Life Kit - How to create your own spiritual practices

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

Are you looking to connect to something greater than yourself, but aren't sure how? In this episode, a spiritual psychiatrist and a professor of theology share ways to personalize your path, whether that's seeking inspiration from the faiths and religions you grew up with or trying something new.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

James Baldwin was an activist, an orator, a style icon, but on NPR's Book of the Day, we'll dissect the thing he was most known for, his writing. That last clause kind of reads like a horror story, right? There's something deeply, deeply ominous about the way that that opening paragraph closes. Celebrate Black History Month with us as we examine some of his best works on NPR's Book of the Day podcast. You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey everybody, it's Marielle. There's a lot that goes into living a healthy life.

And on Life Kit, we talk about these things all the time. Move your body, get enough sleep, eat more fiber, spend time with the people who love you, rest. But there's something else we rarely talk about that's a huge part of people's lives, spirituality and religion. For a lot of us, spirituality brings a sense of purpose and meaning in life, and research shows that it can improve our mental and physical well-being. People haven't always thought of it that way. Oftentimes, spirituality, you know, throughout history was overlooked as unimportant. And I used him as a psychiatrist and a clinical assistant professor at Yale.

And there are many people like Freud who looked down at it and saw spirituality as an infantile, obsessional neurosis. It's something people cling onto when they are weak or when they're unable to see what we have here in life as sufficient. Growing up, this was similar to what Anna believed. She was a high achieving kid who loved math and took after her physicist dad. If she couldn't see and measure something, she figured it wasn't real. When I was growing up, spirituality wasn't part of my life at all.

But as an adult, after getting several degrees, she found that she was struggling personally and emotionally. She took some time off to travel, went backpacking in South America, and started to get in touch with her spiritual side. And it was completely unexpected and unanticipated. Eventually Anna's interest in spirituality led her to visit ashrams in India, to practice Buddhist meditation in Thailand, and to study at a Kabbalah center in New York. Even though it never was something I identified with,

there was a part of me that just felt drawn. And things came into my life that made me see the world a little bit differently. Now, Anna's a practicing psychiatrist who helps her clients address their psychological needs, and their spiritual ones, too. And she says the science is catching up. No, you still can't measure your spirit, but there are ways to document how and when people feel needs and they're spiritual ones too. And she says the science is catching up. No

you still can't measure your spirit but there are ways to document how and when people feel spiritual and its effects on our health. And only now are we coming back around to integrating it within our understanding of healthy body and healthy mind. Here's one example. A 2018 study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that people who participated in either weekly religious services or daily prayer or meditation as kids experienced greater life satisfaction and positivity in their twenties. Other research has shown the health effects of spirituality among adults. On this episode of Life Kit, how to form a spiritual practice. Maybe you already have

a particular faith and you're looking for a way to personalize your experience. Maybe you want to tap into your spirituality outside of religion. Or maybe you're new to spirituality like Anna was and you want to see if there's something there for you. Reporter Ruth Tam talks to Anna and other experts and gives us tips on how we can get in touch with our spiritual side. on how we can get in touch with our spiritual side. On the Thru Line podcast, the myth linking autism and vaccines was decades in the making and was a major moment for vaccine hesitancy in America, tapping into fears involving the pharmaceutical industry and the federal government. No matter how many studies you do showing that this is not a problem, it's very hard

to unring the bell. Listen to Throughline from NPR, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ruth Tam. Unlike Anna Usim, I didn't have to be convinced spirituality was important. I grew up in a Christian family and my father was a minister, so it was a belief I inherited. But like Anna, I eventually found myself unpacking a lot of the things I grew up with. What did I actually believe? Was my life spiritually healthy and fulfilled? Was spirituality something I could only feel and understand through religion?

Or was it something that could exist outside of that? When I'm trying to figure out how I feel about something, I'll talk to the people in my life about it. But my conversations revealed just how tricky these questions are. Here's Taylor Jacobson in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I feel like the word spiritual or spirituality is one of these things that like you could ask a hundred people what it means and they would all have totally different definitions. And Gwen Vogelsang in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I don't think spirituality can be defined. I think it is such a personal experience.

I almost don't know that it's meant to be talked about. I almost ended the interview right there. But just because spirituality is difficult to define and talk about doesn't mean we're not thinking about it. It became important to me when I learned through my parenting journey that I have no control. I was desperate for something to hold onto and I didn't have anything to hold onto.

