Spiritual Sanctuary

Spiritual Sanctuary

Welcome to Spiritual Sanctuary. This is a small collection of exercises to help you reflect and pray on your mental health journey.

These resources have been created in collaboration with Sanctuary Mental Health Ministries, an ecumenical organization who seek to engage the topics of faith and mental health and wellbeing.

We encourage you to find out more about the work of Sanctuary here: https://sanctuarymentalhealth.org/uk/

These prayer exercises are intended to gently invite you to spend time in the gentle and loving care of God. It is important to recognise that exploring our mental health can sometimes bring up difficult things. Therefore, we encourage you to prepare a “care plan” for yourself before praying with these sessions.

Your self-care plan might include preparing your listening environment with a warm blanket, comforting beverage, and tissues. It could also include breathing and grounding exercises or a plan to move your body in a meaningful way. You might also want to think of a safe person you could reach out to if anything begins to feel a little too much during this prayer time. This could be a friend, a family member, or a priest or pastor. There are also many mental health organisations with valuable resources and crisis services, such as the Samaritans in the UK, or an equivalent wherever you are in the world. You may choose to identify some of these resources in advance of engaging in the exercise. Here are some examples:

Samaritans UK: https://www.samaritans.org

Premier Lifeline UK: https://www.premierlifeline.org.uk/

Samaritans USA: https://samaritanshope.org/