How’s your spiritual health? Hungry for a healthy, happy life?
We all know how important it is for our bodies to have proper nutrition, exercise, sleep, and water in order to maintain a healthy life. A neglected body shows symptoms that can eventually become major health problems. A body in distress is constantly seeking balance and sending us messages as to what needs to be addressed. In order to heal and become whole again, we need to be attentive to those symptoms as well as supply the body with the proper care.
Our body is the home of our soul and the vehicle that carries us through this life. With proper maintenance and check-ups, we can make the ride more enjoyable and fulfilling.
Our soul is the essence of who we are. It also needs to be nourished on a daily basis to maintain a healthy connection. In order to feel healthy, alive, and well, our soul needs a steady diet of balance, authenticity, and self-love.
People are starving to have a life and to make meaningful connections. Even though they may look successful on the outside, inside they are running on empty.
Symptoms of a malnourished soul include feeling stuck, overwhelmed, burnt-out, anxious, depressed, chronically fatigued, hopeless, miserable, unfulfilled, and unhealthy.
Without proper nourishment, our soul feels lost, and we end up feeling disconnected. Finding the pieces of our soul brings peace by returning to wholeness and restoring our vitality. The soul is always there with us, nudging us and trying to get our attention.
Actually, reoccurring problems are signs we are receiving necessary information and clues from many different angles as to what our soul needs, but by failing to hear and respond, we continue to live a life void of pleasure, passion, joy, and a sense of purpose. We suffer from impaired vision, which prevents us from finding a new solution.
The essential vitamins required for nourishing our soul are just as basic as the plants’ needs for air, water, and light. They can be summarized as the follow:
VITAMIN A
The ALMIGHTY sense of Purpose and Meaning will guide us in seeking out our spiritual gifts. When we plant a seed, it contains all that it needs to grow into what it is meant to be. By tapping into our intentions, we can focus on the vision we want to create and commit to it with our life purpose.
VITAMIN B
Our BELIEFS have an impact on our personal values, which are at the core of who we are. and become the things that are important to us. Integrity is when we make choices and take actions that are in alignment with our values, which in turn give us support, hope, faith, patience, inner strength, and courage to carry on.
VITAMIN C
CONNECTIONS is all about the important relationships in our lives. We all have the need to belong as well as the need to love and be loved.
Vitamin C in your body aids in the formation of collagen, which is essential for holding the body’s cells together, from the muscles to the bones, tendons, ligaments, organs, and skin. The word collagen comes from the Greek word, kólle, which means glue. Good communication is the glue that forms a strong bond in relationships.
Spiritual Nuggets: Food for the Soul
- Make time for YOU. Checking IN with ourselves allows us to make changes so we can grow and thrive. We are all familiar with this concept, but how many people actually do it? Schedule it as a non-negotiable part of our daily agenda. To cultivate any healthy relationship, we need to make time to spend with each other. And the same applies for the relationship we have with ourselves. This forms the basis of self-care. Practice self-love.
- Connect with something greater than ourselves. Prayer is important in keeping the lines for communication with God open all the time, not just in times of need. It helps us develop a close relationship with the divine source.
- Connect with others. The soul thrives on forming meaningful relationships. We feel more satisfaction in life when we are able to share those special moments and stories with the special people in our lives.
- Connect with nature. Spending time outdoors is the best medicine for relaxing: walking, hiking, gardening, sunbathing, or outdoor sports.
- Meditation is the key to reducing stress, increasing awareness, and maintaining our centre, all of which are necessary to leading a calmer life and being able to respond more mindfully to life’s challenges.
- Just Breathe. Breathing exercises help relax your body, calm your mind, and nourish the soul by giving you energy and restoring balance. Every breath you take is the gift of life.
- Eat real food. Isn’t it ironic that we have a health food section in our grocery stores? Isn’t all food supposed to be healthy? Real food has life-giving energy. Even bugs know that, as we wouldn’t find any in refined foods. Choose natural, unprocessed foods.
- Keep the body moving. Whatever exercise we choose, make sure it is something we enjoy: yoga, aerobics, running, dancing, swimming.
- Do a healthy purge; whether it be a detox for our bodies or decluttering our homes: take a regular break from technology and social media in order to maintain sanity and develop better life-balance habits.
- Journaling is therapeutic as it provides us with a tool for self-reflection. We can write down our feelings, worries, dreams, and hopes. Learning to express our feelings is about paying attention to them and what we need to connect with in order to process our emotions. If not, we’ll end up stuck in them.
- Practice gratitude. This sharpens our spiritual muscles by training the brain to focus on the positive and let go of the negative. This builds our resilience, courage, and confidence to meet life’s challenges.
- Keep those neurons in our brain firing by learning something new. Keep an open mind and step out of your comfort zone more often.
- Volunteer work is about giving back to the community and contributing to something larger than ourselves ; that sense of belonging has a positive impact on everyone involved. The spirit of volunteering is about compassion and kindness; by donating our time, money, skills, or energy, we are providing a sense of community and purpose.
- Find your passion. What excites you? By doing the things we love, we will have more energy to create a life we love and to live more fully. Passion and purpose go hand in hand. Our soul has a purpose and longs for meaning. Our passion will light the fire to keep us going and motivated in setting our goals, making the necessary decisions, and facing life’s challenges.
- Give yourself permission to be happy and to do the things you want. Realize that the only thing stopping you is you. We choose our beliefs and our habits. We can choose to focus on our personal and spiritual growth by taking responsibility for our lives; Not only will we be able to recharge our lives, but we will also be in charge of our lives.
- Tap into our intuition by learning to listen carefully to the language of our soul, the voice of our true self. It is our own built-in GPS system. Most people fail to recognize that they are their own greatest guides. We need to tune in and learn to trust our intuition. How many times have we said, “I knew I should have done it!”
- Live your authentic life by embracing your true self. Honouring your true self is vital to creating a stronger and more expansive foundation for living a life on purpose and to the FULLest; meaning-FULL. purpose-FULL, peace-FULL, joy-FULL, and spirit-FULL.
The bottom line for nourishing the soul is to pay attention to how we love ourselves. Love is the universal life force that connects all things and beings in this world. Self-care is accepting the love that is your true essence.
Everyone has that light within them, no matter how much darkness they are going through. The path to enlightenment is about being in the light. Nurture that light and keep it shining like a diamond.
Invest in spiritual wellness. Always choose love, the most nourishing ingredient in who we are and everything we can become.
Take care of your soul, and remember that it is always taking care of you.
Antoinette Giacobbe M.A.
