Building Resilience through Spirituality with Dr. Lisa Miller

Every child has an innate, inborn, biologically-based body, mind, and soul need hunger for spiritual life. And if we listen and if we pay attention to the girl screaming from her spiritual heart for a deeper connection and a deeper roadmap to live, now if we ignore this, the girl is at great peril because she is now 80% more likely to become addicted, 70% more likely to face unwanted sexual situations, 80% at greater risk, 82% of suicide. The data is clear and in light of this data, by omission or commission, we make choices and we are allowing the girl to be harmed. That is an active choice if we do not support the spiritual core. What if I told you that there was one factor more critical than any other that could protect a girl as she grew from young girl to teenager to young woman? What if I said that factor would make her 40% less likely to use and abuse substances, 60% less likely to be depressed, and 80% less likely to have dangerous or unprotected sex? And what if I told you that substantial peer-reviewed brain research backed up my claim? I am visualizing the skeptics as they roll their eyes, clearly you need proof. My guest today has seen that data and understands the scientific truth behind it. She says that "children who are raised with a robust and well-developed spiritual life are happier, more optimistic, more flexible, and better equipped to deal with life's ordinary and even extraordinary traumas than those who are not." And she has the scientific data to back that up. We now know that a girl's spiritual core shapes her sense of meaning, purpose, calling, and connection, and we know what matters to her well-being. Today, we'll explore how the adults and girls' lives can support them on their quest to answer life's biggest questions. Before jumping into our conversation, let's hear from some girls on what they have to say about our topic today. So, do you ever find yourself thinking about the big questions in life, like what's the meaning of life? And if you do, where and with who are you having those conversations? A common phrase that's associated with Oak Knoll is "rooted in purpose." So this means that whatever you consider your roots, whether that be like your family or your faith or your school, or for a lot of people, it's some combination of those. That is where you can find your purpose. And if you are rooted in your purpose, you have strong roots, which will hold you up. And anything that comes at you, you can stay strong and you can take it, but if you don't have strong roots, it's harder. And so I definitely do think about this idea and this visual often when I'm confronted with my own thoughts about purpose and meaning in life. And personally, I definitely identify mainly with my faith, which is where I find my purpose. My form of meditation has always been prayer. After I pray, I feel like the words that come to mind, the way I'm feeling, I feel clear, calm, and connected. For me, it's to Jesus or Mary, but for anyone that could be any divine figure. And I feel like I have found that as I become more comfortable with prayer, I've become like more stable and more happy and like a more calm person. And I would say the same way that religion can be a form of spirituality. Prayer is a form of meditation. And the feelings that you get after you pray or after you meditate can be the same. But again, where you ascribe those feelings to is the main difference. I'm Trudy Hall, your host for The Connected Girl, a podcast series produced by the International Coalition of Girls' Schools and part of the On Educating Girls series. And today I'm very excited to engage with Dr. Lisa Miller, a professor of psychology and education at Columbia University Teachers College and the founder of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute, the first Ivy League graduate program in spirituality and psychology. A foremost scientist on spirituality across the lifespan, her innovative research and writing has focused on the quantifiable effects of spirituality on our lives. She's frequently cited in print and in online media, a go-to expert on how integrating spirituality in our lives can transform them. I'm hoping that our conversation today transforms how we all view the connective power of spirituality in the lives of our girls. Dr. Miller, I am really excited to have this conversation. But I can't wait to talk about girls and young women. You know, we love all people, but here today we're talking specifically about girls. And that's why I'm excited. So let's just start by being really clear if you could give us a definition of what we mean by spirituality in your work, in your research. So scientists, not being theologians, do not define spirituality, all told. But we do apply the lens of research to identify threads of lived human spiritual life that are absolutely game-changing onto the rest of our lives. And when we do this, and we have very, very precisely, very rigorously a scientist for now over 20 years, we have identified two threads that we can say beyond a shadow of a doubt are absolutely part of every human being innate to the human composition. The two threads of lived spirituality are first a deep capacity to be in a lived relationship with a higher power. Now the word may change around the world. Some people may say God or Hashem, Allah, Spirit, Universe, Jesus, whatever one's word may be, there is one human portal inborn, built into our brain through which we connect, feel and know a relationship with a higher power, a transcendent relationship. And the second innate capacity in every human being is that that transcendent relationship, the loving guiding presence is felt towards the second innate capacity in every human being of spiritual life, is that that deep love of the transcendent relationship is felt in and towards every human