The Science of Spirituality: Unlocking the Key to Whole Person Health with Dr. Lisa Miller (The Velvet)

Published Dec 11, 2024, 6:16 PM

What if spirituality was the missing link to a healthier, more resilient life? In this episode, Kelly sits down with Dr. Lisa Miller, PhD—bestselling author, Columbia University professor, and clinical psychologist—to explore the groundbreaking science behind Spiritual Health. Dr. Lisa shares how an engaged spiritual life enhances creativity, grit, and optimism while reducing depression, anxiety, and even addiction. Through a mix of cutting-edge research and practical advice, Dr. Lisa reveals how to build your spiritual core, nurture a deeper sense of meaning, and create a foundation for connection in ourselves and our children. It’s not about if spirituality makes a difference, but how you can integrate it into your life.

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HOST: Kelly Henderson // @velvetsedge // velvetsedge.com

Conversations on life, style, beauty, and relationships. It's The Velvet's Edge podcast with Kelly Henderson.

Doctor Lisa Miller is a PhD at New York's Times best selling author, Columbia University professor, clinical psychologists and scientist. She is leading the conversation about spiritual health, which is the new horizon for whole person health. Doctor Lisa, I'm so happy to have you here. I was just telling you before the podcast, I can't think up a more dreamlike conversation for me to combine psychology, spirituality and science all in one. So thank you so much for being here.

Well, I'm so excited to join you, and I love the place that you're creating in the heart of our culture to really talk about what's true and deep in the heart. Thank you.

So you've written a lot of books, You've done callless interviews. I was deep diving on all your notes and all your accolades. But I was just curious as I was reading what drew you to go down this road of even putting science, psychology, and spirituality all into one even research project.

So you know, I started out as a practicing psychologist. I was brand new right out of the PhD program, and I was really seeking to see what was healing in people. I wanted to know what was true and healing in people. And what I saw to be totally honest was that when we are really in our most painful places, therapy without spirituality simply doesn't do a good enough job that for most people. You know, there was another round of suffering, there was another round of addiction that we weren't getting out of the hole. And it seemed to me that mental health without a spiritual core was simply leaving people stranded. So I set out of done now twenty five thirty years of science that examined the deep spiritual nature of who we are and how we recover and grow and change through suffering. That suffering might even at times be a spiritual event, and when we honor our deep spiritual nature, life unfolds totally differently. So I came to science, and it's now been twenty five thirty years of science because I saw a screaming need of pain in us that wasn't addressed without honoring our spiritual nature, without touching the spiritual core.

Well, I want to get into that. And I was just thinking, as you were talking. I love that you're actually using science also because I think a lot of times in our culture, spirituality, or anytime I'm talking about some of this stuff, I find that some of the more scientific, logical minded people are kind of like, yeah, yeah, but that's woo woo, you know, and they kind of put it into this category that's separate from the tangible things that you can prove scientifically the way that their brain thinks. So I think it's really important to make these two comparisons because it really opens up a whole new world for more types of minds and brains and people.

So, Kelly, we now have a twenty five year glorious, rigorous, pure review science in some of the best journals JAMMA Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, and you name a journal of Child adolescent Psychiatry that shows beyond a shadow of a doubt, some very core, very revealing and you know, it's just not making its way into our society truths about who we really are. Can I share a few of them?

Yes? Please?

