“To remain well, individuals must stay in harmony with themselves, their environment and their creator”
—Carol Locust
Spirituality is defined as connectedness with self, others, a life or God that allows people to experience, self-transcendence and find meaning in life. Spirituality helps people discover a purpose in life, understand the vicissitudes of life and develop their relations with God or a high power. Within the framework of spirituality a person discovers the truth about self, about the world and about the concepts such as love, compassion, wisdom, honesty, commitment, imagination, reverence, and morality. Often, spiritual behavior is expressed through sacrifice, self-discipline and spending time in activities that focus on the inner self or soul.
The word “spirituality” derives from the Latin word spiritus, which refers to breath or wind. The spirit gives life to, or animates, a person. It signifies whatever is at the center of all aspects of a person life. A person's health depends on a balance of physical, psychological, sociological, cultural and spiritual factors. Spirituality is often identified as the important factor that helps to achieve the balance needed to maintain health and well-being and to cope with illness.
Frequently spirituality becomes equated with religion and privacy of an individual's religious orientation. But spirituality is a much broader and more unifying concept than religion. Florence Nightingale described spirituality as the sense of presence higher than human, the divine intelligence that 2creates, sustains and organizes the universe, and an awareness of our inner connection with this higher reality.
Religion and nature are two vehicles that people use to connect themselves with God or a high power; however bonds to religious institutions, beliefs or dogma are not required to experience the spiritual sense of self. Faith, considered the formulation of spirituality, is a belief in something that a person cannot see. Spirituality is also a component of hope, and especially during chronic, serious or terminal illness, patients and their families often find comfort and emotional strength in their religious traditions or spiritual beliefs.
Recently, nurse researchers as well as pastoral care professionals, physicians, social workers, and others have proposed that spirituality has special importance as the integrating theme that unifies all aspects of an individual's health. It is a force intrinsic to human nature and is one of the deepest and most potent resources for healing.
Spirituality
Spirituality is a concept that is unique to each individual. Individual's definitions of their own Spirituality are influenced by their culture, life experiences, beliefs and ideas about life.
There are two important characteristics of spirituality about which most authors agree:
- It is a unifying theme in people's lives
- It is a state of being
Atheist search for meaning in life through their work and their relationships with other individuals. Because atheists feel they are alone, they sense a strong responsibility for themselves. They also tend to believe in a joint responsibility for others. In acting for themselves, they feel they should also act for all of mankind.
In case of agnostics, it is important for them to discover or find meaning in what they do or how they live. Since agnostics find no ultimate meaning for the way they are, they believe that we as people bring meaning to what we do.
Religion
Religion is commonly associated with the state of doing or a specific system of practices associated with a particular domination, sect, or form of worship. Religion is defined as a system of organized beliefs and worship that a person practices to outwardly express his or her spirituality. Many clients practice a faith or belief in the doctrines, and expressions of a specific religion or sect, such as protestant, catholic, orthodox, Jehovah's Witness, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism. A person's religion influences the manner in which an individual exercises a faith of belief and action.
Religion serves different purposes in people's lives. For some, religion is a set of rules and rituals used to worship a supreme being. For others religion is a way of life providing nourishment and a connectedness to all of life. When providing spiritual care to clients it is important to understand the difference between religion and spirituality.
Religion often includes the formal organizational structures for social behavior. Religious beliefs can influence life style, attitudes, and feelings about life, pain and death. 4Some organized religions specify practices about diet, birth control, and appropriate medical care. Religion can both help people live fuller lives as well as strengthen or console people during suffering and in preparation for inevitable death.
Faith and Hope
The concept of faith has two uses described in literature. In the first, faith is defined as a cultural or institutional religion, such as Hinduism, Islam, and Christianism. The second use deals with faith as a relationship with a divinity, higher power, authority, or spirit that incorporates a reasoning faith. The reasoning faith is an individual's belief and confidence in something for which there is no proof. A trusting faith deals with the inner resources that allow an identity to act.
Spirituality is frequently identified as a key element in hope. Hope is described as a multidimensional concept consisting anticipation of a continued good, an improvement, or the lessening of something unpleasant.
Hope is future oriented. An individual imagines what is not yet seen. Hope usually includes active involvement by the individual. Involvement might include goal setting, caring, planning or praying. Hope comes from within a person and is related to trust. That which is hoped for is seen by the person as truly possible. Hope is more than a desire or wish. Hope relates to or involves other people or higher being. This can involve thoughts, feelings and actions that involve others. The outcome of hope is important to the individual. The expectation is often a future outcome that has meaning to the individual.
Hope is energizing, giving individuals a motivation to achieve and the resources to use toward that achievement. However, in either form, hope often offers new meaning to life, especially when a person conquers a disease or disability.
In times of illness, the thoughts of many people turn to spiritual things. The additional time to think, the uncertainty of life and the inability to control the course of events cause people to look for something secure and permanent in which to believe. Help is needed to face fears of death, past actions, 5life after death and to know what God is like. People want to know how to have a peaceful heart. They need to feel love and concern for their spiritual welfare.
Spirituality in Holistic Health Care
For nursing to be holistic, it should be universally applicable, cover all aspects of health, i.e. physical, mental, social and spiritual.
Ayurveda has a holistic concept of Medicare and health care and it defines health as svasthya. “to be one's own spiritual self”. Charka (AD 500-600); the renowned Ayurveda physician, defined health as equipoise state of body, mind, sense organs and soul.
Swami Vivekananda said, “Serve every person as god.” This concept alone can bring a revolutionary change in our attitudes in Medicare. This concept pleads with our health care team members to consider treatment of their patients as service of God himself. They would be making their profession itself a spiritual practice, through which great spiritual graces like peace, sympathy, love, freedom and fearlessness can flow.
Louis Pasteur, the great French scientist, said, “blessed is he who carries within himself God, an ideal beauty, for therein lie springs of great thought and great action.” This brings us to the topic of harnessing spirituality in the scheme of holistic health care.