Because spirituality is such a strange, squishy topic to talk about with others, having questions about it can be a really lonely experience. I'm struggling because I feel isolated in my spiritual journey right now. This is Gray Black in Boston, Massachusetts. My spiritual practice, I see the directions of things that I could do.

I see the values that I'd like to embody, but I haven't figured out the correct way to obtain that. As I continued talking with people, one word in particular kept coming up in conversation, connection. And that's our first takeaway. Even though it's a lot of things to different people, spirituality can be thought of as a connection to something greater than yourself. Here's psychiatrist Anna Yousum. And for some people that something greater could be God. For other people, it's a collective consciousness. It could be a set of collective values like faith, love, trust, perseverance. Before we go any further, let's talk about the difference between spirituality and religion for a sec. While religion usually involves belief in or worship of a higher power or

powers, spirituality is often thought of as more broad, a personal connection to something greater. You could be both spiritual and religious. Your connection could be to God, whatever form that takes. You could be religious but not spiritual. You could believe in and follow the rules of religion, but not necessarily feel a personal connection to something greater. You could be spiritual but not religious. You might nurture a sense of connection to something bigger, like your community or to nature, but not believe in one religion. And there are increasingly more people like that. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center report, 22% of U.S. adults identify as spiritual,

without a belief in any one religion. If your spirituality is tied to religion, things like gathering as a community, praying, singing, fasting, volunteering, and believing in certain teachings can foster that connection to something greater throughout your life. But if you don't believe in a religion, how do you experience your spirituality? I heard a lot of different answers from people. Some like to go walking in nature, others like to write poetry, and some like to wash their dishes and simply feel the sensation of the water and suds on their hands. There's a lot of different ways it can look.

Let me give you an example of what somebody who is spiritual but not religious might do in a given week. They might today go to yoga, and then come at night and do a little bit of a sitting meditation from a Buddhist or Tibetan tradition. And then a few days later, they might go to church to pray with a friend, or they might I'll be honest, that feels like a lot. Pulling from so many different cultures and sources makes me wonder what's the belief that ties them all together? If spirituality is a connection, what is it you'd be connecting to? So I asked Isaiah Yong, an associate professor of spirituality at the Claremont School of Theology.

He had a lot of different spiritual and religious influences growing up. Isaiah said that any practice that's just about our own individual happiness falls short of what we can live up to as humans. Picking up a new hobby, exercising, socializing, all that's great. But if you're doing it as a spiritual practice, it should ultimately be about cultivating a connection to something greater than yourself. To be a person is actually to be in relationship with the world. When I say the world around us, I mean obviously our neighbors, people in our community,

but it also is about how we connect to the earth. Our spiritualities are about remembering those connections. If you view spirituality as a connection, then it's not a trophy you earn after, quote unquote, doing the work. It's also not something you go out and find from someone else more enlightened or religious than you. A connection is a link. There's you, and there's something greater than you. When you're trying to develop a spiritual practice, you might be focused on the part that's the something greater.

But Isaiah says that you need to first look at yourself before seeking something bigger. Here's takeaway two. know your spiritual starting point. What beliefs were you raised with? What connection did you feel to something bigger than yourself? I think it's really important for people, whatever kind of cultural context they come from, to realize they do have a context,

they do have a history and to really do their best to understand those histories of their own ancestors first as a way to kind of ground them into exploring community relationships with other kinds of cultures and traditions. Isaiah is an ordained Pentecostal Christian minister who trains caregivers, therapists, and spiritual directors on how to do their work empathetically and cross-culturally. And for him, it's all in the family. His parents, who came from Buddhist and Catholic families, were ministers too. I come from an immigrant household. My father is Chinese Malaysian. My mother is Mexican American. They were the first two people, as far as we know, in their own families and cultural backgrounds to partner with someone outside

of their own cultural group. When they were both young adults, both of them really had transformative spiritual experiences through Pentecostal Christianity. And that was kind of a start of a new track for them in our family, in our lineage. Isaiah's culturally blended upbringing really influences his faith and work now. I really identify more interreligiously than anything. Even though I am a Christian minister, my own practice involves different rituals that would be informed from kind of those Buddhist and Catholic roots. A lot of my work is really about promoting how we need one another and we can learn a

lot from each other. Knowing your spiritual starting point will help you identify what you want to nurture. What's the part of you that's reaching out and wants to connect? We are assuming that kind of everybody else has something to give and to offer to us, but we don't really know what it is we're bringing. This is particularly important if you're itching to discard something you grew up with and pick up something new. It's easy to romanticize. It's easy to idealize another tradition or practice, thinking that, oh, this is what's needed. This is the most beautiful thing, right?

