Spiritual Wellness, Meditation, and Stress Relief

Dr. Cy Napse

Welcome back, everyone. I’m Dr. Cy Napse, here with Lila Meadows and Jennifer Cuneo, and today we’re talking about spiritual wellness in a way that’s, well, practical. [calm] Not vague, not preachy. Just useful. In health classes, spiritual wellness is often defined in a few linked ways: the ability to discover and express your purpose in life, the ability to experience love, joy, peace, and fulfillment, and the ability to help yourself and others reach full potential. I like that because it treats spiritual health less like a mystery and more like a set of inner gears that help life run with less grinding.

Lila Meadows

Mm, yes. And I think that’s reassuring for students, because spiritual wellness doesn’t have to mean you have everything figured out. It can start with really simple questions like, Who am I? Why am I here? What matters to me? What helps me feel connected? [softly] Sometimes even noticing that you want more peace is the beginning.

Jennifer Cuneo

Exactly. In psychology, we often separate spirituality and religion, but we don’t have to pit them against each other. Religion is usually an organized system. People share beliefs and practices, and it often includes ideas about the sacred, rules for behavior, and support from a group. Spirituality is more personal. It’s your sense of meaning, direction, purpose, and connectedness to other people, other things, and even the past and future.

Dr. Cy Napse

That distinction matters. Religion can offer structure, community, and rituals. Spirituality can offer a personal map. Different tools, same workshop, you might say. And according to the course material, both can affect health. [matter-of-fact] Some researchers, like Kabat-Zinn, recognized spiritual health as important in reducing stress and improving general health. Dean Ornish even argued that a lack of emotional and spiritual health is a basic cause of heart disease. That’s a strong claim, so I’d hold it carefully, but it shows how seriously this dimension has been taken.

Lila Meadows

And one reason it may help is that it gives people a sense of steadiness. If you feel connected to something meaningful, stress doesn’t always disappear, but it can feel less overwhelming. There’s a little more room to breathe.

Jennifer Cuneo

That ties nicely into meditation. Meditation is described here as a mental exercise that affects body processes and has both physical and psychological benefits. It has roots in Eastern traditions, and one well-known influence in the U.S. was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who helped teach transcendental meditation, or TM. In TM, a Sanskrit word is used as the object of focus.

Dr. Cy Napse

And that phrase, object of focus, is the key cog. Meditation usually requires one. It might be a mantra, which is a word. It might be breathing. It might be a geometric image like a mandala. It might be imagined sound, called nadam. It might even be a koan, an unanswerable riddle used in Zen practice. The point is not to force the mind into silence with a hammer. It’s more like giving attention a home base.

Lila Meadows

I love that. A home base. There’s also a very accessible version called Benson’s secular meditation. It removes the religious and philosophical parts and keeps four basics: a quiet environment, an object of focus, a passive attitude, and a comfortable position. One example is repeating the word one with every exhale.

Jennifer Cuneo

And when students ask, Does meditation actually do anything, the answer from this material is yes, research shows both physiological and psychological benefits. Physiologically, meditation is linked with reduced respiration, lower resting heart rate, reduced muscle tension, reduced galvanic skin response, and increased alpha brain waves. Those changes are called the relaxation response, or trophotropic response.

Dr. Cy Napse

Psychologically, benefits may include reduced anxiety, both state and trait anxiety, improved sleep, increased positive feelings after stress, greater self-actualization, a stronger internal locus of control, and even reductions in eating disorders. So spiritual wellness is not just abstract. It can become visible in mind, body, and daily coping.

Lila Meadows

So if someone’s listening and thinking, okay, but what do I actually do, let’s make this concrete. One idea from the class material is control theory. When people feel some degree of control over a stressor, health is less affected by that stress. There are two broad styles: primary control, where you try to change the situation, and secondary control, where you try to manage yourself emotionally.

Jennifer Cuneo

And religion or spirituality can support either one. Intercessory prayer, for example, asks for divine help to prevent something or get through it. That’s a kind of primary control. Reframing a situation as fate or as part of nature is more secondary control. So is using meditation, contemplative rituals, prayer, or scripture reading to soften emotional reactions.

Dr. Cy Napse

There are also named coping styles from Pargament. Self-directing means the person sees themselves as responsible for the outcome, though God or nature has provided resources. The classic phrase is, God helps those who help themselves. Collaborative means working with God, or with forces of nature, to handle the situation. Deferring means turning the whole matter over to God or nature. Pleading means begging for intervention. None of these is a magic switch, but they describe different ways people locate control when stressed.

Lila Meadows

And then there are practices students can try right away. Meditation is one. Breathwork is another, especially diaphragmatic breathing. Stress breathing tends to be rapid and shallow. Diaphragmatic breathing is deeper, more from the belly than just the chest, and the material says it’s a precursor to all forms of relaxation.

Jennifer Cuneo

There are lots of forms. Pranayama is a Hindu practice that uses breathing as the focus. Anapanasati is a Zen practice that involves counting breaths, usually one to ten. The course notes also mention color breathing and nasal switching. And in the video source, Anulom Vilom, alternate nostril breathing, is taught as a slow, calming practice. The emphasis there is to slow both the inhale and exhale as much as possible.

Dr. Cy Napse

Slow breathing can be like adjusting the tempo of a clock. When the rhythm steadies, the whole mechanism often settles. Related to that is body scanning: first find a relaxed body part, then identify it, then spread that relaxed sensation to tenser areas. It’s simple, but for many people, simple is what works.

Lila Meadows

I’m glad you said that, because students sometimes assume spiritual wellness has to look dramatic. It really can be a quiet daily practice. And forgiveness belongs here too. The material defines it as sincerely intending not to seek revenge or avoid the person who hurt you, which is decisional forgiveness, and also replacing negative emotions with positive ones, which is emotional forgiveness. Importantly, forgiveness does not excuse, justify, condone, pardon, diminish, or forget what happened.

Jennifer Cuneo

That’s crucial. Forgiveness isn’t saying the harm was fine. It’s deciding not to keep carrying unhealthy anger. According to the slides, unforgiveness can trigger the stress reaction, while forgiving others is associated with lower anxiety, depression, and stress, lower cholesterol, less self-reported illness and back pain, and greater spiritual well-being. And yes, the slides also say forgive yourself, which many students need to hear.

Dr. Cy Napse

Finally, volunteering. The material explicitly calls volunteering a spiritual activity with many benefits. Service-learning projects are one example. Why would helping others matter for stress? Often because meaning is a powerful stabilizer. When we act in line with values, the mind has fewer loose cogs rattling around.

Lila Meadows

So your takeaway can be very small: try one minute of slow breathing, repeat one word on the exhale, do a brief body scan, practice one act of forgiveness, or offer one act of service. Tiny steps still count.

Jennifer Cuneo

And if you’re sorting out religion, spirituality, both, or neither right now, that’s okay. The goal is not perfection. It’s better stress management, more emotional control, and a stronger sense that your life has meaning.

Dr. Cy Napse

Beautifully said. We’ll keep building these skills in future episodes. Thanks for being here with us.

Lila Meadows

Take good care, everyone. Bye, Cy. Bye, Jennifer.

Jennifer Cuneo

Bye, Lila. Bye, Cy. See you next time.