Nurturing the Soul:
The Psychospiritual Approach to Holistic Health and Wellness
Today, the fight for complete wellness is more important than it has ever been due to the often stressful and disconnected nature of modern life. The psychospiritual approach merges the physical and psychological aspects of health in order to attain equilibrium and peace, making it an essential tool for dealing with psychosocial challenges.
Defining the Psychospiritual Approach
The word “psychospiritual” is a fusion of the mind and spirit. It stands for the realization that mental and spiritual well-being are intricately intertwined and fundamental for one’s overall health. It combines psychological practice with a broader scope of spiritual practice to create a healing environment that allows for self-improvement and growth.
Contextual Background
Various cultures throughout history have accepted the concept of combining the mind and spirit in healing rituals. Pioneers like Dr. Gladys McGarey, called the “Mother of Holistic Medicine,” implemented a combination of spirituality and medicine toward the end of the 20th century. Her contributions showed the importance of not viewing medicine in isolation. Neglecting the role of the mind and spirit in one’s body greatly limits effective healing.
Fundamental Issues
Unto Transformation: The healing that truly empowers a person stems from the oneness of their body, mind, and spirit. Like all aspects of life, holistic fulfillment requires a multifaceted approach.
Intrapersonal Relationship: Having a healthy relationship with oneself is essential if one is to have any understanding of their emotions, beliefs, and thoughts.
This helps in fostering self-growth and personal healing.
Combination of Practices: The blend of meditation and psychotherapy forms an all-encompassing method of healing.
Therapeutic Techniques
The use of different therapeutic techniques such as:
Psychospiritual Therapy: This therapy uses a person’s spirituality along with psychology to address mental and emotional issues. It proposes a restoration of harmony with the soul while fostering self-awareness and conscious understanding of disharmonious causes.
Mindfulness and Meditation: These activities aid in the awareness of the present, minimizes stress, and augments connection greatly.
Breathwork: Some people use breath control to relieve anxiety as well as promote relaxation and even heightened spiritual experiences.
Expressive Arts: Creative activities, including primary arts, music, and even dance performances, permit emotional expression while nurturing one’s self spiritually.
Nature Therapy: It can regenerate and invigorate the mind and spirit from the pressure or tension of our lives.
Advantages:
Providing a broad-spectrum approach to a clinical problem encompasses advantages such as:
Reducing Emotional Problems: Meeting psychological and spiritual needs increases joy as well as enhances their ever fluctuating emotional life.
Gaining Spiritually: Performance of spiritual exercises develops a sense of overall purpose and connectedness at a higher level.
Managing Stress: The use of relaxation and mindfulness helps stress to be handled properly.
Better Coping Strategies: The connection of the mind and spirit offers individual’s better coping strategies to help tackle life’s challenges.
Scientific Integration And Efficacy
Most researches conducted prove that there are great advantages that come along with merging psychological and spiritual practices. Such approaches, within the integration of psychology and spirituality, have been demonstrated to improve coping skills, emotional health, and even the sense of life purpose. For example, self-transcendence psychospiritual practices enables an individual’s mind to go beyond negative thoughts, which makes self-help and healing to take place easier.
Educational Empowerment And Prevention
Offering education in spiritual and psychological self-care helps people take responsibility in attending to their health. This information encourages actions aimed at prevention, as well as encourages a healthy lifestyle.
Regulation And Professionalism
Psychosocialspiritual practitioners follow acceptable rules of practice, which state that integration has to take place in a meaningful and respectful manner. All practitioners need to be professionally competent and respectful to different cultures.
A holistic approach using psychology and spirituality recognizes deeply the nature of the mind and the spirit, and the two elements working together. Putting together the two modalities offers greater prospect to individuals because they become whole again and experience healing, growth, and wellness. An individual begins to realize that true fulfillment comes from adopting this philosophy.
Who are Psycho-spiritual Practitioners?
Psycho-Spiritual Practitioners (formerly known as Chaplains) are part of the healthcare team. Psycho-Spiritual Practitioners at Hamilton Health Sciences are Registered Psychotherapists through the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO) and accredited through the national Canadian Association for Spiritual Care (CASC).
Psycho-Spiritual Practitioners provide Psycho-Spiritual care to all people. They strive to support diverse spiritual expressions, religious practices, and the variety of ways people find meaning and express their beliefs. They provide a range of services for patients/families, including: prayer and meditation; rituals; end-of-life support; psycho-therapy; grief counselling; and connections to community faith leaders and religious resources.
Psycho-Spiritual Practitioners promote staff, learner and physician well-being through resilience support to teams across HHS.
Contact Information
A Psycho-Spiritual Practitioner is available Monday to Friday 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM.
• Claudia Collins (cell: 905-870-8123; email: collinscl@hhsc.ca)
Juravinski Hospital and Cancer Centre:
• Ann Vander Berg (cell: 905-870-4568; email: vanderan@hhsc.ca)
• Juliette Alzate (cell: 905-870-2866; email: alzate@hhsc.ca)
McMaster Children’s Hospital (MUMC):
•
Klara Siber-Simic (cell: 905-870-0863; email: siberk@hhsc.ca)
• Klara is also the Practice Lead for the team
St. Peter’s Hospital:
• Femke Visser-Elenbaas (cell: 905-870-3976; email: visserf@hhsc.ca)
• Marta Simpson (cell: 905-870-1468; email: simpsonm@hhsc.ca)
All general inquires about Psycho-Spiritual Care can be made by sending an email
to: psychospiritualcare@hhsc.ca
If an incident occurs after hours (nights, weekends or holidays) that requires follow-up by a Psycho- Spiritual Practitioner, please make a referral in EPIC or send an e-mail
to: psychospiritualcare@hhsc.ca. A Psycho-Spiritual Practitioner will respond the next business day to assess the need and provide appropriate care as soon as possible.
If there is a major event that requires an immediate response, teams can contact the Site
Administrator to escalate a request for support through the Director-on-call.
Patients and families belonging to a faith community are encouraged to contact their own religious leaders directly for support. When a religious leader is asked to attend to a patient in hospital they may be designated as an alternate Essential Caregiver, following the current visitor policy.
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