How I Came To Recognize That Science And Spirituality Can & Must Co-Exist

In this episode of the Integrated Wisdom podcast, I am exploring my personal journey with embracing my spiritual self and how I came to peace with the fact that I  didn't have to choose between Psychology/ Science and Spirituality.

Join me as I discuss:

- How I came to my spiritual perspective
- Why I felt being a Psychologist meant that I couldn't be open about my spiritual views
- How I came to realise that both can co-exist, and in fact are enhanced by being integrated together
- Some of the emerging scientific evidence that supports a spiritual basis to life
- Why returning to our spiritual essence may hold an essential key to helping us to overcome the current state of chaos and suffering the world is experiencing
- The new direction of my coaching work and this podcast

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Intro and Outro music: Inspiring Morning by Playsound

You can also find me on Instagram @integrated_wisdom

Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational purposes only. It is not intended to be treated as psychological treatment or to replace the need for psychological treatment.

Transcript

Tatiana: 0:00

Welcome to the Integrated Wisdom Podcast. I am your host, Tatiana Da Silva. Join me as we discuss what it means to live an integrated life and explore ways for you to create a life filled with greater meaning, peace, and connection by integrating the wisdom of spirituality, psychology, Neuroscience, Epigenetics and Energy Psychology are hoped to empower you to create deeper and more loving connections with yourself and others, whilst also paving the way for humanity at large to be reimagined and inspired to become the very best version of itself. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the integrated wisdom podcast. Thank you so much for joining me for yet another week. Can't believe we've made it to episode 22. It feels like I only started these just the other day and already here we are. Five months later. And I'm so grateful to those of you who have been following along. This week I wanted to focus on. I guess my own journey with. Integrating spirituality into my life. Some of the challenges that I experienced along the way about embracing it fully. And what I think needs to happen. Next in terms of. Embracing spirituality as more of a prominent feature in our lives. If we have to have any hope. Of moving forward in a positive way. You know, I think. We're all watching what's happening around the world at the moment. There's so much chaos. I. I know so many people are questioning. Why is there so much chaos? What is this all about? It feels like. You know, one thing barely starts to feel less threatening and then something else pops up. And. I think as human beings, many of us are really, really struggling all over the world. In ways that we've never struggled before. I've spoken about this earlier, where the number of psychological conditions just seems to be rising, further and further. And we're seeing these presentations show up in people and kids that are getting younger and younger. And. Some of the tools that we currently have on offer just don't seem to be doing the trick enough or just don't seem to be able to catch that tide enough. And so what I wanted to focus on today is why I think that is. Why I think a more spiritual view is the answer to a lot of these things. But also I want to talk a little bit about some of the changes in the focus that I have at the moment. That will start showing up in subsequent episodes, moving forward. So, I guess if I start from. My own experience with spirituality. I've my I myself. Being someone who always had an inkling to spirituality from a very, very early age. I was raised in a religious household. And a Christian. Religious household. And. Whilst I found, you know, the community that we grew up in. Had a lot of positives. As I became older. Some of the things that we were being taught. Just didn't seem to resonate for me as much. Didn't make sense for me as much. And once I became an adult, I decided that that religion really wasn't for me. And not just that particular religion, but I think any religion, I started to look around and realize that many of the other religions out there had some very similar challenges. Despite them all having a very positive central tenet which is, you know, To preach kindness, to preach love to others. To be a guiding source of morality and positive qualities, they seem to always be kind of enmeshed with some not so great traits. You know, There are many religions purport to be the only one true way. That their way is right and other ways of wrong. And I think it's always at odds with the message of loving our neighbors. It's hard to love our neighbors when we're being told all the time that. We're right. And they're wrong. And somehow we're better. For having the beliefs that we have. And. And even some of the doctrines focus on. A life of fear, you know, like we're encouraged to, to be good people out of fear of repercussion, fear of punishment. And I don't think that really aligns with the truth. I certainly, I believe, I believe in God, I believe in Central intelligence source. that created everything that we experience, not only on this planet, but in the entire universe. But unlike some of what's taught in religion in general. And certainly what I was taught growing up. My belief is that. God source. Is pure love. And. You just didn't make sense for me to continue to. engage with. Teachings That didn't highlight that enough. That seemed to be much more focused on using a stick. To to guide people's