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Offers techniques to stop and recharge, change thinking patterns, use meditation to focus and de-stress, and use the peace that comes from the resulting calmness to make key changes in your life and the world.

Bible Readers and Lay Writers in Early Modern England studies how immersion in the Bible among layfolk gave rise to a non-professional writing culture, one of the first instances of ordinary people taking up the pen as part of their daily lives. Kate Narveson examines the development of the culture, looking at the close connection between reading and writing practices, the influence of gender, and the habit of applying Scripture to personal experience. She explores too the tensions that arose between lay and clergy as layfolk embraced not just the chance to read Scripture but the opportunity to create a written record of their ideas and experiences, acquiring a new control over their spiritual self-definition and a new mode of gaining status in domestic and communal circles. Based on a study of print and manuscript sources from 1580 to 1660, this book begins by analyzing how lay people were taught to read Scripture both through explicit clerical instruction in techniques such as note-taking and collation, and through indirect means such as exposure to sermons, and then how they adapted those techniques to create their own devotional writing. The first part of the book concludes with case studies of three ordinary lay people, Anne Venn, Nehemiah Wallington, and Richard Willis. The second half of the study turns to the question of how gender registers in this lay scripturalist writing, offering extended attention to the little-studied meditations of Grace, Lady Mildmay. Narveson concludes by arguing that by mid-century, despite clerical anxiety, writing was central to lay engagement with Scripture and had moved the center of religious experience beyond the church walls.

Given its affinity with questions of identity, autobiography offers a way into the interior space between author and reader, especially when writers define themselves in terms of religion. In his exploration of this \"textual intimacy,\" Wesley Kort begins with a theorization of what it means to say who one is and how one's self-account as a religious person stands in relation to other forms of self-identification. He then provides a critical analysis of autobiographical texts by nine contemporary American writers-including Maya Angelou, Philip Roth, and Anne Lamott-who give religion a positive place in their accounts of who they are. Finally, in disclosing his own religious identity, Kort concludes with a meditation on several meanings of the wordassumption.

This chapter contains sections titled: Notes References and Further Reading

Owing to the increasing number of people with palliative care needs and the current shortage of health care professionals (HCPs), providing quality palliative care has become challenging. Telehealth could enable patients to spend as much time as possible at home. However, no previous systematic mixed studies reviews have synthesized evidence on patients' experiences of the advantages and challenges of telehealth in home-based palliative care. In this systematic mixed studies review, we aimed to critically appraise and synthesize the findings from studies that investigated patients' use of telehealth in home-based palliative care, focusing on the advantages and challenges experienced by patients. This is a systematic mixed studies review with a convergent design. The review is reported according to the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) statement. A systematic search was performed in the following databases: Allied and Complementary Medicine Database, CINAHL, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Embase, Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature, MEDLINE, PsycInfo, and Web of Science. The inclusion criteria were as follows: studies using quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods; studies that investigated the experience of using telehealth with follow-up from HCPs of home-based patients aged ≥18; studies published between January 2010 and June 2022; and studies published in Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, English, Portuguese, or Spanish in peer-reviewed journals. Five pairs of authors independently assessed eligibility of the studies, appraised methodological quality, and extracted data. The data were synthesized using thematic synthesis. This systematic mixed studies review included 41 reports from 40 studies. The following 4 analytical themes were synthesized: potential for a support system and self-governance at home; visibility supports interpersonal relationships and a joint understanding of care needs; optimized information flow facilitates tailoring of remote caring practices; and technology, relationships, and complexity as perpetual obstacles in telehealth. The advantages of telehealth were that patients experience a potential support system that could enable them to remain at home, and the visual features of telehealth enable them to build interpersonal relationships with HCPs over time. Self-reporting provides HCPs with information about symptoms and circumstances that facilitates tailoring care to specific patients. Challenges with the use of telehealth were related to barriers to technology use and inflexible reporting of complex and fluctuating symptoms and circumstances using electronic questionnaires. Few studies have included the self-reporting of existential or spiritual concerns, emotions, and well-being. Some patients perceived telehealth as intrusive and a threat to their privacy at home. To optimize the advantages and minimize the challenges with the use of telehealth in home-based palliative care, future research should include users in the design and development process.

