Mind, Body, Don't Forget the Soul!
- hoadleyc70
- Mar 31
- 3 min read
Mind, body and spirit(soul). This is one way to identify the different parts of our whole human selves. A practitioner focused on wellness will acknowledge all three aspects as contributors to overall health and wellness. Health and wellness professionals keep body and mind health in front of us regularly. How about the spirit? The word itself has several meanings. Taken from Merriam-Webster here are three that may apply for this discussion: 1) an animating or vital principle held to give life to physical organisms; 2) a supernatural being or essence: such as a) Holy Spirit, b) soul; 3) the activating or essential principle influencing a person.
Do these match your understanding of the spirit or soul? They are too different words and not always interchangeable but they are connected. Some definitions of soul are: 1) the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life; 2) a person's total self; 3) the moral and emotional nature of human beings. Regardless of which word we use care for the spirit doesn’t fall into traditional medicine. It is…spiritual but also philosophical, psychological, and social. To me it is essentially who we are as a person, not just a biological species.
Growing up I struggled with figuring out where exactly the soul is in our body, using soul as a synonym for spirit. Is it the heart? The heart and soul are commonly linked but obviously we are not talking about the biological organ of the heart, or are we? I had to look it up! Throughout history different philosophers thought of the soul as being part of the heart, the brain or spread throughout the body. As an adult with a huge interest in brain research, I definitely think of it as being stored in the brain because the brain activates everything but even if that happened to be true I’d bet big money (not literally, okay) on it being much more complex than that because humans are complex.
So how does one care for our spiritual self? How do YOU care for your soul? Faith or religious practices? Enjoying beauty or nature? Yoga and meditation or prayer? A little bit of everything? Do we spend as much time caring for our soul as we do our bodies and minds? Are we out of balance?
You may know I am a church musician. Societies and cultures around the world have historically set aside time when the focus was not work or recreation, but attending to spirituality. It is pretty obvious that is no longer a common practice in the Western world, the one I know. As businesses went from being closed for part or all of the Sabbath to staying open all day every day, many people work instead of engaging in activities for the soul. A long-time practice in the Midwest is to reserve one afternoon and evening during the week for faith-based activities (usually mid-week, like Wednesdays). There were no school activities after school that day. School calendars keep trying and with at least some success encroach on that time. Community sports clubs now have tournaments many weekends with games on both Saturday AND Sunday. Is our culture only about developing the brain and body, neglecting the spirit almost entirely?
Does it matter?? Our mind, body, and soul are intertwined within us so yes, being unwell spiritually can manifest in the body or mind but also in our life paths. The world is so full of things to take in and things we think we have to do or else we will not be successful! It isn’t always clear what defines success. Eventually we can come to realize that our decisions and actions have taken us away from what we believe we are here on earth to do, the good gifts we bring to those around us that become food for our own soul. If we neglect our spiritual self, do we simply become minds and bodies empty of purpose? Inanimate in the world? That doesn’t sound like success to me.
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