How To Nourish Your Soul - LNJ Life Coaching

We are a soul in a body, and our soul was created to give Love and to receive Love, and because we are created in the image of God, we know that God is Love. God created us so we can thrive in an atmosphere of Love and affection; the absence of affection may be detrimental to a person’s soul. For instance, a person brought up in a toxic environment may grow up to have mental health and emotional issues such as anxiety, depression, insecurity, and anger.

This reason is why God gave us guidance on how to raise children.

Ephesians 6:4 AMP says – Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger [do not exasperate them to the point of resentment with demands that are trivial or unreasonable or humiliating or abusive; nor by showing favoritism or indifference to any of them], but bring them up [tenderly, with lovingkindness] in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Pay attention to the keywords in this verse and the importance of practicing what those words say. The Lord tells us not to provoke our children to anger or push them to resentment but to bring up children tenderly and lovingly.

The soul is a sensitive entity, and the Lord knows how fragile it is, so He tells us to be tender and loving when we deal with each other, not only parents and children – but as humans, we have to be kind to others as we are kind to our self.

We can find the Greatest Commandment in Matthew 22:36-40 NIV; it says, Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

The primary keyword in this verse is the word, Love. Jesus calls us to Love God with all our souls and also to Love our fellow brother.

How, Then, Can We Nourish Our Souls?

To nourish our soul means to be kind to ourselves and to pay attention to our self-talk. Consider this, the very words you would not say to someone, don’t say those words to yourself. Still, we find ourselves prone to speaking negatively to ourselves because of our mental strongholds from trauma and other negative experiences.

To nourish our souls means we must be intentional about what we think and say. Two verses supporting this statement are Proverbs 4:23 and Philippians 4:8; if we can follow these principles, we will see positive life changes.

Sensory Stimulation And Physical Activities To Nourish The Soul

The Spiritual and the physical always overlap with each other. Whatever we do physically, there is a spiritual effect happening as well. Science teaches us about Neural Activity and how it can cause physiological change; depending on our thinking, we can experience negative experiences or positive experiences.

For the sake of this blog post, we will discuss how to use sensory stimulation and physical activities to help us think positively and experience a positive life, as Proverbs 4:23 says.

Happy Chemicals Help You To Nourish Your Soul

When we think positively or engage in positive activities, our bodies naturally secrete hormones and chemicals called Dopamine, Serotonin, Endorphins, and Oxytocin. These chemicals help with our mood, motivation, self-esteem, relationships, and emotional responses.

Activities To Help Nourish Our Souls

Aromatherapy: Aromatherapy uses essential oils or scented candles for therapeutic purposes. When we smell essential oils, the scent molecules in the essential oils travel from the nose directly to the brain and powerfully impact the Amygdala, the emotional center of the brain. Aromatherapy helps to induce Serotonin and Dopamine in the body.

Massage Therapy: Massage therapy helps to reduce stress and increase relaxation, lowers blood pressure, manages pain, and boosts mental and emotional health wellness. Massage helps to induce Serotonin and Dopamine in the body.

Enjoying Sunlight: Staying in the sun, especially early in the morning, helps to boost your Vitamin D levels, helps you to relax and reduce stress, fights off depression, and helps to boost your overall mood. Sunlight helps to induce Serotonin in the body.

Ocean Therapy: Going to the beach is excellent for swimming and relaxing, but other therapeutic benefits include improving your cognitive function, it helps to boost your mood, and dramatically reducing stress, anxiety, depression, and anger. In addition, your body feels peace and calm; the waves help to soothe and relax the brain naturally. Finally, visiting the ocean helps to induce Serotonin in the body.

Cooking Therapy: Especially if you love to cook, you will find that cooking can put you in your comfort zone and can dramatically reduce stress and anxiety. Cooking can make you happy and relaxed, increase self-awareness, and boost your self-confidence. You may take a cooking class, a great way to meet like-minded people and form interpersonal relationships as well. In addition, cooking helps to induce Dopamine and Endorphins in the body.

Listening To Music: Listening to music helps to reduce depression, anxiety, and stress. In addition, it improves emotional regulation and processing. Listening to music, especially classical music, helps to induce Dopamine in the body.

Volunteering: Volunteering has a lot of therapeutic benefits, such as reducing stress, combating depression, and fighting feelings of isolation, and it increases your confidence. In addition, it gives you a sense of purpose, ignites passion, and makes you happy. Volunteering induces the bonding chemical called Oxytocin as well as Serotonin and Dopamine.

Exercising: Exercising helps to release the chemical called Endorphins, and Endorphins help us with our sense of well-being, keep us in a state of pleasure (no pain), help to increase our self-confidence, Increases our self-esteem, helps us with our stress management, and overall happiness.

Nature Sounds: Listening to nature sounds such as rain, ocean waves, birds singing, or sounds of streams helps to reduce anxiety, stress, and depression. The calming effect contributes to having peace of mind. In addition, nature sounds help to induce Dopamine and Serotonin in the body.

Practice Love: Love is an action word, so you can devise things to do to show Love to yourself or someone else. You may compliment other people, volunteer, pay it forward, call a friend to say hi, invite friends for game night, babysit, or visit a museum. Practicing Love and affection helps you to Nourish Your Soul, and the body induces Oxytocin.