behavior. Rather than working on eliciting the goodness in us. Which we, we all have. But also, I think one of the things that I really struggled with organized religion was a lot of the things just didn't make sense to me. the contradictions constantly kind of tied my head up in knots, I couldn't understand. the contradictions in a lot of what was taught. It just, it just didn't make sense to me. And I struggle with things that don't make sense. Very analytical person by nature. So. It just brought up a whole bunch of gaps for me. That made me think, okay. This is not where I find some of the answers I'm searching. And. You know, being someone who was always very scientifically minded, very curious about the human experience, wanting to always understand people on a deep level, but also wanting to help and serve people on a deep level. The natural fit for me was to be a psychologist. And, from an early age, Even as in high school, I was always reading books about psychology personality. always studying lots of psychological principles. But I always found myself really curious as well about spirituality. And some of the concepts out there that spoke about it in a much more broad, much more loving nonjudgmental way. And as I progressed into becoming a psychologist, And. The training that we receive, which really aligns with me because of, like I said, I have this very analytical. Way of looking at things. We're taught and trained to be scientists, practitioners. Right? We look at everything through a lens of where the evidence is. We practice with modalities that have been validated in research. What we term as evidence-based. And we, we tend to not really veer away from, from that. We're not overly experimental in our clinical work. Uh, we, you know, there's a prescribed list of modalities that have been well validated in research. Have been demonstrated to be. Effective for particular types of presentations. And that's essentially the tool kit that we, that we work from. But as I progressed in my career and I started to discover other elements to life that came in through that lens of spirituality. I started to. Uh, to kind of understand how. Some of the challenges that we experienced and some of the tools that psychology in particular has to offer even medicine. They're limited in their ability to truly help a person. And because we're not just physical bodies. We're not just thinking brains. There are other parts of us that also co-exist and interact with these other elements that we're most often talking about. And with my experience developing and seeing lots of different presentations and learning lots of different things about spirituality, the spiritual nature of life. Psychology. The physiology of our bodies and The way our nervous system operates. And how everything is so fragmented, right? We're only ever addressing things in like little parts. It just stood out to me how this isn't the way. Something here is amiss. But. My identity as a psychologist, as a scientist practitioner was so dominant in the way that I saw myself that I couldn't reconcile the idea that I could be the scientist practitioner and also spiritual it's something that I felt I couldn't talk about to other people. That I had to keep to myself because I feared really deeply. That if I started talking about it, that my professional credibility would be completely shot. That my peers would think I'm insane. That people around me would think I'm insane. You know, how could I possibly stand for science and evidence whilst at the same time be talking about these things that. There is no evidence for. And for many, many years, I just kept it to myself and it was just like this. This dirty little secret. And the secret interest of mine that I would pursue in my private time. And I would use for my own benefit to help me navigate life with greater ease, navigate my relationships with greater ease. But then I, you know, I kept completely separate from my clinical work. But with time and the more I am, I could see the positive effects that integrating these aspects were having for me as a person. But also my ability to practice in the way that I saw people's presenting problems in the clinical room. I started to feel really frustrated. Completely frustrated by the fact that I couldn't include or integrate this other element that I felt was so fundamental to our understanding and dealing with other human beings. And it really does feel a lot of the time. Like I am practicing with one hand tied behind my back because there are limitations to what the psychological modalities that we work with have to offer. Right. And. I think it's really exciting that the tide starting to turn. More and more people starting to talk about spirituality and energy in ways that have more authority that have more validity, but we still have a really long way to go. And. You know, whilst I love science, I'm very I'm fond of looking at things from a lens of reason. Making sure that things make sense that they stack up because especially when we're dealing with. With people in vulnerable circumstances. Having those safe guard rails ensures that people. are safe that they're not being exploited that no harm is coming to them. And I think that's the lens that science plays, right? Like that's ultimately why we practice. In an evidence-based way. We want to make sure that we're not doing harm to people. And unfortunately the danger with Some spiritual or energy modalities is that the lack of evidence means there is a lot of. There's a lot of scope for, for harm to be done. And certainly without naming names, I know that there are plenty of people out there who, for. I've come across, either