Episodes

  • Alignment: Connecting Our Experience with Our Values with Dr. Pam King

    Alignment: Connecting Our Experience with Our Values with Dr. Pam King
    Oct 14 2024

    “When our life is aligned to what truly matters, that is when we experience the most enduring joy.”

    In this episode, Dr. Pam King explains the 3rd step in the 5 A’s of Agility for Spiritual Health. Alignment is the process of becoming more reflective, drawing connections between our thoughts and emotions—and our beliefs, values, habits, and the experiences that shape us.

    This is the step where we look for our intentions and expectations and hold them up to our raw experiences and the possible meanings associated with them. We begin by identifying what's true or what's false in our feelings and thoughts so we can more clearly move toward our purposes.

    ANNOUNCEMENT: With & For Season 2 launches on January 6, 2025!

    Show Notes

    • “Alignment involves aligning the insights that you gained from taking inventory and attuning to your feelings and becoming aware of their meanings of then aligning these feelings to your ideals, your values, and what you assume matters.”
    • What matters to you?
    • Taking stock of what we attuned to, and what we became aware of
    • How do we align what is with what we want?
    • How to practice alignment
    • How do you spend your time?
    • Reflecting regularly on life goals
    • “When our life is aligned to what truly matters, that is when we experience the most enduring joy.”
    • Resilience and stability

    About the Thrive Center

    • Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
    • Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
    • Follow us on X @thrivecenter
    • Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

    About Dr. Pam King

    Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

    About With & For

    • Host: Pam King
    • Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
    • Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
    • Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
    • Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

    Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.
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    8 mins
  • Awareness: Non-Judgmental Reflection on Our Emotions and Thoughts with Dr. Pam King

    Awareness: Non-Judgmental Reflection on Our Emotions and Thoughts with Dr. Pam King
    Oct 7 2024

    It’s not easy to reflect on our emotions without judging them or running away from them. It’s difficult to stay with challenging or frightening feelings and thoughts. But to cultivate awareness means taking an open, curious, and non-judgmental approach to observing our minds.

    More than simple or immediate observation (like Attunement), awareness asks us to get curious and reflect on our feelings, emotions, thoughts, and the landscape of experience we discovered in step one of attunement. What emotions are coming up for us? What thoughts keep coming into our consciousness?

    In this second step of the 5 A’s of Agility for Spiritual Health, Pam King explains how we can become more emotionally aware and open-minded about our psychological reality. The key to observing our thoughts and feelings is to simply look, and not judge yourself. Let the emotions come and go, and learn from they provide information to us.

    ANNOUNCEMENT: With & For Season 2 launches on January 6, 2025!

    Show Notes

    • Jill Westbrook introduces the episode
    • For the most enriching and helpful listening experience, make sure to start with the beginning of this series!
    • More than immediate observation: we must reflect non-judgmentally
    • Just observe, don’t judge yourself.
    • Examining the meaning of our feelings, thoughts, and sensations
    • Attach reflective thoughts to our embodied and psychological experience
    • Journaling is a powerful exercise to connect kinetically with emotional realities.
    • Narration and storytelling helps with processing non-judgmentally.
    • Cultivating curiosity and open-mindedness
    • “So be curious, welcome the dust, welcome the muck,  hold it, consider what it means and what it's pointing you towards.”
    • “Avenues for growth. Avenues for loving yourself.”
    • Uncover the values that fuel our life.
    • Understanding anger, sadness, disappointment, joy, delight—all as emotional signposts to meaning and purpose
    • Emotions that direct us to what matters.
    • Practical Example: Anger
    • Practical Example: Sorrow or Sadness
    • “Linger, but don’t loiter.”
    • “You’re not in this alone.”

    About the Thrive Center

    • Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
    • Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
    • Follow us on X @thrivecenter
    • Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

    About Dr. Pam King

    Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

    About With & For

    • Host: Pam King
    • Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
    • Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
    • Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
    • Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

    Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.
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    11 mins
  • Attunement: Paying Attention to Our Feelings, Thoughts, and Sensations with Dr. Pam King

    Attunement: Paying Attention to Our Feelings, Thoughts, and Sensations with Dr. Pam King
    Sep 30 2024

    What’s happening right now? What do you feel? What physical sensations are present from head to toe?

    The first step in practicing the 5 A’s of Spiritual Health is Attunement—a simple, direct process of connecting to reality, perceiving your experience of the present moment, and paying attention to our physical sensations. It’s as simple as a clear-eyed consciousness: listening, feeling, acknowledging, being aware of basic sensations.

    In this episode, Dr. Pam King explains attunement and the foundation it lays for cultivating greater agility and adaptivity. She oconsiders theological and psychological grounding for the benefits of attunement, and offers practical techniques, including a body scan and breath exercises.