Okay, So the first that is just jaw dropping and beautiful is that every single one of us, every one of us, nobody's left out, is a naturally spiritual being. We know this, It is a fact. How do we know this? Scientists use a twin study. We look at twins raised together and twins raised depart if we want to find out whether any human capacity has an inborn quality versus being totally environmentally formed. So, for instance, height and weight obviously has a genetic component. Whether we're at risk for diabetes or heart disease has a genetic component. Our temperament, whether we're introverted or extroverted, whether we're a little high strung early back, has a genetic component. The capacity through which each and every one of us experienced this spiritual life is inborn. There is a genetic component. That means that no matter whether I am religious or not, I am still a spiritual person. And that means that whether my religion is Catholic, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Jane, I am still a naturally spiritual person of the deep common universal form. Religion are beautiful faith traditions. Right, whether I'm Hindu or Muslim, or Christian or Jewish, whatever I may be, religion is a beautiful gift of our parents and grandparents. We might choose a tradition and immerse ourselves through the lens of a twin study. Religion, our beautiful texts and ceremonies is environmentally transmitted. Okay, it's one percent environmently transmitted. Now, two thirds of people in the United States say I am spiritual and I am religious. My natural birthright of being a spiritual being on earth is shaped for two thirds of Americans by our faith tradition. I choose the prayers from Catholicism, Judaism, h I choose the meditations to cultivate my natural spirituality. But whether or not we are religious, we're all spiritual beings. And what was extraordinary beautiful is that there is one deep, common spiritual portal in every human being. Of course, there's one source of life, whatever you want to call it, God has sheen Allah, the Big Bang, one source of life, the universe, and then there's one common human portal. This is suggestive that how we are built is to live together and in our own lives on a spiritual path. Now, because it's innate scientific finding. Two, there's a region in the brain we have tracked in our MRI studies, the neural circuitry that undergirds spiritual experience in all people again seven point four seven point four spiritual beings on Earth, human beings on Earth, seven point four spiritual brains. It's simply the truth of who we are. That's the most important finding from clinical science to be concrete, ironclad in the past twenty years. And in the Awakened Brain, I get into the weeds. You can pull up references on Google, scholar or medline and the Awakened Brain everything is referenced. But I share with you here in aggregate the take home line that we need for ourselves to realize who we are, and if we are a parent, it is the most important thing we do for our children is strengthen their birthright of natural spirituality, their own spiritual core.

Wow. I love combining science psychology. And then also you're mentioning things like mriyes and actual tangible things that we're looking at the brain and saying this is a need like human bodies, human beings need this kind of thing, and spiritual health is very important to our own overall health. So could you explain to the listeners also what is spiritual health.

Spiritual health is when we realize our deep, ongoing, transcendent relationship with the deeper nature of life. That is loving, that is guiding. We are an open system. We are built to be an open system and a deep, sustained relationship. My word is God. You could be universe or source, untouched by source. It could be the beautiful name of your faith tradition. I walk with Jesus. I feel the presence of Hisham. I know God watches over me. Whatever your word is, my word happens to be God. We are built to be in a sustained relationship with our higher power, and when we realize our true human nature, we walk through life in a sustained dialogue with God. That is spiritual health. The second piece that's equally important is that we then see God's presence, the source of life, in one another. Both are forms of relational spirituality. As I feel deeply in my heart a relationship with my higher power, I feel that deep love towards you, You, my sister, my brother, my fellow living being, little animals on earth.

Right, we're all connected. You see yourself and someone else, all of those mentalities, so you see God, right, But then you could go deeper and say we are God and all of those things too.

Have this part of my morning prayer is May I be you right, may see you?

Yeah?

And I act you?

Yeah. I love that. So if someone's listening and they're saying, okay, cool, what you just explain what spiritual health is, then you also talked about the part of our brain that needs it. But why, like, why is this so important for life here on earth? I can't see these things. I don't you know, I don't have a tangible thing necessarily, So why are you trying to tell me that I need this? Right?

Because your life is a grand, sacred quest. You are the captain of the huge spiritual adventure. That's how we're built. That's okay, what it is. We don't know what's coming around the corner, and we don't need to. We're built to be in a state of quest to say, what is life showing me? Now? What is my higher power asking of me?

Now?

What is being revealed to me? That is an open system engaged with the guidance and the buoyancy of life itself. It's a whole new way of journeying, which means we don't need radical control. We don't need to know what's coming tomorrow and have the perfect plan, which means that everything that goes so called wrong isn't necessarily wrong. Just because it's not what I'd planned or wanted doesn't mean it's wrong. Not always. Why is this happening to me? But why is this happening for me? Actually? Kelly, would you be open perhaps to doing a practice?