But all whatever tradition or culture story we want to tell, it has its beautiful moments, and it has its very difficult and challenging moments. And so I think it's important to really have a holistic approach to all this to recognize that we can't find all the answers we need by just switching another path or forgetting ourselves, our own stories and histories. It's like, how do you really build a meaningful relationship with someone if you don't know yourself at all? In examining your spiritual starting point, you might find that you're looking for a reset. Maybe you got distracted by certain life goals and always thought you'd come back to your faith. And maybe now you want to re-devote yourself in a way that feels sustainable. For people who are part of religious traditions, then the question is, what within the tradition can you do to help you take your faith to the next level? Is it to

get a mentor? What does prayer mean in your religion? Is it to be able to pray in a different way on a regular basis? In addition to that, on top of their existing practices, there's also a lot of secular practices. People might be part of a specific religion and then start to meditate or start a yoga practice. And that in no way feels like it is conflicting or in no way feels like it is getting in the way of their existing practice. Others may want to develop a spiritual practice outside of religion. Maybe you never had a relationship with a particular faith in the first place, or maybe you no longer identify with the one you grew up with.

If you're struggling to move beyond religious rules, here's takeaway three. Traditions are not a closed loop. They're meant to be renewed. These traditions are living. We get to, in this time, inherit certain things, but we also get to add or change or begin to speak our own experiences with them and be able to allow them to bring meaning to our lives. We talk about things like Buddhism or Hinduism or Jainism, Christianity, but there's not just one version of any one of those things. If you're rebuilding your spiritual life because of religious trauma you've experienced, creating new spiritual practices is easier said than done. But it is possible.

I spoke with Gwen Vogelsang in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who broke away from the Christian Reformed Church she was raised in and rebuilt a spiritual life outside of religion. I think what I've learned through tapping into spirituality is that what I want and need can't be separated from what the larger world and everyone and everything in it wants and needs. And with that has come a ton of humility and acknowledging that I don't have answers and nothing is black and white. So it's caused me to let go of a lot of to let go of a lot of tension and animosity I felt towards my religious upbringing and realizing that they're not wrong, they just have their own path. Now Gwen's relationship with spirituality encourages her to connect to nature and to

other people and to ultimately be present in each moment. Spirituality to me is in the chaos that we're living in. Being able to sit in my sun room and feel the sun on my face and feel a sense of calm because my ego is not in charge. As you're thinking about building out your spiritual life, what if you get really excited about another culture's traditions? When I heard Anna talk about all the things a spiritual but not religious person might do in a given week, my head was spinning. There was yoga, prayer, candles, beads, psychedelics, and some of those examples are religious practices.

For example, although yoga is marketed in the US as a form of physical exercise or a mindfulness technique, it does have roots in Hindu and Buddhist practices. What happens when it's removed from that context? Isaiah helped me understand spiritual practices as cultural traditions. So here's takeaway four. If you're inspired by cultures that aren't your own, spiritual practices need to be treated as part of a respectful relationship. If we really want to take the diversity seriously of the world and the ways that these practices are passed down, then it's really important to be in relationship with the communities

that they come from, to be in support for not only their own storytelling and legacies to be continued, but also only their own storytelling and legacies to be continued, but also their material well-being. Learning about a different spiritual practice and its history can be interesting as an intellectual pursuit, but it's important to actually root that interest in relationships, to meet people, to understand where these practices come from and who practices them today. I encourage students all the time to visit spiritual communities that are different than theirs. So that's a way they can actually not just go to a place and experience something,

but actually get to know someone on the other side and see what are those stories, what are their values, what are the needs going on there. And that really becomes the kind of glue so that when we are practicing our spiritualities in more expansive ways, it is really connected into relationship. If you're looking to tap into your spirituality in a new way, you might be in a vulnerable place. Life may not be going the way you planned or you might be in the middle of a crisis.

And there are people and organizations who might take advantage of that. So, while it's useful to be open-minded, here's takeaway five. Be discerning about how you practice your spirituality and who you practice it with. Especially for someone early on starting a spiritual practice, it can be quite challenging to find a place that aligns with one's values, feels safe, is not kind of culty or abusive, right?

