This book synthesizes perspectives on how ‘place’ is deeply intertwined with our spirituality and well-being. Split into three sections, this book brings together contributions from global scholars across a range of disciplines to unravel how the personal, social, and cultural spheres of place shape our spiritual experiences and overall well-being. It is an essential read for those interested in enriching their knowledge of the linkages between place, spirituality, and well-being, while also providing a foundation for future research on place and its intersections with both spirituality and well-being.

In this thoughtful book, Swinton explores the connections between mental health or illness and spirituality and draws on these to provide practical guidance for people working in mental health. He analyses a range of models of care provision that will enable carers to increase their awareness of aspects of spirituality in their caring strategies.

This edited work addresses policy and practice for professional working in the mental health field and for carers and people with mental health problems themselves, enabling them to overcome the stigma often associated with mental health problems, and the subject of spirituality.

This book examines the role of religious and spiritual experiences in people’s understanding of their environment. The contributors consider how understandings and experiences of religious and place connections are motivated by the need to seek and maintain contact with perceptual objects, so as to form meaningful relationship experiences. The volume is one of the first scholarly attempts to discuss the psychological links between place and religious experiences.The chapters within provide insights for understanding how people’s experiences with geographical places and the sacred serve as agencies for meaning-making, pro-social behaviour, and psychological adjustment in everyday life.

This book shows how the relationship between wellbeing and spirituality is studied by a range of disciplines including religious studies, theology, anthropology, psychology and history while also linking the debate to various religious traditions including Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Afro-Brazilian religion and even paranormal experiences.

Reflecting on the current dialogue occurring between health care and ministry professionals, John Shea analyzes the unique spiritual interests of patients, caregivers, chaplains and health care organizations.

“Esther Sternberg is a rare writer—a physician who healed herself...With her scientific expertise and crystal clear prose, she illuminates how intimately the brain and the immune system talk to each other, and how we can use place and space, sunlight and music, to reboot our brains and move from illness to health.”—Gail Sheehy, author of Passages Does the world make you sick? If the distractions and distortions around you, the jarring colors and sounds, could shake up the healing chemistry of your mind, might your surroundings also have the power to heal you? This is the question Esther Sternberg explores in Healing Spaces, a look at the marvelously rich nexus of mind and body, perception and place. Sternberg immerses us in the discoveries that have revealed a complicated working relationship between the senses, the emotions, and the immune system. First among these is the story of the researcher who, in the 1980s, found that hospital patients with a view of nature healed faster than those without. How could a pleasant view speed healing? The author pursues this question through a series of places and situations that explore the neurobiology of the senses. The book shows how a Disney theme park or a Frank Gehry concert hall, a labyrinth or a garden can trigger or reduce stress, induce anxiety or instill peace. If our senses can lead us to a “place of healing,” it is no surprise that our place in nature is of critical importance in Sternberg’s account. The health of the environment is closely linked to personal health. The discoveries this book describes point to possibilities for designing hospitals, communities, and neighborhoods that promote healing and health for all.