Sure?

Okay, beautiful, Okay. This practice is called the road of life.

Okay.

I invite you to think of a time where you really wanted something. You wanted it so badly. You wanted him or her or them to say yes. You wanted attention or love. You wanted to get into a school or get a job, or get an internship. You wanted that home or this for your child or that for your child. You wanted them to make the team, you wanted them to get into college. And you did everything right to get that red door. You researched it, you were tactical and strategic. A let's be let's see you nailed it. You go for your red door because you've planned it right. You grab the handle, but it's stuck, and you can't believe it's stuck because you'd wanted it so bad and you've done everything right. I mean, you really wanted it and done everything beyond by the book only because it is stuck. You might be angry, you might kick this red door. You might be depressed, but you do pivot, and you pivot eighty ninety one hundred and ten degrees. Over there, over there is a glorious, wide open yellow door. You didn't know yellow doors existed. No one had ever spoken of yellow doors. On the other side of the shining yellow door is a job where you feel alive. Is a mentor who sees in you beyond what you knew in yourself. Is a synchronicity, a turn of events that opens up a whole new field of opportunity discovery. Is a partner that loves you in a way you've never been loved. That yellow door was not what you had thought you wanted. It was far, far better and better for you. And now, as you sit back and you look at that stuck red door and the hairpin turn that took you to the wide open yellow door, was there anyone there at that hairpin turn, a trail angel pointing you to the yellow door. It could have been a story told by a dear friend who'd never confided before. It could have been a two minute conversation at the coffee shop at a party. So when you synchronistically met a trail angel pointing you to the yellow door. So now sitting way back, stuck red door hairpin turned trail angel to the wide open yellow door. That has so much to do with the glorious life you live today and who you really are. How are the most important parts of our lives found? Is it narrowly through planning? Sure, we have to do our part, But are we less really makers of our lot and more discovers of our journey? And where in your road of life is your higher power? Is your higher power in the wide open yellow door, and the stuck red door is your higher power in the trail angel? And you be an open system in deep dialogue with the force that's through us and through life in us, through us around us. Have you been on a spiritual path all along? Oh? And I welcome you back.

Oh my gosh, I just had so many memories flooding through my brain and it was it's interesting, And I'll tell the listeners a little bit about what was just happening for me. But you and I were speaking before the podcast, and you asked me about spirituality just in my life in general, like what that had looked like. And I told you I grew up in a Christian household. Then as I got older, religion, it's not that I don't believe in those things anymore. It's just evolved for me. It's kind of expanded and there's a lot more to it, I would say, And it's because of some of the journeys I've been on. But one of the main things in my adult life, like, I was engaged at one point and I thought, Okay, this is the right thing. I think I was nine, and it felt like the right time. I had done my dude diligence, all the things you were just talking about in this thing. And then I found out three months before my wedding he had been cheating the whole entire relationship. And my listeners know most of the story. But but the thing is is when I tell that story now, I don't feel the pain of what that felt like at the time. It was such a gift now I look at it now because what happened for me when I got turned away from that red door is I did get turned to the yellow door, and like the spiritual experience that started for me in that moment of even finding that out and being in the soul crushing pain that I was feeling, that was that was just the beginning. It was what opened me up to where I am now. And of course there's been other hardships along the way, but I would have never started down that path had that red door not slam shut and had my higher power just like guided me gently, like, hey, look, look there's so much more over here, Like you actually deserve more than that, actually have a whole world to walk into that's so much more open than that. I don't know. And so now it's just like hearing your story with that and that meditation I was just doing, I was thinking, God, that's so right. It's just reminding me of all the painful experiences. Not to dismiss any pain because they were. They were fucking brutal, I'll be honest, but they they do they open you up and do a whole new experience and it's so much better. It really is.