being and every living being. Whether it is the same, scientists have gone on to even track the neural correlates, the universal circuits in every human being's brain through which we feel and know the higher power and feel that love towards one another, both are forms of course of relational spirituality. And the circuits in the brain that run as we experience this great transcendent love are the exact same whether I am Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, Christian, spiritual, but not religious. There is one spiritual brain and we all have it and this is what Trudy I call the awakened brain. So then to step one step further into this explanation, what's the difference then between religion and spirituality? You've named several different religions. Is spirituality separate from different than religion? For about two thirds of people, spirituality and religion may go hand in hand, but they're not the same thing. Religion, our beautiful world faith traditions, whether I'm Jane or Hindu or Catholic, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, our religions through the lens of science are a gift. They are a gift of our parents and grandparents. We might choose a faith tradition and then immerse ourselves. But religion is 100% environmentally transmitted. Religion with our sacred texts and ceremonies, community is a gift of the environment, 100% environmentally transmitted. Spirituality is innate. Every single one of us is born with an inborn capacity for a transcendent relationship and to feel that love towards fellow human beings and fellow living beings. Religion and spirituality go hand in hand for about two thirds of people in the United States and globally it's a little higher, about 70%. People at this intersection of spirituality and religion will say it is through my faith tradition that I understand the higher power, that I've learned to pray or meditate, that my moral code has been derived through my relationship to the higher power. It is at this intersection where many people find cultivation by religion of their natural spiritual awareness because while spirituality is innate, if we look through the lens of a twin study, we can determine the extent to which any human capacity is inborn versus environmentally formed. So, for instance, temperament is about half innate, half environmentally formed. IQ, this is going out to educators, is about 60 if not more percent innate, 40% environmentally formed. The capacity through which we experience spiritual life is 1/3 innate, it is absolutely built into who we are, but 2/3 environmentally formed, which means our schools, our teachers and counselors and coaches, our parents and grandparents in larger community all weigh in 2/3 to cultivate the natural spiritual core. Is it the job of schools? Yes, of course it's the job of schools because just as we are physical beings and there's PE and sports teams, just as we are cognitive beings and there's math and science and language arts and just as there is emotional life understood, EQ and ways to cultivate empathy and compassion, there is in every human being a spiritual core through which to understand the transcendent reality and who we really are, what we're doing here on earth. This cannot be ignored because actually, treaty, it turns out that the spiritual core is the hub of whole person formation. Spirituality is not a nice thing, it's not icing on the cake, it's not something that some people have and others don't. When we look through the lens of 20+ years of peer review, rigorous science, spirituality is the core of the whole girl. And actually, while every human being is a naturally spiritual being, in girls the realization of our birthright, cultivation of the spiritual core is even more important. 20 years of science are very clear. Every human being is a spiritual being, but for girls, spiritual life is even more important as the moreing, the deep embedded compass through which she guides and governs her life. Social development, moral development, all grow out ethical development from the deep spiritual core. So this cannot be an afterthought and it cannot be, you know, on some days when we have time, we address spirituality. Spirituality needs to be in and through every bit of school life, every bit of family life in a way that is inclusive and pluralistic and constitutional. But it is basically, you know, now that we know this through the lens of science, it's an imperative that every educational institution address the whole person for most spiritual core. Let's talk a little bit more about that because I know in your research, you've seen positive outcomes for those who do have deep spiritual practices. Can you talk a little bit more about how that might be impacted by the work you're talking about, by schools, by educators, by parents, or what are the kinds of things that we're hoping to achieve if we focus on this? In truity, the science is truly jaw dropping. There's moments in science where you just can't even believe your eyes. The findings are so glaring and bright and glorious when there's a strong spiritual core in a young high school student, 15, 16, 17, she is 80% less likely to face addiction, 70% less likely to take dangerous risks and end up in unwanted relational situations and wanted sexual situations. 