You know when you start to make a smoothie and everything is loud, the blender is shaking, and you think it’s about to explode? That was me at age five realising that my beliefs contradict each other. Growing up in a Māori Catholic family, I struggled to exist within two worlds. My spirituality has never Read more
The meaning of spirituality has developed over time as our understanding of culture, religion, and personal development has changed. Traditionally, spirituality was part of religious practice and the attempt to inhabit the original shape of things or live in the image of God. In early Christianity, spirituality is related to living a life orientated by Read more
Hallow, a Catholic prayer and meditation app that claims over a million downloads, has raised over US$52 million in investments. Prayer apps are not new. Silicon Valley startups popularized mindfulness and meditation apps as early as 2010, although many have criticized those apps for being spiritually shallow. Hallow’s young founders – devout lay Catholic millennials Read more
A new study found that Generation Z Americans — defined as those age 13-25 — increasingly distanced themselves from religious institutions like churches, mosques or synagogues in 2020, finding spirituality instead in practices like tarot card readings and sharing fears and musings in online spaces like Tik Tok. Half of the more than 10,000 young Read more
Much of what psychologists and neuroscientists are finding about how to change people’s beliefs, feelings, and behaviours echoes ideas and techniques that religions have been using for thousands of years. Read more
Scientists spent years looking for the ‘God Spot’ in the brain before concluding it didn’t exist. Early candidates like the temporal or parietal lobes never panned out. And differences in how researchers define spirituality has also complicated things, because different areas of the brain light up when we use moral reasoning vs when we experience Read more
New Zealand Cardinal, John Dew, is adding his support and encouraging people to wear a mask while outside exercising during the lockdown. “Recently, Pope Francis took part in an advertising campaign encouraging people to get vaccinated and called the gesture an ‘act of love’. Wearing a mask when leaving our homes to use an essential Read more
One hundred million people worldwide now have Calm on their smartphones, a meditation app that monetized doing absolutely nothing. The app’s popularity skyrocketed during the pandemic, as anxieties ran high and finding peace and quiet proved harder to do. Calm provides mindfulness meditations, breathing exercises and bedtime stories to encourage users to take some time Read more
What do you think of when you hear the word spiritual? Do you see visions of immaculately arranged Instagram posts of people practicing yoga or calmly sitting with their eyes closed in an upscale loft? Do you hear the ramblings of someone ‘finding their bliss’ or seeking ‘inner peace’? Do those things seem totally unrelated Read more
Actress Theresa Healey told Stuff that lots of Catholics become actors: “I think it’s because we’re introduced to the concept of spirituality from an early age. Mass is a performance, it’s all rituals, mystery and symbolism. The transubstantiation, wine becomes blood, bread the body. The church was my first theatre, then the theatre became my Read more