Focus:
Moving from illness as an identity to living as a person who has no illness.
Repetition:
My cells are healthy. My body is well. I am free. I am love.
Taking What Is True From Any Table
You have been here long enough to know that this space is built on one simple conviction: your body was designed to heal, and the tools it needs are ancient, affordable, and available to you. We work with ancestral foods, living soil, sunlight, breath, sound, movement, sleep, rhythm, and community, and we honour the wisdom of traditional cultures. I come from the Catholic tradition, and that shapes how I see healing, but this space is for everyone.
Something comes up in our community often, and it deserves its own week. It is the question of how to learn about health when the person teaching it does not share your beliefs. It is the hesitation you feel when you click on a video about vagus nerve toning and the teacher opens with language that feels foreign to your spiritual life. It is the moment you close the tab because the somatic therapist mentioned energy work, or the breathwork teacher referenced a tradition that is not yours. It is that quiet worry that by learning from someone outside your faith, you are somehow taking part in something you should not.
I hear you, and I understand. I want to walk through this with you gently, honestly, and with a lot of grace, because I believe this hesitation, while well-meaning, may be keeping some of you from healing that is right there for you.
Your Nervous System Is Physiology, Not Philosophy
Here is where we begin: your nervous system is not a spiritual practice; it is a physical reality. Your vagus nerve, fascia, limbic system, and autonomic nervous system are part of the body you were given. When someone teaches you that slow, long exhales turn on your parasympathetic nervous system and help you out of a chronic stress response, that is not a religious claim. It is biology; it is simply how the human body works.
If a secular therapist, a Buddhist teacher, or someone of any other background has studied this biology and learned to teach it well, that does not make the breath itself secular or Buddhist. It makes it human. The breath and the nervous system are universal, and the body’s ability to regulate, restore, and release stored tension belongs to all of us, whatever we believe about where it came from.
In my own tradition, St. Thomas Aquinas taught that natural law, the moral and physical order woven into creation, is open to everyone through reason, whatever their faith. Truth is built into creation itself. When anyone observes how the body works and teaches others to support its healing, they are seeing something real and true, and you do not need to share their worldview to benefit from it.
A Long Tradition of Taking Truth From Many Tables
This is not a new problem; people of faith have been working through it for centuries. The early Church Fathers spoke of “spoiling the Egyptians,” from the Book of Exodus, when the Israelites left Egypt carrying the gold and silver of their captors. The principle was clear: truth, wherever it is found, belongs to God, and you do not have to become an Egyptian to carry out their gold.
St. Augustine wrote about this directly in On Christian Doctrine. He said believers should not give up music just because pagans tied it to superstition, or refuse to learn to read because pagans credited Mercury with inventing letters. Wherever truth is found, he said, it belongs to its Master, so recognise the truth and reject only the superstition, not the truth itself.
Scripture says it simply: “Test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Not everything that comes from people who believe what you believe, but everything. It assumes truth can turn up in unexpected places, and that your job is not to avoid but to discern.
I share this from my own tradition because it is what I know, and because so many of you share that background and have asked me about this tension. But the principle is for everyone: you can learn from anyone without becoming them, take what is true, and leave what is not. Truth does not change based on who speaks it.
Nervous System Tools You Can Make Your Own
So what does this mean for your healing? When I point you toward resources on nervous system regulation, somatic practice, limbic retraining, vagus nerve support, or fascia work, I am not asking you to take on anyone’s spiritual worldview. I am pointing you to people who understand how the body heals, and you get to take what serves you and leave what does not.
Here are the areas that come up most often.
Breathwork and Vagal Toning
Slow, intentional breathing is one of the most powerful and well-researched tools we have for regulating the nervous system. It turns on the parasympathetic system, lowers cortisol, improves heart rate variability, and helps the body out of the chronic fight or flight state behind so much chronic illness. It is also practised in nearly every tradition on earth, spiritual and secular alike.
In our Christian tradition, the Desert Fathers and Mothers practised hesychasm, quiet, rhythmic breathing paired with the Jesus Prayer, as a path to inner stillness and communion with God, and the monks of Mount Athos have practised it for well over a thousand years.
If you have a faith background, simply pair any helpful breathing technique with your own prayer or intention. If you do not, the breath still works; it does not need your belief, only your breathing.
Body Awareness
This is the area that causes the most hesitation for people of faith, and I understand why. Words like “body awareness” and “mindfulness” have become so tied to Eastern meditation that many of us instinctively pull back. But please hear this: paying attention to your body does not belong to any one religion. It is basic human awareness, and it is good stewardship of the body you were given.
When you notice your jaw is clenched, your shoulders are up around your ears, or your stomach is tight with anxiety, and you choose to soften those places, you are not performing a religious act; you are listening to yourself. If you pray, you can make this prayer, as the Psalmist writes, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10), an invitation into the present moment that includes the body. If you do not pray, it is simply reconnecting with what your body is telling you, and either way your nervous system benefits.