Well, and you said so beautifully, Kelly, soul crushing pain, It is a soul crushing, soul crushing that actually is the initial phase of an awakening, much bigger life. So the thing we thought we wanted so much would have brought forth a life that was too small for us. And I know that in a narcissistic sense. Yeah, smaller than someone else. Yeah, for us in our path, it would have been a cage. Yeah. Why because the thing we think, oh, I need to have it, that red door so much. That is all based on information today backwards, it's all historical. Maybe what I thought I wanted when I was seven, when I saw the women around me, when I was thinking what my parents said would be so great for me. And when the red door is stuck, that guidance you said you felt God's presence, your higher power guiding you forward, that guidance, that high pixel hit in the heart. That really almost like being buoyant on the sea, being pulled forward. That knowing is taking us somewhere with information that has yet to unfold. That's information, enormously powerful, life giving, liberating information that we have yet to see before us. But it's already there.

Well, And as you're speaking, I'm just thinking about what you mentioned earlier about the brain, So is there. I kind of want to talk about mental health with spirituality and the reason I'm making that connection right now, and then going into the brain. Piece of it is, when we're talking about this part of my journey, I couldn't see that there was any positive. It was just so painful, like I said, and you know, everyone would say, oh, better to find out now, and you know all the little things we all say to each other. But on a deeper level, I knew it was kind of like a bottom, I would say, and a shakeup and a time for me to go, okay, if I am not on the right path for me, what have I missed? And why am I being misguided? And there was no connection. But what was happening with my brain was I was in so much pain that I also was trying to make steps to avoid any more pain, if that makes sense. So the next little bit of the journey was a lot of like wobbling and kind of like testing something out. I guess my question for you would be, when we have these spiritual awakenings and experiences, how do we then take care of our brain to be able to move forward and to be able to tap into something spiritually to where you can get to the place of where I'm saying now I look back and go, well, that was actually a gift, like what's the science there?

