Workshop Summary:
This session explores how personal spirituality can serve as a powerful resource in the treatment of neuroplastic pain. Drawing from research on meaning-making, existential coherence, and spiritually integrated psychotherapy, we will examine how connection to purpose, values, and personal spirituality may reduce neural threat signaling, enhance emotional regulation, and support healing.
Participants will gain practical tools for ethically integrating spirituality into clinical care while honoring diverse belief systems. Through experiential exercises including visualization, breathwork, and structured relational reflection, attendees will experience firsthand how these approaches can foster greater safety, connection, and resilience.
This presentation invites clinicians to consider spirituality not as an adjunct to treatment, but as a meaningful dimension of human experience that can support recovery, well-being, and lasting transformation.
Learning Objectives:
- Differentiate between spirituality and religion in clinical practice and articulate an ethically grounded approach to spiritually integrated psychotherapy.
- Describe theoretical mechanisms by which meaning-making, identity coherence, and personal spirituality may reduce perceived neural threat in neuroplastic pain.
- Identify how existential distress, shame, and identity fragmentation can contribute to persistent pain activation.
- Experience and evaluate spiritually informed interventions (including visualization, breathwork, and structured relational reflection) that may support mood regulation and pain recovery.