through watching them talk or reading some of their stuff that probably have a little less concern about the impact that they have on people. And the harm that some of the things that they're teaching potentially could have. Predominantly because they don't understand. The role that trauma plays. In, in a person's life and. And all these other facets that I think shouldn't get ignored. In favor of just focusing on spirituality. Or a spiritual explanation for everything. I don't think there is a single modality that can explain all things. Right. I think. Uh, human beings are complex. The human experience is complex. And we can't find answers. For everything in spirituality. We can find some answers that explains some parts of it. But not all parts of it. Just like in psychology, we can't explain all parts of it. We can explain some parts of it. And in medicine is no different. And I think. There is a massive disservice that's done to humanity. When we keep these camps separate. When we treat them as separate things. Because they're not. Right. We're ultimately this, this multilayered system. Of essences that are physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. And we have to be addressing people on all of these levels. And I think that's, what's put, the world is calling for right now. You know, when I look around and I see the chaos and I see the crises that, that we're, we're seeing all over the world, people struggling. Suicide rates are higher than they've ever been. Young people are engaging in aggressive acts. The behavior that we're witnessing just so chaotic and in some way, so detached from humanity. That's it's really shocking to see. And I think, what's led us to this point is the fact that for a long time, Our spiritual essence has not only being undermined. But it has been completely excluded. Right in the last few decades, more and more emphasis has been placed on the material aspects of life. At the detriment of our spiritual essence. In fact, I think over time there's been a lot of dirision that's been expressed towards more spiritual concepts. Sadly, particularly by the scientific community. And this disconnection from our essence, from who we truly are, has led us to this point where we don't know who we are anymore. Right. We have a crisis of meaning in the world right now. People don't know what the purpose of life is anymore. Right. We don't we've disconnected from our essence. We're so focused on, on ourselves and Short-term pleasure. And all these illusions about what constitutes a good life. And we've never been lonelier. There's an epidemic of loneliness in the world. We've never been more mentally unwell. There're rising rates of depression, anxiety, trauma. Right. Not to mention suicidality is escalating exponentially. We're seeing suicidal behavior in children. We've lost our way. And I love my profession. But I think sadly psychology has hit a limit in its ability to support people through this crisis. Because it, it also lost its essence along the way. Psychology began as a study of soul essence. Right. That's what psychology means. Psyche means soul. Or spirit. And the prefix, ology is the study of so psychology is literally the study of the spirit or soul essence of people. But somewhere along the way we bought into this lie. That in order for us to be a legitimate scientists. We needed to shun our spiritual essence. And so we've been practicing with a handicap ever since. And I believe that the time has come for our spiritual essence to be brought back into focus into the center. of things. I mean, I think in psychology, it's very clear. People need to remember who they are. They need to find a sense of meaning and purpose to their life that's not tied to fleeting things. They need to rediscover their values. Right. Reestablish healthy connections with other people. Form communities again. That's what's so desperately needed. Find compassion and kindness. Medicine needs to understand. The mind-body connection so much better. The part that our soul essence and energy plays in some of the diseases that we develop. It's no coincidence that there is an escalating number of auto immune conditions happening in the world right now. And one thing that's already giving me hope is that I hear that there's work being done. In, in various camps where they're starting to understand. That it's important for us to start integrating some of these things into the way we support people. I've spoken about the department of perceptual studies at the university of Virginia. You know, out of their department of the faculty of medicine. They've been studying spiritual phenomenon for decades. Right. They've amassed an incredible body of evidence that lends support to concepts like reincarnation, mediumship. Near death experiences. Right. That all points to the same thing. The existence of an eternal soul. The consciousness that that is separate from the physical body. And the part that, that actually plays in the way in some of the things that people experience. And more recently a modality that used to be relegated to woo woo energy healing, emotional freedom technique or tapping as it's most commonly known. Has found scientific validity for clinical use. You know, it's now considered an appropriate clinical tool for us to use as therapists. And because it works on these energetic level. It seems to have an enhanced ability to assist people to fast track through some of their. unhelpful beliefs, some of their. traumatic memories. Because it's working not only on the nervous system, the physiology and the cognition the mental level. But it's also working on this energy element that's related to our soul