So Kelly in the awakened Brain, I share my deepest, darkest moment. I was struggling my husband, and I was five years of not conceiving a child. I mean, I'd been to all the best doctors up and down the East Coast. I'd been to the people who invented in vitro. There's nothing wrong with you, there's nothing wrong with him. But no little soul was landing. Wow, he was coming. And each year we just got more and more depressed. I mean, I couldn't even go to a baby shower. It was too Yeah, and in the darkest, most excruciating moment, I remember it to this day. We'd just been to the people who had invented in vitro. I came home and I just knew in my deep inner wisdom this haunting feeling that this little embryo hadn't stuck. Every time a little embryo, it felt like going to a funeral, like this tiny little possibility had died, this tiny little spirit had died. It was horrifying, It was so painful. It was really like going to a family funeral. Yeah, So I'm walking got out of the car, walking up the steps to our home, and there right on the front step of our home. Never in the years before, never in the twenty five years since, just that day. It was a tiny little something. I couldn't figure out what it was. It was sort of like a smear, glassy, and I looked over and it was a dead embryo. It was a dead duck embryo, dead on my step. That is synchronicity there. I would be the worst scientist in the world to ignore that. I just had a failed in vitro. As I sensed in my heart, I feared this was not going to take. This little embryo. And there's a dead embryo on my front step. It wasn't even on the side on the driveway, and it wasn't the day before, and it wasn't any day in the twenty five years after. Any scientists would have to say, far too unprobabilistic to have happened by chance. There's a guidance laid in my path, so I know, and I'm depressed. I mean, it's clear what that means. And I walk in the house, I'm like, Oh, this little embryo is not going to take. I was so depressed I would go to bed in the middle of the day, wine there and I didn't even I felt bad to show my husband this despair. I didn't want to bring him down. I didn't want to let him know it wasn't going to take Why should suffered three more days? So I go to my office and I lie down on the couch in my office. In the middle of my nap, I hear there's a knock at my sliding glass door. Can I get up? And I can't believe it. The mother duck has come up the porch to my door. I pull back the door and she's brought me a little juicy worm, the most wonderful delicacy in the world to her. So she knew, See, all living beans know what's going on, just like our dogs and cats know what's going on. All living beans happened to the unit of reality, tap into the single consciousness field, and she knew. So she and I were both non mothers that day, and the pain in my heart. Perhaps she felt too because she had lost her little embryo. But she was comforting me. She was comforting me. I mean, what had I done for her? Right? She was comforting me. And what I realized was that even when we absolutely do not get what we wanted. I really wanted to conceive and I really want to conceive that round of IVF after years and years of struggle. We're not alone. We are absolutely not alone. We are loved. We are completely loved, and we are even guided. So on the day that the worst thing happens and I don't get what I want, or I lose someone I love, or the baby isn't born, we are not alone. We are loved, and we are guided. We are showing up for each other. And Kelly, I can tell you one hundred stories in our extraordinarily painful struggle with infertility where people just showed up. There's a pivotal moment where I've just had another failed in vitro and I can't believe it, and I can't get to work on time. I'm so depressed. And finally, at about eleven o'clock, I get on the bus and I'm going up to Columbia, and suddenly we stopped in the middle of the day. The bus is quite empty, and a gentleman gets on, who's quite usual gentleman, and he's walking towards me. And I just didn't have a lot of generosity, a lot of energy that day, and I thought, oh no, he's not walking walking down the bus past all the empty, shiny empty chairs to me. Are you kidding me? Like I'm the worst I've ever been? You know? So I'm just like, be politely, polite, be playing. He plops down one seat away from me. Gentleman leans over, quite unusual gentleman and says, you know what, lady, you look like an awfully nice lady. In fact, you look like just that type of lady that would go all around the world adopting kids. He smiled and Kelly at the next stop he got off. Who rides a bus for one stop? Able body, gentleman? What a blessing? Who is he? He's a trail angel. He's a trail angel. And you can think was he did he? Was he sort of mystically incarnated? Was he a guy inspired to take the guidance from God? I don't know the full backstory, but he was absolutely a trail angel. So this is when we even are in our worst moment, in the moment of despair, the pocket of real pain. The synchronicity is that God lays before us our higher power, show that we are loved, We are guided, and we are never alone. The worst struggle is never alone.

It's we were talking a little bit before the podcast about you know, the more I've gone into my spiritual journey as well, and the more I've researched even different religions, I just love learning about what other people, what's inspiring other people, what they're studying, what means something to them. And the more I've gotten into it, the more I'm like, wait a second, All religions are kind of saying the same thing, really, and it's really interesting because we all want to say that like it's this one that's the right way, or you know, like if you we don't do it this way whatever, and it's like, no, actually, if we really come together, take away the names, we're all saying pretty much the same thing. And one of the main ways I've learned that is in twelve Step recovery, and so what you were just saying it just sparked something in that as well, because the reason I think twelve step works from my own observation, is that you go in and it is a spiritual program, which is a big kind of issue for a lot of people when they first enter into those rooms. But what you find is very much what you just described as a bunch of trail angels, because it is the connection that starts to heal you. It's the rooms. It's sitting with people who have felt the pain that you feel. And there's something in that that triggers something I would assume in our brain to go, wait a second, I'm not alone. I am on a path of some sort. Maybe this redirection was my best protection and things like that. So have you experienced that in your own journey or just in your practice when you have worked with different clients, like have you seen this kind of awakening happening?

Oh, the twelve step program is a profoundly spiritual program. One hundred percent agree with you, Kelly. In fact, two thirds of people to recover through AA. Research is clear about this do so through a spiritual awakening. They may have walked in and felt quite unhappy with the notion of spirituality or religion. Through what you've just described is a community of unconditional, radical love together handing it over to what, to the great force and through life. Whether they say my higher power is the universe or the deepest good nature of humanity or the source of life or God or Jesus. There is one source of life, and every one of us is built to hand it over. That's how the brain works. Why do we have mass addiction and mass depression because we have culturated an entire generation into people now, two generations who have not yet had the opportunity to realize our true nature. Our nature is to hand it over. When we don't, we're isolated. When we don't, we think we need to control anything everything. We think we need to control everything. When we don't hand it over, we wither on the vine, were malnourished because we're closed off to spirit. But we are built in our brain. Every one of us is built in our brain to hand it over, to be in a sustained relationship with the higher power. However it is we conceptualize of that, there's still one higher power and whatever faith tradition we may be of or not of, there's one spiritual brain, seven point four billion spiritual brains, one source of all life. We're meant to be a spiritual community here on earth together. An AA does a AGESC?

