Spirituality involves our experience of and response to transcendence—our understanding of who or what is beyond the ordinary realm. Because spirituality engages us with what is most sacred or important, healthy spirituality grounds us in our beliefs and values, connects us to others and the divine, and directs us toward our purposes in order to live full lives.
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Bring your life into focus
Explore our Spiritual Health Framework. Psychological research informs six facets of healthy spirituality. Choose a THRIVE facet to support your pursuit of thriving.
Transcendence & Spirituality
Awareness of and connection to a source of invigorating love offers meaning and 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 offers meaning and inspires purpose. For many this is God, for others it may be a higher power or nature.
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Collections
Nurture your spiritual health with our gathered collections of articles, practices, and research.
Podcast
A Psychology-Backed Framework for Healthy Spirituality
In this episode, Dr. Pam King discusses why spirituality is so essential to the human experience, and how it operates as the antidote to the culture of anxiety and despair around us.
Blog
What is Spiritual Health?
Spirituality is an essential part of human life. Seeking and experiencing God or something beyond the ordinary realm—a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves—that provides meaning, direction, and inspiration has been evident since humans were drawing on cave walls.
Blog
The Church-Going Bust: Rebuilding Spiritual Communities in 21st Century America
Psychological resources can help leaders build stronger communities. Thrive offers a model of spiritual health for thriving communities.
Blog
Healthy Spirituality – The Focus is Love: Why is Love So Hard?
Healthy spirituality supports and develops the human capacity to love. Love of God and love of neighbor are central to the Christian tradition, and psychology points to the centrality.
Blog
Healthy Spirituality – The Focus is Love: The Role of Leaders
Healthy spirituality requires a boots on the ground rebuilding of loving, supportive communities.
Podcast
Intro: A New Podcast on Spiritual Health, Wholeness, and a Life of Thriving
What can we do to pursue lives of wholeness and spiritual health? What can we learn from psychological science and spiritual wisdom to transform our relationships, our work, and our personal wellbeing?
Spiritual Health
FAQs
Spirituality involves our experience of and response to transcendence—our understanding of who or what is beyond the ordinary realm. Spirituality connects us to love, provides meaning and guidance, and motivates a way of living. We may or may not practice spirituality within the context of a particular religion. It is not a “nice to have,” but necessary for human wellbeing and thriving.
Healthy spirituality connects us with the transcendent, affirms our dignity and uniqueness and provides a source of meaning for our lives. It activates our capacities for connection to others, and supports living purposefully into the fullness of life.
No, spirituality that separates us from others is not healthy. Healthy spirituality connects us to others, the world, and God, clarifies meaning; and directs and motivates us towards being present and pursuing a purposeful life. Spirituality that doesn’t include these aspects would lack an aspect of health.
Psychological research provides much insight into how healthy spirituality can be life-giving. The Thrive Center offers a model of Spiritual Health – a lens for looking at the wholeness of life. Both psychology and Christian theology point to the ultimate outcome of healthy spirituality as love – understanding that we are beloved, supported by love, and capable of living out love in the world. The practices within each facet of Thrive’s Spiritual Health model are designed to, either directly or indirectly, develop capacities for love.