82% less likely to face completed suicide. There's nothing in the clinical or social sciences as profoundly protective against the diseases of despair. Now, why does this matter? I mean, it's not someone else's daughter or someone else's student that faces this. We're in an epidemic and it doesn't matter if it is the best school or it is the most under-resourced school in an unsupportive community. It doesn't matter if it is the very finest school or school that struggles to have the resources they need to help every student. Every school faces this challenge, 50% actually higher at this point, closer to 55% of high school students in the United States have a clinically significant disease of despair. That means half the students in your classroom have a clinically significant disease of despair. Depression, anxiety, depression, a disease of despair on a moderate level, which means it is in their way, it dogs and pains them, and it subtracts from their life. They're facing a pothole in their life. We have the antidote. All right. So, if we have the antidote and I'm trusting your research, what does that antidote look like if we apply it? How do we make sure to inject our girls with that antidote? Treaty, about 40 years ago in the United States, we were trying to be inclusive. We were trying to really do our best at that time to make everyone feel welcome. So we shut down discussion of spiritual life and religion. We said, you know, take down the Christmas tree and the Hanukkah menorah from Town Square. We don't talk about spirituality and religion at school or in the boardroom. This was an effort to make everyone feel welcome, but at the time, maybe, but by now, it is just simply proven to actually be radically exclusive. We have driven from the public square the deepest source of our human being. We have brought on an ice age where we now have a country and really a post-industrial global culture following us, unfortunately, that has faced an ice age, a frozen era where we have become spiritually non-conversant. Being non-conversant to the tremendous peril, if not damage, of what is now Gen Z. For the first time, we have a generation of high school students who have some have, but never have so many not, prayed or meditated by the side of a parent or grandparent, ever read a sacred text as a path to living, not a cultural artifact, understood community as infused with sacred presence, found a purpose that's not just what they're going to be or doing in the world, but in service to the higher power, understanding life in a sustained relationship with a higher power and who we really are as sacred to one another. That's not on the table. That is simply not part of the air and water of culture and instead what we have is a desanctification of life. I'll tell you a story, Judy. I've raised three kids. They're now in their early 20s. When my youngest child, and again, they went to wonderful schools, so schools that would be listening here now. My youngest child was in middle school. She came running up to me, phone in hand, "Mommy, Mommy, look at this here on social media. Mommy, I'm very worried. This girl is going to take her life." She was terrified, "Sure enough, I can't take it anymore. I've been in pain two months. It hurts. It's never going to end. I'm taking my life." Judy, what might you imagine? Social media was the commentary, "Tell your parents, get help. This will pass. You can't do it. Hold on. You go, girl. No one can tell you what to do. It is your life. You can do it. You want." That is a cultural desanctification of life. That is the direct result of shutting down the voice of spirituality and religion in the public square. The phone. The phone might accelerate this reality, but the phone is just a delivery device. The problem, which is entirely in our hands and fixable, is the public square. Can we reignite the voice in every girl from her spiritual heart? Can we validate the knowing of spiritual awareness, intuition, mystical experience? Every girl has this capacity right there. School is the perfect place to reignite and offer the two-thirds environmental embrace onto the one-third innate spiritual core. I'm really intrigued by that, because if school is the perfect place to do it, how do you speak to those critics who say, quote, "Religion doesn't belong in school?" Now, you've just done a nice job of telling us that we're not really talking about religion here. We're talking about something entirely different. But how do you speak to those critics who would say, "Not in my school. This is my role as a parent to actually control this conversation?" Every child has an innate, inborn, biologically-based body, mind, and soul, need, hunger for spiritual life. There's a craving of the heart for the transcendent, for the unit of love. There is a nagging of the head to know, "What is my deep ultimate purpose as a soul on earth? What is the nature of reality and how I might walk through it, the path?" Every single child faces this call, and in fact, when we look through the lens of science, there's a 50% increase in the heritable contribution from middle to late puberty to emerging adulthood, which means a biological clock is going off in your girl, starting with puberty, and intensifying all the way into college. What is my ultimate purpose? Is God real? How does God work? Is the universe random, or is there some meaning? What is suffering? How do I hurt so much with the booting up of this spiritual hunger? It can feel like an existential angst, and you see this in so many girls. What is the purpose of it all? Everyone's so stupid and fake and phony, and does God really care? These are existential comments if you're fortunate enough to hear them. If we listen, and if we pay attention to the girl screaming from her spiritual heart for a deeper connection and a deeper roadmap to live, now, if we ignore this, the girl is at great peril because she is now 80% more likely to become addicted, 70% more likely to face unwanted sexual situations, 80% at greater risk, 82% of suicide. The data is clear, and in light of this data, by omission or commission, we make choices, and we are allowing the girl to be harmed. That is an active choice if we do not support the spiritual core. Can we shift a bit to the role of the parent? I hear clearly that there's a role that schools play, and yet, believing in surround sound, there's clearly a role that parents play. How do I enter this terrain with my daughter? What