your Table of Spiritual Companions
Dr. Miller leads a brief meditation where you set a table before you with those who love you and ask them to tell you what you need to know now. This practice helps develop a connection to a deep kind of spirituality that is intuitive and imaginative and helps one to feel loved, held, guided, and never alone.
A Practice: Dr. Cynthia Eriksson on Grounding in the Body
Dr. Eriksson guides a meditation practice to connect you to your body and space in order to cultivate a sense of safety and calm. The twisting motion and identification of the space grounds and settles the parasympathetic nervous system.
A Practice: Dr. Richard Davidson on Developing Awareness
Dr. Davidson leads a practice to bring awareness into our bodies and into the present moment. This practice is intended not only to build capacities for awareness but to develop compassion for others.
Backed by research
The mind behind the method
We hold that science can provide insight needed to understand spiritual health and develop practices that lead to thriving in everyday life. We’re researchers and psychologists that live real lives and come face to face with the same questions you have.
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It takes a community to thrive! Every gift helps combine the science of psychology and theology to build more spiritually healthy leaders and communities.