To summarize the effects of spiritual intelligence (SI) training in several contexts and to identify the most consensual patterns in SI intervention design. The \"adaptive application\" of spirituality in life is called SI, the ability to use spirituality in everyday problem-solving and it is proven to relate to better clinical and spiritual care (SC) competency in healthcare professionals. Interventions aiming to increase SI have been tested in different settings with benefits that can have a significant impact on the way healthcare professionals approach SC. It included any quantitative studies that used reproducible methodology and reported on the implementation of interventions aiming to increase SI. Text, proceedings, conference or opinion papers, abstracts, reviews, mixed methods and qualitative studies were excluded from this scoping review. Scoping review of quantitative studies on \"spiritual intelligence\" (query term) that include SI intervention programs (inclusion criteria) conducted on PubMed Central, Scopus, Web Of Science and PsycInfo databases, using the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology. Studies published until the 1st january 2022 were included. The studies' selection, extraction and synthesis of data was carried out by two independent reviewers. From the 10 articles/studies included, six were quasi-experimental and three experimental. Most (n=9) were conducted in Iran. The most common target samples of the studies were nurses (4 studies) and students (4 studies). SI training protocols, although based in group sessions, varied in their content between the different studies. SI interventions reported significant increase of SI levels, improvement of communications skills and reduction of anxiety, stress and depression levels. Despite the consensus among studies regarding the benefits of spiritual intelligence programs, more studies are needed to gauge long-term outcomes. There is also a need to standardize training protocols in spiritual intelligence.

The spiritual exercises are often attributed to Ignatius of Loyola. Many say he has a patent on the method of the spiritual exercises. However, the spiritual exercises are as ancient as philosophy and have many methods. From Socrates to Ignatius of Loyola there are, of course, centuries of history that allow us to choose a synthesis. Likewise, the Christian tradition itself has gradually prepared for the appearance of the figure of St. Ignatius. In current studies of the Spiritual Exercises, it is necessary to pause to confront the book of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola with a possible Cartesian interpretation. Contrasting Ignatius’ and Descartes’ viewpoints will not only shed light on what is unique to the method of Ignatian Spiritual Exercises but will also provide a deeper understanding of the practice and approach to the exercises by underlining the connection between desire and narrative. This study is based on the method of Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. Leaving aside the aspect of moral reform implicit in the Exercises of this type, this approach is spiritual, that is, the research pursues the person in his or her ultimate concern.

The concept of ‘existential’, used frequently in Scandinavian healthcare journals, is associated with various, often unclear, meanings, highlighting the need for a more accurate understanding of the concept. In this integrative review we analyse how the concept has been used in Scandinavian healthcare journals from 1984 to 2020, exploring the trajectory of the concept, its definitions and its applications. A secondary aim is to offer some clarity regarding how the concept may be used in future healthcare research and provide a definition of ‘existential’ based on our findings. Our findings show that while the concept is increasingly used, it is rarely defined, and there appears to be no consensus on the concept’s meaning. We categorise applications of the concept into five overarching themes: (1) Suffering and re-orientation, (2) Meaning and meaninglessness, (3) Existential philosophy in relation to health (4) Existential questions as approaches to care and (5) Usage and demarcation of existential, spiritual and religious concepts. Based on the findings, we propose a definition of the concept of ‘existential’ in the healthcare context. The study contributes to, and underscores advantages and limitations of, the use of the concept in healthcare research.

The COVID-19 response introduced legal restrictions on social distancing globally, affecting healthcare staff personally and professionally. These restrictions suspended routine hospital visiting, which may have left staff feeling they had to compromise on the care they provided. Such conflict may be experienced as moral injury. This scoping review aimed to synthesise international evidence, to answer this question: “Have COVID-19 restrictions affected healthcare staff’s experiences of moral injury? If so, how?” Nine studies met the search criteria. Although healthcare staff seemed to be aware of the risks and effects of moral injury, they were still reluctant to “name” it. Healthcare staff’s own emotional and spiritual needs were mostly ignored. Although psychological support is often the recommended approach by organisations, a greater focus on spiritual and emotional support is recommended.

The \"Global South\" is a fashionable expression. It appears in academic journals, in the title of university academic centers, among activists around the world. I argue that from the perspective of capitalism and expansion of Western values, the \"Global South\" is the location to be developed economically and liberated from non-democratic regimes. From the perspective of the emerging political society, the \"Global South\" is where liberation from Western democratic rhetoric to justify economic takeover and cultural management is taking place. I show how the very concept of \"Global South\" came about, replacing that of the \"Third World\" after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I end the article by mapping five trajectories, discernible in the present, that are orienting global futures and I further argue that they cannot be understood properly without understanding the economic, political, and epistemic conflict that make the \"Global South\" a current location of global conflicts.