do I say? How do I get the conversations going, or do I wait for her to bring it up? The science is very clear. As a parent in the making and forming of the spiritual team, there are two tremendous contributions we make. The first is walking the walk of our authentic spiritual life. It's very easy to get busy, at times it's very easy to get flip or cynical, but we really need to walk the walk of our spiritual life and make time. That means pull over when you see there's a homeless person. That means clear Sunday and take the food to the homeless shelter. That means correct yourself when you make a snide or dismissive comment about someone saying, "You know what? I'm going to revisit that. She's a soul on earth, and everyone is struggling, and actually I pray in my heart that she find love and guidance." Walk the walk. Be explicit and be transparent. The second thing that's tremendously important is that we open up the window into our own spiritual life and share in the first person. That means pray out loud, loving God whatever your words are. Thank you for the gift of today. I just look at my daughter, and I know this is not an accident. I just look at the sunshine or the sunrise, and I feel so grateful that we woke up today and have this gift. That means I'm feeling really edgy and loving source of life, whatever your words are. I feel touched by source. I want to realign myself with the opportunity of today. Transparenly pray, meditate, really run your spiritual life out loud. Your daughter might sit there and roll her eyes, but it doesn't matter because every single bit got in. When you talk the walk of spiritual life, it says the spirituality is important in our family. In fact, the sacred life is real. This is real, and we talk about it here. Our relationship goes to this depth. There's a language to describe the terrain of spiritual life and a practice you can get in. Again, in every home, in a way that's inclusive, pluralistic, dynamically, and diversely expressed, some people meditate, some people walk in nature, some people do gratitude exercises. With an object of their preposition, gratitude to ... Now I'm grateful, but grateful to the source of all life, whatever your word is. I'm hearing you say that it doesn't matter whether I myself believe that there is God, if I'm an atheist, for example, there's still language, there are still practices, there is still ways I can walk the walk, if you will. Talk the walk. Run your deepest moral compass. One of the most beautiful findings in science is the very same circuits through which we talk to God or the higher power are the very same circuits through which we love and see each other as ultimately and infinitely dignified and worthy, which means that a deeply devout evangelical and an ardent humanist are using the same circuits. They are both spiritual beings. In fact, if you look at all of the practices of spiritual life, the beauty of spiritual life, prayer, meditation, study of multiple scriptures from around the world, ceremony and service of all dimensions of lived spiritual life, it is love of neighbor and altruism that most strengthen the spiritual brain. One of us is born with a brain ready to awaken, but it's our choice to practice a lived spirituality that strengthens the neural correlates of spiritual awareness. It becomes the go-to place. The tender age of adolescence is when we are most impacted by lived spiritual life. We can always get in, but there is a crucial window in high school, particularly for girls, of spiritual awakening in which we are exquisitely sensitive to strengthening and awakening our spiritual awareness. Spirituality is not a belief, it is a seat of perception, it is a stance in living. Data on a very large sample of adolescent girls showed that girls are 50% more likely starting with puberty to become depressed than boys, but if a girl strengthens her spiritual awareness, I turn to God for guidance in times of difficulty. Nature is a sacred unit of place for me. My family, my school is sacred when a girl strengthens her spiritual core. She is protected against the otherwise increased risk for depression. Girls don't get more depressed when they have a spiritual response to suffering. Girls don't get more depressed than boys when they navigate life in this deep seat of spiritual awareness. Girls are awakening and it is our great honor and opportunity to strengthen and validate and give them language and direction on their spiritual path. It seems like we need to really lean into the language that you are using here about helping her beyond this quest, and I am leaning into the hope that you are offering versus the statistics that you have that talk about the necessity to actually really be there for this young woman as she is on this deep, deep search and journey for where she wants to be in her own life. As we think about this, I really want you to wrap our conversation in some language that helps us walk away with a clear directive as to the work that we are doing here in the lives of girls to help them on this deep spiritual quest. Treaty, in the awakened brain, I show that every girl is born with two forms of awareness, achieving awareness and awakened awareness. We need both. Achieving awareness is the capacity to strategize, to research, to calculate, to come up with some tactics, to cover all five classes and plan and organize to understand what needs to happen for the class to have the community event. That's very important, and schools are quite good at teaching achieving awareness. Equally, if not more so, a girl also needs to cultivate awakened awareness because achieving awareness is not enough. Achieving awareness can get us on the A train and send us flying, and when we get off, now as a woman, we might not know where we are or why we're there, and it might feel pretty empty. I have to be honest, Treaty, I have a lot