I agree when you're mentioning cultivating a spiritual relationship, and there's all the different avenues. That brings up something that you talk about in your work, where the importance of as a parent really like teaching your child a spiritual foundation and giving them that set to them in childhood. And I asked you before, well, how do you know the difference between like pushing your own religious or spiritual beliefs onto a child and giving them a spiritual foundation, Like you want them to have a spiritual foundation because of all the reasons you're describing, But also isn't it important for us each to have our own you know, journey with that and exploration and decide what works for us or what speaks to us. So how do you navigate that as a parent.

So the science is really clear about this for us parents, And Kelly, I raised three kids, so I deeply in my heart, both as a scientist and as a mom, feel this is the most important gift we give our child. The most important gift we give our child is to strengthen their natural spiritual core.

Okay, do we do that?

And science is Claire, There's two big contributions and they're equal. The first is that in our very being we have radical unconditional love the way you just described aa. Yeah, amongst the family as you might sit in AA. And it doesn't matter if you just failed that test or ace that dust. I mean, we're going to help you if you didn't go well. But in terms of us here at the dinner table, we love you. We just love you. We love you as a soul on earth. We love you as the gift from the higher power of God to our family. We love you radical unconditional love. To walk the walk and walk it towards other people. You know, stop and do something for the elder who's in Stop, you know, as a family, and make time to go to the soup kitchen. Stop as a family, to serve. So walk in the walk of spiritual life. Our children watch us like a hawk. And the second piece that's tremendously important is that we talk the walk of spiritual life in a way that's authentic and rooted in our heart. That we offer them our own deepest, authentic spiritual journey. Because if the child hears us pray out loud, come sit by me as I meditate, look at the sunset. It is such a beautiful gift from God. I just look at you and your sister. I know I couldn't have made you alone. The universe is so abundant and good. When we narrate talk the walk of spiritual life, our children know that the spiritual realm is real. Our children know there's a way in when they pray with us, meditate with us, and they can and get there themselves when we pray out loud, when we say you want to finish this prayer, you want to sit by me, let's walk in nature. Look at that bird and the bird's mama. They remind me of us, baby and mama, and they see the unity of all life. Children think spiritual life is real because we said it was as mothers with all of our heart, with the fullness of our being. They know there's a way in to connect with the higher power. They know there's a language and a roadmap of the spiritual reality. They know our lives are not like mighty mouse of our own control, but that we are an open system and dialogue with what it's not asking of us. Now, this is the greatest gift because it allows your child to open up in the journey of life as a spiritual event. I mean, that's so precious, that's so huge. To give our children the capacity to know life as a spiritual event, not as a shopping list, not as a bunch of accomplishments where I win or lose, not based on my outer shell, where I could have an accident and get disfigured. Now a spiritual event, full of adventures, full of pains and sorrows and glorious moments. It is this unbelievable quest.

I agree with you completely about the action step of walking your talk, too, because that's what I've observed in my parents, and I think I have different practices than them sometimes, and there's have shifted throughout my lifetime as well, but ultimately the biggest lesson has been to observe their growth as they continued their own individual spiritual practices. And I always knew kind of where to go when my life fell apart because of that, If that makes sense.