    ANNOUNCEMENT: With & For Season 2 launches on January 6, 2025!

    Show Notes

    • Jill Westbrook introduces the episode
    • ANNOUNCEMENT: With & For Season 2 launches on January 6, 2025!
    • What is attunement? And how does it support personal agility and adaptivity?
    • Connecting to reality, the present moment, and our physical experience and sensations
    • Clear-eyed consciousness
    • Listening, feeling, acknowledging, noticing sensations
    • Embodiment and rooting in the body
    • Our bodies are part of the created order.
    • God has given us bodies to know and serve God.
    • Pain and stress, joy or pleasure
    • How do we attune?
    • How to perform a body scan
    • Breath exercises
    • Walking as a spiritual practice of attunement
    • Breathing
    • Andrew Huberman’s breath exercises: “the physiological sigh” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSZKIupBUuc

    About the Thrive Center

    • Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
    • Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
    • Follow us on X @thrivecenter
    • Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

    About Dr. Pam King

    Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

    About With & For

    • Host: Pam King
    • Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
    • Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
    • Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
    • Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

    Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.
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    8 mins
  • Agility and Adaptation through the 5 A's of Spiritual Health with Dr. Pam King

    Agility and Adaptation through the 5 A's of Spiritual Health with Dr. Pam King
    Sep 23 2024

    How can we cultivate agility and adaptivity in our chaotic, shifting times? Dr. Pam King offers a research-backed cycle of practices to incorporate into the rhythms of your daily life—helping you navigate change and work through life’s obstacles. She calls them the 5 A’s of Spiritual Health: Attunement, Awareness, Alignment, Activation, and Assessment.

    In this episode, she introduces the 5 A’s, explaining the context, process, and benefits. She comments on the contemplative practices and psychological science that support this cycle of habits and offers reflections on why these simple movements can be so transformative.

    ANNOUNCEMENT: With & For Season 2 launches on January 6, 2025!

    Show Notes

    • With & For Producer Jill Westbrook introduces the episode
    • “Why do we need to develop agility as a practice?”
    • Developing agility and adaptivity
    • What the 5 A’s are: “a cycle of practices synthesizing, research on different contemplative practices from different spiritual traditions …. and psychological research around the efficacy or the impact of different types of spiritual practices on human well being and health.”
    • Attuning to our bodies and physiology
    • What sensations might mean
    • Engaging emotions, thoughts, values, actions, and behaviors that lead to a thriving life
    • Dealing with complexity and unpredictability
    • Tuning into our sources of meaning and purpose
    • How to cultivate more spiritual vitality and sense of purpose
    • “At the center of thriving is adaptive growth.”
    • “We want to be able to grow in a purposeful direction.”
    • “Thriving is living life on purpose.”
    • Agility allows us to balance goals, relationships, and values.
    • Attunement
    • Awareness
    • Alignment
    • Activation
    • Assessment

    About the Thrive Center

    • Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
    • Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
    • Follow us on X @thrivecenter
    • Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

    About Dr. Pam King

    Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

    About With & For

    • Host: Pam King
    • Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
    • Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
    • Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
    • Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

    Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.
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    9 mins
  • A Psychology-Backed Framework for Healthy Spirituality with Dr. Pam King