of very well-educated friends and two-thirds of them quit. They just quit their careers because it felt empty. It didn't come from a deep place in their heart. Terrific women. So, how do we help a girl find a deep path of meaning and direction, and whether or not she chooses to be professionally oriented, make the choices that will fill her bucket, truly fill her bucket. The A train is not enough. A bunch of skills, well, we need them, but it's not enough. And here is where our awakened awareness is so important, because awakened awareness equally hardwired is our capacity to be in dialogue with the deeper nature of life. Awakened awareness built into our brain allows us to see guidance and direction, allows us to ask bigger questions and receive answers in the heart, intuition, deep gut instinct. Women are so strong at intuition as a hardwired, valid form of knowing. Many women can feel a connection with God or their higher power and hear an answer in their prayer life or meditation life in their mind's eye. That is valid, true data. Many women have had mystical experiences, whether in their dream life or a visualization. This again is precious, sacred information through the lens of science. The brain is built to receive and perceive intuition, mystical awareness, gut instinct. The brain is built with hardwired ways of knowing, hardwired epistemologies that are awakened ways of knowing. Intuition are particularly good at using our awakened brain. The girl is asking us to help her awaken. The girl is asking us, as women, to say that yes, that mystical experience, that gut instinct, that intuition is extremely important data. In fact, if you ask 100 girls to raise their hand, have you ever made a decision, not out of the pros and cons, not out of adding it up, but out of just a deep knowing in your heart, just a feeling in your inner wisdom. Raise your hand if you've made a really important decision that way. Most girls will raise their hand. And then you say, has that information ever steered you wrong, not one hand will go up? And Trudy, I've done this practice at army installations. I've done this in midtown banks. I've done this with educators and healers. No one has ever raised their hand that mystical awareness, intuition, deep instinct has ever steered them wrong. This is not airy fairy, and this is not far-fetched. This is based on hardwired knowing. We are built to be awakened. The girl is particularly good at this, and this is her strength in life. The girl is particularly good at awakened knowing. The girl has awakened intuition, awakened deep heart knowing, awakened attention where she can see confluence and synchronicity as guidance. This is all built into the girl. We are at a precious moment to tell her, yes, listen, this is real. What does it mean? Act on it. Thank you so much for awakening in us a new paradigm about how to be with our girls on this deep spiritual journey on which they're seeking meaning and purpose in their very important lives. You're right, these women will be leaders. These women are going to be responsible for taking our world in the direction of our hopes and dreams, and why would we not be with them on this incredibly powerful and important journey? So thank you very much for helping us understand it, for helping us unpack it, and for giving us the reason to go on the journey with them. True day. I've loved every minute. As we end our conversation with Dr. Lisa Miller, I want to encourage all of our listeners to read The Spiritual Child and The Awakened Brain, and those links will be in the episode notes. As we close out the last episode of this season of The Connected Girl, it seems precisely right to give the last word to girls, girls who are connected in mind, body, and spirit. When I think about the mental health of girls in this generation, I definitely think of this kind of self-confidence a lot mentally too, like just knowing that you are good enough, and that no matter what other people might say, or what you think other people are saying about you, that in order to be happy, the only person that you have to please is yourself. I'm a true believer in everything happens for a reason, and if something happens, like if you get a bad grade, or if your boyfriend breaks up with you, like everything happens for a reason, it's not that you deserved it. It's just because there's a different path for you waiting. Just knowing that you're enough and that everyone has a purpose, everyone is here for a reason, and just because something bad happened doesn't mean that it's the end of the world because no matter how dark the road is right now, like there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and like just you matter, that's like the biggest thing for me because I'm just like first-hand experience. You've been listening to The Connected Girl, a podcast produced by the International Coalition of Girls' Schools to address real issues that impact the lives of girls we know. This episode is the sixth in a series of six podcasts engaging listeners to think about the many ways that the connections in girls' lives keep them whole and healthy and let them know they matter. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to The Connected Girl on the ICTS's podcast channel on educating girls so you can check out the rest of the series. Thanks for listening. It's important to the girls in your lives that you do. The International Coalition of Girls' Schools created this series in true partnership with two-stories podcast production by Cara Williams with audio editing, engineering, and sound design by Rebecca Vancelle. Thanks to the students from St. Cuthbert's College in Auckland, New Zealand, and Oak Null for the Holy Child in Summit, New Jersey, whose voices are featured in the audio clips in this episode of The Connected Girl series. For more information, please refer to the show notes.