Knowra Spiritual practice Spiritual practice A repeated activity intended to cultivate spiritual awareness, connection, discipline, or transformation. Practices may be individual or communal and may draw on religious or nonreligious traditions.
Meditation : A family of practices that train attention, awareness, or contemplation. Many traditions use meditation to steady attention or cultivate insight.
Lectio divina : A Christian method of prayerful scripture reading involving reading, meditation, prayer, and contemplation. It turns repeated reading of scripture into a structured contemplative discipline.
Buddhism : A religious and philosophical tradition founded on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama. Buddhist traditions developed extensive disciplines of meditation, ethical conduct, and ritual.
Mindfulness : Attention to present experience, cultivated as a mental quality or through formal practice. Some spiritual disciplines cultivate mindfulness as an outcome and a method.
Habit : A behavior repeated regularly until it becomes relatively automatic. A habit need not aim at spiritual awareness, connection, or transformation.
Prayer : Communication or communion directed toward a deity, sacred reality, or spiritual concern. Prayer gives spiritual practice a relational form through address, listening, or petition.
Zazen : Seated meditation practiced in Zen Buddhism, often emphasizing upright posture and attentive presence. Its disciplined posture and attention exemplify practice as embodied training.
Christian monasticism : Christian forms of communal or solitary religious life organized around prayer, discipline, and devotion. Monastic communities preserved and systematized recurring forms of Christian spiritual discipline.
Asceticism : The disciplined renunciation of pleasures or material comforts for religious or philosophical aims. Spiritual practice can use restraint to redirect desire and strengthen commitment.
Psychotherapy : The treatment of psychological difficulties through structured conversations or other psychological methods. Therapy may overlap with spiritual aims but is organized around psychological care.
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