You watch them on a quest exactly, and there's really hard times where the bread door stuck yeah open, Yeah it was a yellow door, yeah beautiful, and trail angels lining the way humans living beings. You know, Kelly raise a very important point, which is if I have a strong spiritual life, do I need to worry I'm somehow being coercive that my child might have a different faith traditional right, walk right, and the bottom line is that forty five percent of people change faith traditions. I might have been raised Hindu and I become Christian. I might have been raised Christian and I become a Universalist. Write that process itself draws on a deep connection to spiritual inner life. As a parent, my concern, speaking for myself, is not whether or not my child adapts my faith tradition. My deepest concern is that my child be able to hand it over, that my child treat life like a spiritual event that I have realized for my child the profound impact have as ambassadors. Parents are spiritual ambassadors to strengthen and open their spiritual awareness. That only comes if we pass the torch when they are children and teens. If we speak in our own voice and yes, I happen to be Jewish or Christian or Muslim, it doesn't matter. The child knows that the spiritual reality. Much more deeply, the spiritual reality is real. What gift do we give our children as parents? We give them the gift of knowing that the deep spiritual reality is real, whether that comes packaged in the language of Christianity or Islam or Judaism or any other faith tradition is very secondary to the profound, enduring, lifelong effect of strengthening their natural spiritual awareness. Let them pick any faith tradition, what endures. What endures is their spiritual awareness.

Yeah, that's what I believe because I think that as humans, and I feel like our culture is starting to kind of accept this a little bit more, and then there's a whole other side that is really fighting it. But it's like, if you try to say that everyone should live their life exactly the same way, you're kind of missing the point that we all came here as completely different human beings for a reason, like to help each other out, you know, Like I have a certain skill set, you have a certain skill set, and look at us right now. We're able to co collaborate and create something together because of our different skill sets. And that's the beautiful thing about humans to me. And I think that can go for spirituality as well, because it's what resonates for me every morning. To do in my practice may not be the thing that really communicates to your heart and your soul, So it's about finding your own path. But I love the idea of walking the walk and letting people around you observe that to then build their own spiritual foundation or build upon a spiritual foundation their own spiritual path.

And what a wonderful way to truly, truly be deep, true friends of the heart. I really want to I want to know your deepest truth and that's your spiritual path. And of course you're going to use your own language and I'll use money. Right, We're not going to show up dressed in the same outfit.

Right, we both have.

Fun, but they're two different colored.

Now there you go, exactly.

But you're absolutely right, Kelly, that can we really know each other deeply? Yes, that is spiritual knowing. That is an awakened friendship and awakened parenting. It is an opening of the awakened heart. And we can feel in the heart of what you want to tell me about Christmas or Honok or Wally. I can feel in the heart that joy and love. It doesn't need to be told in my tradition or with my language. And that's real spiritual multilingualism. We need to live it and show it to our children. You know, right now, by the time a child is six, he or she is more likely to hang out with a child in first grade whose family uses the same name for the higher power, and they're even more likely little first grader more likely to share their lunch box, their little school lunch with someone who uses the same name for the higher power. So we already have an unfortunate sort of splinteredness when what we need is to come together in the heart. Love, yes, cocquers all what faith, love right, love each other and know of deep pro I want to hear about the birth of your new sister brother. I want to hear about the pasting of your grandma and grandpa and know it in the heart, and you tell me it in your language, your faith tradition. But I sure know what you're talking about. I know of what you speak well.

I feel like our culture could use a lot of what you just described. But let's talk about that a little bit, because it is such an anger just time. I feel like there's a lot of divisiveness. There's been a lot of change, or there's a lot of change coming, and not everyone knows where to stand with all of that. Do you have any tips to use spirituality in a time of high anxiety to really help our brains, our psychology our hearts, though, our souls, all of it. How can spirituality help us in this time?

