The Source of Life: Meditation and Spirituality in Healthcare for a Comprehensive Approach to The COVID-19 Syndemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of values beyond mere survival, such as closeness, spirituality, and connectedness. Spiritual accompaniment is a valid therapeutic tool for people with life-threatening diseases, helping them recover a transcendent dimension of existence and reintegrate illness and death into their thinking. In 2020, telematic spiritual accompaniment was extended to COVID-19 patients with very positive results. This inspired a project to rebuild a rural village for green therapy (echotherapy), where patients at various stages of life-threatening illness can receive expert, non-confessional spiritual accompaniment centered on meditation, living alongside families and monks. A hospice oriented toward spiritual assistance will also accommodate patients in advanced stages of illness.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The COVID-19 syndemic has raised many unanswered questions about the most important values in human life. It has revealed the limits of looking at mere survival and ignoring closeness, spirituality, and "connectedness". Spiritual accompaniment, in contrast, is a valid therapeutic tool for individuals suffering from life-threatening diseases, allowing a real recovery of the transcendent dimension of existence which retrieves one's relationship with the mystery, and reintegrates illness and death within one's horizon of thought. According to this vision, in the field of healthcare, people experienced in spiritual accompaniment may support patients through their disease journey by strengthening their resilience; this was extended in 2020 with telematic assistance, to patients with COVID-19, with very positive results. This gave impetus to the project to rebuild a rural village, suitable for pursuing the principles of green therapy (also known as echotherapy) in order to host patients in various stages of life-threatening illness who wish to deepen their spiritual search by receiving expert, non-confessional spiritual accompaniment, by living side by side with families and resident monks; there will also be a hospice oriented towards spiritual assistance, to accommodate patients in advanced stages of illness. The spiritual accompaniment proposed here is centered on meditation and is part of a historic tradition, although it is promoted with language adapted to the modern era. This has for decades helped many people following this path.