Evidence-Based Spiritual Resources for the People You Serve

Song Prayers, Contemplative Listening, and Human Flourishing Research with Dr. Elizabeth Fulgaro

The People You Serve Are More Than Their Symptoms

You sit with people through burnout, anxiety, depression, trauma, abuse, and diagnoses no one is ready for. Many of them are carrying a weight that treatment plans and sessions don't fully reach, because part of what they carry is spiritual.

More and more professions are recognizing that we are no longer biopsychosocial beings. We are biopsychosocial spiritual beings. In hospitals and palliative care, that means at least offering to bring in a patient's spirituality and asking about that part of their wellbeing. Some people won't want it, and that's fine, but if it isn't offered, the whole person isn't being cared for.

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What the Research Is Showing

Religion, spirituality, and health, which includes emotional and psychological health, is one of the fastest-growing fields of research.

The up-and-coming field is human flourishing. Harvard is leading the way with a five-year study of 200,000 participants in 22 countries, looking at what it takes to flourish in six different domains. The spiritual component is recognized as key within the domain of meaning and purpose.

I'm a scholar and practitioner in human flourishing. I contribute to the research, and I create resources that help people increase their degree of flourishing.

MORE ABOUT ELIZABETH

The Study

Dr. Elizabeth Fulgaro, Human Flourising Practitioner

My doctoral research was a small qualitative study with four women veterans over 30 days.

Each day they selected songs from a playlist, reflected on how they were, listened for a minimum of 20 consecutive minutes, and reflected again. The women didn't know each other and still don't. In their exit interviews, each of them asked me to share the practice with the same instructions I had given them.

The research showed:

All participants experienced transformation in outlook due to input from the songs. Repetitive listening resulted in changed ways of thinking, which built the participants’ resilience in unique ways conducive to their personal circumstances.
Growth in resilience in individuals results from regular, repetitive offerings of song prays through which the relationship with God continues its development.
Life is reframed through the expanding view and enhanced understanding of additional components of resilience, such as identity, a sense of belonging, purpose, and meaning through the lens of relationship with God.
There were no negative outcomes from participation in listening to daily song prayers.

READ THE STUDY ON GOOGLE SCHOLAR

I also turned the study into a book, Soul Care - Song Prayers: A Spiritual Practice Towards Resilience & Well-being, and removed a lot of the footnotes so a chaplain or psychologist can do a quick read without getting bogged down. It's available as an audiobook too, so you can listen on your way to work.

Where You Can Access Support For You & Those You Serve

For spiritual directors, chaplains, counselors, psychiatrists, social workers, physicians, palliative care specialists, faith leaders, and researchers supporting people through burnout, anxiety, depression, trauma recovery, and abuse recovery.

It can help calm the nervous system, and it speaks to people living with a sense of low value or worthlessness, or carrying weight of any kind. The practice can be used alongside the care you already provide.

EXPLORE PRACTICE

What can change when someone begins the practice?

Sometimes the First Change Is How They See

A friend came to this practice carrying years of wounds and regrets. When she arrived at my home, she would spend the first hour trying to prove she was worth being around by making everyone laugh. I began handing her albums. Later, I taught her to look through the covers and choose one for herself.

When I asked what the music had done, she told me she had been living with her head down, staring at her worries and troubles. The music helped lift her eyes.

She began to see her life from a different perspective. She became more able to trust that God would remain with her and could still bring something beautiful from what she had experienced.

Another woman in my research first listened while commercials and interruptions played. She said the music was fine. Three days later, she listened without commercials. She messaged me from her kitchen and said she had experienced God in a way she never had before. She intended to listen for twenty minutes and remained there for an hour.

A pause does not erase everything that happened but it may create enough quiet for you to notice something you could not hear before.

Their understanding can begin to change. Their relationship with themselves may change. Their connection with God may deepen. Over time, that change can move outward into how they love, choose, speak, and stand beside others.

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