We get anxious when we think, oh no, the thing I want isn't going to happen, or oh no, how am I going to control this? I'm not in control. Anxiety is very often the feeling of not being in control, not being able to anticipate what comes next. So the number one antidote is to release the illusion, the assumption of total control. We don't have total control, and instead be firmly rooted in the stance of discovery. Life is a quest and stop saying what do I want? How am I going to get it? Why didn't I get it? And instead offer up to the universe, Hey, what is life showing me? Now? What am I being asked to become? You know? Someone just hurt me deeply? Someone just betrayed me deeply? How can I love more deeply? I don't mean re expose myself and go get right right right? Yeah? How can I love love deeply in my heart as a soul on earth in my walk? What has just landed in my path that invites me to lead a much bigger life, not have more junk, lead a deeply bigger life. That's another way of being that shifts from sort of a narrow what I call achieving awareness where everything is measured. You got it, I didn't get it. What do I have to what I call an awakened life where we live in dialogue? Not what I want, but what is life showing me now? Yeah?

I I mean that's the question I asked pretty much every day. And I think when we were talking earlier about our hardships and then looking back going well, there was all of these things that opened up because of that though, Like even in my example of hanseling a wedding, was that fun in the time? Absolutely not. But when I look back now the points that you were making, Like I look back and I was like, wait, some of that relationship, I really wasn't being true to myself. And there were all these other things that I started to learn but I couldn't.

See it before.

So because of that deep pain that I felt, my eyes also opened to a lot of things within me that needed to change and that I wanted to work on and go deeper with. And so what you're just saying about when you stay curious and something is like shifting or not going the way you want are you get in a fight with somebody is coming up for a reason. And I talk about this on this podcast all of the time. But it's all here to serve our highest good. I really believe that, even the painful things. And so if you can stay curious, there's like all this world that opens up. You start to see the trail angels, you start to experience the beauty between your relationship with yourself and animals. Like everything becomes part of a higher power in this whole experience, and you miss it if you don't look at it in the way that we're talking about right now.

And yet you are built to see it. Every one of us, Yeah, I promise you in your brain, every single person, every one of your beautiful community has an awakened brain. It's a choice to engage.

There's a choice to engage to.

See and know that we're loved and held, we're guided, and we're never alone. I mean, Kelly, I can tell you each of those has a narrow circuit. Loved and held. We all have a bonding network, right, we have a shift from narrow dorsal that opened ventral attention, never alone. We all have a prital of I can point to you in an MRI study where in your brain, every single one of your beautiful community is given at birth a brain to perceive and know that the transcendent relationship is loving, holding and guiding and they are never left alone.

Wow. Well, I feel like I could analyze this all day with you, but I know we both need to go. So I wanted to mention that you have three books out your New York's New York Times bestseller, The Awakened Brain, The Spiritual Child, and the Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality. But I also wanted to know if there is is there any other way that people can keep up with the work that you're doing around spirituality and psychology and science.

Well, I would love to connect with people. I do do Instagram where I okay, I certainly will share our beautiful discussion Kelly on Instagram and I connect with people that way. We also have the Spirituality, Mind Body Institute at Combe University, which is a place where people can come and become spiritually grounded therapists, guy leaders such as yourself and you know. I want to leave one more message, which is you know, men and women, we are all spiritual beings, but for women to fulfill the wholeness of how we're built. The science says it's even more important that we own our spiritual knowing. That we look at a synchronousity and we know that is meaningful. We take it as real, we honor it, discern what it might mean, and act on it. That men and women are all spiritual beings, but women particularly are realized when we listen to our deep spiritual knowing, our awakened knowing, and then act on it. And the backstory is we get even more depressed when we shut that off, disavow the truth in our heart and don't so we must remain an open system handing it over in this deep sustained relationship with our higher power and knowing each other from the sun as been shining parts of God. Yeah.

Yeah, I love that. I can't say anything more that's better than that. So let's end on that, Doctor Lisa Millard, thank you so much for being here.

Oh Kelly, it's just so wonderful to connect with you in your community.

Thank you guys for listening.

Thanks for listening to the Velvet's Edge podcast with Kelly Henderson, where we believe everyone has a little velvet in a little Edge. Subscribe for more conversations on life, style, beauty and relationships. Search Velvet's Edge wherever you get your podcasts.