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A Spiritual Practice for Health

Many of us say a prayer of thanksgivng before each meal.  We suggest that each person take a deep breath and release it slowly before the prayer.  Be aware of taking full breaths during the prayer.

There is a reason for this.  Our busy lives keep us focused on a variety of things we have to do or are anxious about, and this increases the stress chemicals in our blood and directs the blood to large muscle systems of our bodies.  A deep breath redirects our thoughts to our breath, slows our breathing and heart rate, and redirects the blood to the core of the body - so that digestion is facilitated.  Many digestive problems - indigestion, bloating, acid reflux - result at least partly from the body's resources being directed away from digestion.

Then pray your thanks to God.  A deep sense of gratitude will emerge from the core of the body as breath calms and restores as well as aids digestion.

Thoughts to Ponder

The point of spiritual practice is not to elevate an isolated set of activities over the rest of life but to electrify the spiritual impulse that animates all of life.
R. Wuthnow, After heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950’s (1998). 

Research finds that spouses who view their marriages as sacred are less prone to verbal aggression and other destructive ways of resolving marital conflicts.
Mahoney, Pargament, Jewell, Swank, Scott & Emery in Journal of Family Psychology (1999). 

The more you make your thoughts (beliefs) into your identity, the more cut off you are form the spiritual dimension within yourself.
Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth (2005) 

It is well established that the accelerated growth of brain structure during “critical periods” of infancy is “experience-dependent” and influenced by “social forces.”
Allan Schore, Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self (2003) 

Pastoral therapy is not doing something to another person. It is offering a person a quality of relationship through which curative grace is mediated.
Carroll Wise, Pastoral Psychotherapy (1980). 

Meditations furnished by Samaritan Counseling Center of Northeast Georgia.   www.samaritannega.org