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An particular person’s religion and faith needn’t be remoted from their psychological well being journey and restoration. While researchers proceed to check the professionals and cons of faith on psychological well being, we all know of some psychological well being positives from religion and non secular practices, together with a way of neighborhood, connection to the bigger world, hope, and function.
On this National Day of Prayer for Mental Illness Recovery and Understanding, marked yearly on the Tuesday of Mental Illness Awareness Week, two religion leaders share methods to attach spirituality and faith to higher psychological well being — one presents a prayer and an affirmation, whereas the opposite explains how we are able to successfully meditate. Don’t be discouraged if you wish to attempt prayer however don’t take part in organized faith or don’t know any formal methods to wish. You can use the next as guides to get you began, have a look at how non secular texts discuss feelings and worries, or just take a quiet second to assume and mirror on psychological well being as a broader idea.
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Alejandra Purple Liera, Traditional Indigenous Healing Prayer
Prayer
Today I increase my prayer that we bear in mind our collective energy. That by supporting one another we don’t lose something, we solely achieve. Let us bear in mind our sacredness. May we keep in mind that we feature the power of our ancestors, we feature drugs.
Our function on this earth is to share our gentle, to convey to life our prayers. Don’t depart this world with out sharing your magic, with out sharing your gentle.
When we transfer to the route of our soul, once we faucet into our internal hearth, once we communicate up, and see the power we feature inside, it opens up new prospects and pushes us ahead.
Not solely have we been right here within the battle, now we have been right here within the gentle.
Affirmations for liberation
My physique is a protected house. Every cell in my physique is crammed with pleasure, abundance, tenderness, and gratitude.
I give gentle to my goals, I give gentle to all of the issues that convey me pleasure.
I reclaim my proper to thrive. Joy is my birthright. Rest is my birthright.
I get up every day honoring my reality. I’m protected.
I step into my energy with confidence. It is my birthright to take up house.
Liera is an educator, activist, healer, and neighborhood organizer. She is the founding father of the WOC Sister Collective, which presents all kinds of BIWOC-focused occasions, circles, and workshops that educate, encourage, and empower girls in our neighborhood.
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Gen Kelsang Demo, Buddhist instructor
Using meditation
Mental well being is of key significance in our means to be joyful and free from psychological ache and issues.
Happiness and struggling are states of thoughts, so their primary causes lie inside the thoughts. If we wish to be really joyful and free from struggling, we should learn to management the thoughts.
The actual supply of happiness is internal peace. If our thoughts is peaceable, we shall be joyful on a regular basis, no matter exterior circumstances, however whether it is disturbed or troubled in any means, we are going to by no means be joyful irrespective of how good our exterior circumstances could also be. External circumstances can solely make us joyful if our thoughts is peaceable.
One technique to develop and preserve a particular expertise of internal peace is by utilizing meditation. Meditation is a technique to familiarize our thoughts with advantage, the principle explanation for internal peace. There are many various kinds of meditation we are able to practice in. One sort we are able to use to remodel our issues and ache into psychological peace is meditation on compassion. We can use our expertise of struggling and recall what number of others are struggling in the identical means.
We can then rework our thoughts into the compassionate want, “May everyone be free from suffering,” and maintain that want single pointedly, first for one minute, then two, till we are able to preserve focus on this compassionate want for so long as we would like. In this fashion, we take our struggling and use it to remodel our thoughts right into a optimistic, assured, and brave thoughts of altruism.
This is only one instance of how we are able to use meditation as a device to unravel our issues, enhance our good qualities, and improve the reason for happiness – internal peace.
Demo is the Midwestern U.S. National Spiritual Director and the Resident Teacher at Kadampa Meditation Center Washington, D.C. She has been educating Kadampa Buddhism since 1998.