Can Spiritual Connection Help the Body Heal?
We know the familiar pillars of lifelong health: nourishing food, regular movement, restorative sleep, and good medical care.
But many of us also know, perhaps from experience, that our health is shaped by things that are harder to measure: our sense of connection, the meaning we find in our lives, and what sustains us when life becomes difficult.
Most doctors don’t ask about these parts of our lives. But a growing number of physicians are wondering what we may be missing when we leave them out.
Three physicians approach that question in different ways: psychiatrist Jeffrey Rediger, MD, MDiv; physician and author Lissa Rankin, MD; and gynecologic surgeon Christopher Naraine, MD. Each believes medicine may be leaving an important part of us out of the conversation.
Spirituality Begins With Connection
For these physicians, spirituality is not limited to religious faith. Its common thread is connection: to ourselves, to other people, to nature, or to something larger than ourselves.
For Rankin, that connection begins within. She describes spirituality as reconnecting with what she calls our “Inner Pilot Light,” the deepest part of ourselves that remains intact despite hardship or trauma.
For Rediger, spirituality begins with love. “When I think of spirituality, I think of the love that connects us to each other, to ourselves, to nature, and to the larger world,” he says. “We need love just like we need oxygen.”
And for Naraine, spirituality doesn’t have to look particularly spiritual. “Anything could be turned into a spiritual moment for you,” he says. “You could be climbing a mountain, you could be looking out your window. It doesn’t require any specific religious belief.”
Your Nervous System May Be Listening to Your Life
For these physicians, the larger idea is that our emotional and spiritual lives do not exist apart from our bodies. How safe, connected, or chronically stressed we feel may affect the nervous system and, over time, influence our physical health.
For Rankin, the nervous system offers one possible explanation. Experiences of love, safety, and belonging, she says, can help the body settle after prolonged stress. She connects that sense of safety with the ventral vagal state, a proposed physiological state associated with safety and social connection.
Rediger came to the question another way. For more than 15 years, he studied people who recovered from serious illnesses despite poor prognoses, work that eventually became his book Cured. Along the way, he began to wonder why medicine devotes so much attention to understanding disease and comparatively little to understanding how healing happens.
Again and again, the people he studied described changes that went far beyond medications or procedures. They reconsidered relationships, found a new sense of purpose, or reclaimed parts of themselves they had long ignored.
“Our bodies tell stories,” he says.
Healing and Curing Are Not the Same Thing
“To heal is ‘to become whole,’” Rankin says. “To be cured means to be free of disease or symptoms. It’s possible to be healed but not cured.”
Someone living with chronic illness may never experience a cure yet still find healing through restored relationships, a renewed sense of purpose, forgiveness, or a deeper connection with themselves.
Naraine draws a similar line between treating pain and easing suffering. “The things you do to control the patient’s pain may not necessarily relieve their suffering,” he says. Easing suffering, he believes, may also mean tending to a person’s emotional and spiritual life.
Rankin recalls one woman who began what she jokingly called her “Selfish Bitch Project” after being diagnosed with breast cancer. After a lifetime of putting everyone else’s needs first, she began setting boundaries, asking for help, and believing that her needs mattered, too. For her, the project was about reclaiming her life and reconsidering how she wanted to live.
Those ideas are central to Relationsick: Why Putting Yourself Last Is Destroying Your Health—and How to Heal, Rankin and Rediger’s forthcoming book, out October 6. Drawing on trauma research and clinical experience, the book examines how chronically unequal relationships and the habit of suppressing one’s own needs may contribute to stress and affect well-being.
The Questions Your Doctor Probably Isn’t Asking
Doctors routinely ask about medications, allergies, family history, depression, and anxiety, but few ask what gives a person’s life meaning. Naraine sees that question as an essential part of understanding the whole person. The conversation might begin simply: What matters most to you? What helps you through difficult times? What gives your life purpose?
Rediger believes listening to those answers can change what a physician understands. “We doctors are taught to eliminate the story,” he says. “But when you actually get the story... you get a much more accurate understanding of what’s going on.”
Those answers may help a physician understand what sustains a person, what they may be carrying, and what support they have beyond the exam room.
For people who remain uncomfortable with the word spirituality, Rankin suggests beginning somewhere simpler. “What makes you come alive?” she asks. “I’d talk more about vitality, life force, and joie de vivre than spirituality.”
Making Room for What Matters in Your Care
You don’t have to wait for your doctor to ask, or even use the word spirituality, to bring this part of your life into the conversation. You could simply say, “I want you to understand what matters most to me as we make decisions about my care.” If your doctor isn’t able to explore it with you, ask whether a social worker, therapist, chaplain, or another member of your care team can help.
To be clear: Spirituality is not a substitute for medical care. Illness is not evidence that someone failed to pray, think positively, resolve their trauma, or live correctly. The science connecting spirituality and physical health is still evolving. Any conversation about the two must leave no room for blaming people when illness comes or healing does not.
However we describe it, health is not only about preventing disease. It’s also about remaining connected to what makes life meaningful: the people we love, the communities that sustain us, the experiences that fill us with wonder, and the sense that our lives still have purpose. Medicine may not be able to prescribe those things, but that doesn’t make them any less important to how we heal.
Meet the Experts
Jeffrey Rediger, MD, MDiv, is a physician, psychiatrist, and faculty member at Harvard Medical School. He is the author of the bestselling Cured: The Life-Changing Science of Spontaneous Healing, which examines what people who recover against the odds might teach us about health and healing. He co-authored the forthcoming Relationsick with Lissa Rankin.
Lissa Rankin, MD, is a physician, New York Times bestselling author, and founder of the Whole Health Medicine Institute and the nonprofit Heal At Last. Her books, including Mind Over Medicine, The Fear Cure, The Anatomy of a Calling, and Sacred Medicine, explore trauma, relationships, spirituality, and whole-person health. She co-authored Relationsick with Jeffrey Rediger.
Christopher Naraine, MD, is a board-certified gynecologist and minimally invasive gynecologic surgeon with nearly three decades of experience caring for women. His approach emphasizes the connections among physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
What has helped you feel whole during a difficult season? Whether it was faith, friendship, time in nature, creative expression, meditation, or something else entirely, tell us in the comments what sustained you.
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