Getting into the Spirit! Working on my fitness – Lift spirits, not weights (jk, you can lift weights if you want)

Are rituals fundamental to nurturing the spirit? How can a universal view of ‘spirit’ improve one’s health?

Everyone has a spirit. Whether that spirit is seen as a floating soul within the body, an energy/aura or a chemical interaction on a quantum level, is up to an individual’s beliefs. What is universal is the performance of a ritual as an act of fostering spirituality. While we most commonly associate ritual with religion, this is an effect of religion relying on the idea of the spirit, however spirit and religion/religiosity are not mutually inclusive.

Through the lens of my own Indigenous spirituality in which the observation of plants can be both a ritual and spiritual act, what began with the study of a spring bud has grown into a question of the different ways individuals nurture their own spirit.

The ability to define acts as promoting the health of the spirit allows one to consider the ways in which they may manage not only their mental, emotional and physical health, but spiritual health as well. This is the Indigenous way and a method of pursuing balance/personal harmony. When your mental, emotional and physical health are low, your spiritual health can carry you though.

Within my research I engage with individuals who approach their spirituality outside the scope of organised religion. Atheists, scientists and plant-watching hobbyists are asked about the rituals they engage in, and the impacts on their spirit. Through these conversations I hope to impart this decolonial lens on spirituality where spirituality can be thought of as an operative of living, rather than an operative of religion.