R. This is Raina Javary from Cambridge, Massachusetts. She spent decades thinking about her own spirituality and now primarily experiences it when improvising music. R. I feel deeply spiritual when I'm with music, when I'm listening to music, when I'm playing and making music. I make up things on the spot, which means I have to be extremely present, extremely attuned, listening at a very deep level to what is happening and ultimately very self-accepting. LW We talked about how she's found a spiritual community that she can trust. If there are people around you that you trust, ask them, hey, what do you do when you're in distress or when you're feeling unsettled?

I tend to look out for spaces that have that sense that it's open, you can come in and you can leave whenever you want. That's what I seek out now, where there's a framework and there's an open door and it's open in both directions. CB' Raina participates in singing circles around the Boston area, where people gather as a group to sing songs that lift each other up. The structure is warm and welcoming. There is no sense of being indoctrinated or forced to change one's

beliefs or how one shows up in any way. Right? There's a respect for showing up as you are. There's an invitation to contribute in some way, right, to the singing, but there's no pressure, there's no force. These singing circles are organized by local singers who care more about community than they do about hierarchy. It's not just one leader who's in charge of making all the decisions. We're all contributing to making it happen, and there's some shared sense of purpose, and there is a system of accountability, of shared accountability that's agreed upon in some way, formally or informally.

If you're looking for a similar group, that system of accountability is key. Without it, your curiosity and spirituality can be exploited by people or organizations who don't have your best interests at heart. I would be cautious of anybody who believes that they have a monopoly on truth. I would run and anybody who has a ton of hubris and arrogance, who is not open to other perspectives. As you're forming your own spiritual practice, it's important to not just look at others critically but to also examine yourself. Because the desire to ground yourself spiritually can be conflated with other things—self-improvement goals or life goals that don't really have to do with that connection

to something greater. Sometimes spirituality is taught in kind of a popular form to kind of reinforce dominant messaging of society. People will say, you know, let's make more money, let's work as hard as we can. So let's do mindfulness practice or a spiritual practice to help us be more productive. If a spiritual practice can help you at work, that's great, but I think we do ourselves a disservice when we connect our spiritualities only to productivity.

Really, spirituality is about becoming free from any dominant narratives to lead our lives, to really live the creative, empowered, unique lives in community with others that we can. You don't necessarily need to find this spiritual practice to really live the creative, empowered, unique lives in community with others that we can. You don't necessarily need to find this guru or that practice or this tradition. So I think what I'm hearing is that I maybe don't need

to buy a meditation pillow or a subscription for a five-year service for daily devotionals. It could help, it could help, but it's absolutely not required. In some ways, it could hinder what we're describing. So we've talked about what you don't need to connect with your spirituality. But here's one thing you do need a desire. If you resonate with the idea that spirituality is a connection to something greater, then you don't need anything special to experience it. If you have the desire and the willingness to see it in your life, guess what?

You're practicing spirituality. It sounds simple, but for some of us, it's complicated. It can be hard to tap into your spirituality if that part of you has felt dormant or distracted. It can be hard if your first understanding of spirituality came from a religion that caused you pain. But Isaiah says that nurturing your connection to something greater is worth it. You'll never regret being connected to your own life and to being true to the questions and the longings that are there. To recap, here are some takeaways from my conversation with Anna and Isaiah.

Takeaway 1. Spirituality can be thought of as a connection to something greater than yourself. Takeaway 2. Recognize your spiritual starting point. What is your spiritual lineage? What beliefs have you inherited? Takeaway 3. Spiritual practices are not a closed loop. They have been formed and renewed over time, and you can be a part of that. Takeaway 4. Spiritual practices should be treated with be a part of that. Takeaway four. Spiritual practices should be treated with respect as part of a relationship. What are your relationships with the people whose cultures and faiths you might be inspired

by? And our fifth and final takeaway. Practice discernment. Be mindful of spiritual leaders and organizations who make decisions unilaterally seem to be close-minded or claim to have a monopoly on the truth. That was journalist Ruth Tam. For more LifeKit, check out our other episodes. There's one about how to connect with your ancestors and another about how to make your own traditions. You can find those at npr.org. And if you love LifeKit and want even more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org. Also, we love hearing from you, so if you have

episode ideas or feedback you want to share, email us at lifekit at npr.org. This episode of LifeKit was produced by Andy Tegel. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan and our digital editor is Malika Gareeb. Megan Cain is our supervising editor and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Claire Marie Schneider, Margaret Serino and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Robert Rodriguez and Patrick Murray. Special thanks to Grey Black, Jekka Goss, Reina Giverry, Taylor Jacobson, Timothy Peters, and Gwen Vogelsang. I'm Mariel Segarra. Thanks for listening.