essence. It took some brave people to lead the charge in deciding we're going to study this. There is something here. Right. You, you observed the benefit. There's something there let's study it. Let's try to understand what it is, what it's doing. And that's what's needed. Right. If something's working. I think we need to stop saying it's it's fluke or it's placebo. Placebo only means that there is an element in the person that's doing the healing and that's remarkable. That's not something to be denigrated or dismissed. Right. It's not just some quirky side effect. It is the effect. It's the agent for healing. That's what we need to be studying. And there are so many other spiritual modalities or energy based modalities that demonstrate efficacy, that demonstrate an alleviation of symptom or some type of assistance to people who engage in them. That ultimately need to be studied. I think we're robbing people of tools that could have such positive impacts when we don't look at that. I'm all for having scientific evidence lead the way that we practice, lead the way that these things are implemented. Right. But we can't gain that evidence if we're not taking the time to study it. So we need to start there. As much as I believe in science and I'm a scientist at heart. I'm not ignorant of the fact, that science is never a constant. It's an ever-evolving art. It's only as good as the questions it asks and the tools that it has and those tools and those questions are evolving constantly. The more we know. The better, the questions we ask, the better, the tools we have, the more we discover. So I am a big advocate for more studies. Well, Robust. Good faith studies in these areas. Because I think there's so many answers that could be found there if we started to look. Which brings me to the fact that very recently in the last couple of years, actually, I finally started to, to come out of hiding a little bit about my spiritual aside. And I've started to talk about it a little bit more openly to people in my life. To peers. And to my absolute pleasure and shock, I discovered that there are so many other therapists out there who feel the exact same way that I do. Who have had this conflict between being curious about spirituality, but also being tied up with the identity of being logical, analytical and scientific. And that gives me so much joy to discover that there are many more of us out there. Because I think as we come together, collectively, we can start to create some of these change, we can start talking about it more openly. We can start lobbying our regulators for some considerations that will enable us to implement this back into our our discipline. Should have never been dropped in the first place. Right in. Hopefully you'd be able to, to work with other people who are doing research in these, in these fields or who are interested in doing research in these fields So we can start bringing to the world a more concrete, more ethical, more pragmatic way of navigating life as spiritual beings having a human experience. That's who we are. That's why we're here. So in sharing this episode, with you all, this week and having this focus, it's really about prefacing some of the new direction that I'm going to be taking the podcast and my coaching work moving forward. I'm going to really be calling to the therapists out there who do have that spiritual focus or that spiritual curiosity and start to bring together this community of us who deeply care about caring for other people in the fullness of their being. And being a catalyst for change that're going to genuinely help people navigate life with more ease, with less suffering. And be lobbying for these facets to start being integrated again, into the way that we look at the essence of a human being and what they need. And so moving forward you won't just be seeing episodes of me just talking on these topics. I'm also going to be interviewing other people in these spheres who are health professionals, therapists. You know, very respectful of the scientific method, but who also feel called to explore and implement the spiritual elements of people and of life. I am going to be taking a three-week break after this week, just to rest. And reset, but also to work on this new focus so that when I come back in three weeks time, we'll be hitting the ground running with introducing some of these other elements. And hopefully enhancing the podcast even more. I thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for supporting me for these last 22 episodes. This first season. I'm very, very grateful. And I look forward to seeing you all in three weeks time with. A much more expanded vision and really stepping more fully into my mission, which I hope will continue to be of service to those of you who are listening and anyone else who who may join us on this journey. I hope you'll have a lovely week. And I will see you all next time. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Integrated Wisdom. It is my sincere wish that today's episode may have intrigued and inspired you to reclaim your power and step into becoming more fully integrated spiritual beings. New episodes are published every Wednesday. And I hope you'll continue to join us as we dive deeper into what it means to live an integrated life. So if it feels aligned to you, I invite you to hit subscribe and share it with others who you feel may benefit too. You may also find me on Instagram at integrated underscore wisdom. Remember, each moment is an opportunity to embrace your divine potential and create a world that is more frequently inspired. So for now, stay connected, stay inspired and keep shining your light. Into the world.