Chronic illness often comes with a nervous system that has lost the ability to read its own signals, which is called poor interoception. It is one reason people with chronic conditions feel cut off from their bodies, cannot tell when they are hungry or full or need rest, and struggle to regulate emotions. Gently rebuilding that inner awareness, noticing where you hold tension, how you are breathing, and when your body shifts from ease to bracing, is not a spiritual exercise that belongs to one tradition. It is your body learning to speak to you again, and the practice is yours to shape within whatever framework feels right to you.
Movement as Medicine
We covered movement in depth last week with Sah D’Simone, Jules Horn, Lola Agni, and Tim Matz, but discernment applies here too. If a movement resource includes poses that are explicitly acts of worship in a tradition that is not yours, and that troubles your conscience, you have every right to change or skip those parts. The benefits of movement, releasing stored tension, moving lymph and blood, and regulating the nervous system, do not depend on any posture being done as a religious act.
You can shake, sway, and dance in your kitchen to Gregorian chant, baroque, folk music, or your favourite playlist. You can walk barefoot on the earth and stretch in ways that feel natural to your body without copying forms that make you uncomfortable. Your nervous system does not care what the movement looks like from the outside; it cares that you moved, breathed, and felt safe enough to release.
Mary Ruddick, whose work has so deeply shaped this protocol, has seen in her fieldwork with traditional cultures around the world that the healthiest peoples share certain movement patterns. They dance, they sing, and they move together in community as a natural part of daily life, not as a scheduled workout. They never needed a clinical term for nervous system regulation because it was woven into how they lived, and that is what we are remembering.
Limbic System Retraining
Limbic retraining programs have helped many people with chronic illness, chemical sensitivities, mast cell activation, and other conditions rooted in a nervous system stuck in threat mode. They are based on neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to be retrained to stop treating safe things as dangerous. They use practices like redirecting negative thought patterns, visualisation, gratitude, and gentle exposure.
Scripture calls this being “transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2), and neuroscience calls it neuroplasticity; the words are different, but the reality is the same.
Some programs use language or frameworks that may not fit your beliefs, and if so, you do not need to throw out the whole program. Take the neuroplasticity principles, which are well supported by science, and apply them within your own framework. If you are a person of faith, replace a generic visualisation with a Scripture or prayer you love, and if you are not, use words that mean something to you. The brain responds to repetition, intention, and safety, and you get to choose what fills those.
Jen Donovan is a wonderful example of a teacher who understands the whole picture. Her Six Support Protocols address nervous system regulation alongside nutrition, sleep, detox, movement, and mindset, and her training in polyvagal theory, tension and trauma releasing exercises, and ancestral nutrition has helped hundreds of people rebuild their health from the root. Her work is practical and deeply compassionate, so take what serves you and apply it in your own life; that is exactly how discernment works.
Sound, Frequency, and the Healing Power of Music
We often talk about sound as medicine, and the science supports it. Certain sounds have measurable effects on the nervous system. Birdsong, flowing water, and other nature sounds turn on the parasympathetic system, low humming stimulates the vagus nerve, and music at certain tempos can steady heart rate variability and bring calm.
If a teacher talks about sound healing from a spiritual framework that is not yours, take the physiology and use it within whatever tradition feeds your soul. In our Catholic tradition, Gregorian chant, with its long, slow melodies, naturally draws out long exhales and calms the nervous system. Baroque music, with its mathematical structure, has been shown to support focus and calm, sacred music of every tradition carries this quality, and nature itself, wind, water, and birdsong, is free to everyone and belongs to no belief system.
St. Hildegard of Bingen, Benedictine abbess, Doctor of the Church, mystic, herbalist, and composer, understood how body, soul, and creation fit together better than most modern practitioners. She wrote music she believed reflected the harmony of heaven and wrote at length about the healing properties of plants, stones, and natural remedies. She saw no contradiction between the life of the spirit and the care of the body. I share her as an example from my tradition, but the principle she lived is universal: caring for the body is part of caring for the whole person.
The Biggest Medicine Is Reverence
Everything in ARP comes back to reverence. Reverence for the body you were given, and for the food that grows in living soil. Reverence for the rhythms that govern us: the rising and setting of the sun, the seasons, the tides, and the breath. Reverence for the communities we were designed to live in, and for the generations before us who knew, without a podcast telling them, how to eat, sleep, move, and heal.
When we approach knowledge with reverence, including knowledge from people who do not share our beliefs, we are not compromising; we are practising discernment. We are recognising that truth is woven into reality, and that anyone willing to look can discover pieces of it. Our task is not to be afraid of what others have found, but to test it, hold fast to what is good, and make it our own.
Nothing in this space will ever go against the faith that grounds it. If I recommend a teacher who holds different beliefs, I am recommending their understanding of the body, not their theology. You are always free, and always encouraged, to take the physiological tools and leave the rest, picking and choosing what you use from anyone I suggest. And if something does not sit well with your conscience, your spiritual advisor, or your own sense of what is right for you, honour that fully and without guilt. There is no all-or-nothing here, and there never has been.
If you have dismissed a teacher or resource in the past because of their spiritual background, I gently encourage you to look again this week with fresh eyes. Ask yourself whether there is a physiological truth there you can use. Take the biology and leave whatever does not serve you. This is discernment in action, and it is one of the most freeing things you can practise on this healing journey.