    A Psychology-Backed Framework for Healthy Spirituality with Dr. Pam King
    Sep 16 2024
    “Spirituality is deeply rooted in love, enables us to receive and experience love from beyond ourselves, and enables us and invigorates us to live out love as ourselves.” The precarious times we live in fill us with anxiety. The rifts and shifts of culture, politics, and religion are leaving us feeling unmoored, disconnected, and alienated from ourselves and each other. And a psychologically informed approach to spirituality is the antidote. In this episode, Dr. Pam King discusses why spirituality is so essential to the human experience, and how it operates as the antidote to the culture of anxiety and despair around us. She works through the Thrive Center’s 6 Facets of Spiritual Health (T.H.R.I.V.E). 1. Transcendence & Spirituality2. Habits & Rhythms3. Relationships & Community4. Identity & Narrative5. Vocation & Purpose6. Ethics & Virtues ANNOUNCEMENT! With & For Season 2 launches on Jan 6, 2025! Show NotesLearn more about the 6 Facets of Spiritual Health at thethrivecenter.org.With & For Season 2 launches on Jan 6, 2025!Living in precarious times, which gives us a sense of unrest and dis-easeFeeling “unmoored” and paralyzed by shifting religious affiliation and beliefsSpirituality is the antidote to the anxiety of this cultural moment.Spiritual health slows us down, and helps us reflect and connect.How Thrive aims to help you move toward and align with healthful and helpful spiritualityWhat is spirituality? A definitionSpirituality as experience and response to transcendenceSpiritual and religious harm and abuseHarm is done at personal and communal levels“Spirituality is deeply rooted in love, enables us to receive and experience love from beyond ourselves, and enables us and invigorates us to live out love as ourselves.”Thrive’s spiritual health framework is a unique, research-backed psychological approach to faith and spirituality that contributes to whole-person thriving by focusing on 6 key areas of human life and experience.Facet 1: Transcendence & Spirituality“Awareness of and connection to a source of invigorating love offers meaning and inspires purpose. For many this is God, for others it may be a higher power or nature.”People experience transcendence in many different waysExamples of transcendence: Prayer, Worship, Nature, Beauty, Contemplation, Reason, and Music“Transcendence is important because it is invigorating. It's emotional, as well as mind opening.”Points to meaning and purpose beyond ourselvesPractical Questions for Transcendence & Spirituality: Do you feel cared for and loved by God or a higher power? Do you have practices that connect you to awe or bring you joy and meaning?Facet 2: Habits & Rhythms“Habits and rhythms have to do with healthy spiritual practices and regular rhythms that allow us to slow down, to gain insight, connect to love and energize us into purposeful endeavors.”Forming us and changing usPractices to help us regulate, relate, and reflectHow traditional spiritual practices contribute to thriving and well-beingExamples: Sabbath, Celebration, Play, and morePractical Questions for Habits & Rhythms: Do you have regular rhythms of rest or sabbath? Do you have practices that help you regulate your emotions? Do you engage your gody in spiritual practices like breathing, walking meditations, or singing?Facet 3: Relationships & Community“Connections provide a space of belonging where we can be fully known to ourselves and others and learn to give and receive love.”We’re relational beings created to be known and loved.“When we are known, seen, and know that we matter, our brains relax and we’re able to grow.”Practical Questions for Relationships & Community: Do you have a spiritual community in which you feel loved and supported? Do you respect people who practice their faith differently from you?Facet 4: Identity & Narrative“Growing in clarity about who we are as a beloved, unique, embodied person and how we are related to others and the greater world.”The stories we tell ourselves and others about who we are“It’s hard to get a clear sense of our identity.”“Our identities are spread so thin, it's hard for us to have a cohesive story about our lives.”Who you areWhose you areWhere your life’s goingIs spirituality a journey of finding a static “true self”?Considering the evolving narrative of our livesEarliest attachmentsMeaning, hope, and direction—a sense of being beloved, with all the beauty and the brokennessPractical Questions for Identity & Narrative: Do you understand your life as part of a bigger story? Do you seek to understand who you are and who you are becoming?Facet 5: Vocation & Purpose“Contributing our strengths to the world by living out our response to love.”Spiritual beliefs point us to purposes beyond ourselves—bigger than ourselves, noble, and life-giving“Our lives are part of a much bigger story than ourselves.”Strengths, who you serve or love, and who you’re ...
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    37 mins
  • The Six Facets of Spiritual Health with Pam King & Dan Koch (You Have Permission)

    The Six Facets of Spiritual Health with Pam King & Dan Koch (You Have Permission)
    Sep 9 2024
    Pam King joins licensed therapist Dan Koch on his podcast, You Have Permission, for a discussion of the six facets of spiritual health.Announcement! With & For Season 2 is dropping on January 5, 2025! And until then, every Monday from September to December, we’re sharing some shorter clips, practical features, and other talks or interviews featuring Dr. Pam King, to offer insight into what it means to thrive and pursue spiritual health.Show NotesWith & For Season 2 is dropping on January 5, 2024!Subscribe to Dan Koch’s podcast, You Have Permission and his Patreon at patreon.com/dankochPam’s research interests: positive developmental psychology and theologyHow do psychologists perceive religion, spirituality, and theology?How does spirituality and religion factor in human development?William Damon (Stanford University) on moral development in the wake of the Columbine shooting“My work has really focused on how do we offer people insight into the psychological benefits available in spirituality and religion at their best.”Youth group“What's the question I could ask that would get her thinking about the potentially harmful theology?”Purity culture at youth groupThe Thrive Center’s rubric of Six Facets of Spiritual HealthWhat are the six facets of spiritual health?Transcendence and spirituality. Habits and rhythms. Relationships and community. Identity and narrative. Vocation and purpose. Ethics and virtues.“This model comes from is comes from existing research that highlights potential resources available through religious participation or being a spiritual person that can promote our well being.”How religion and spirituality buffer against mental illnessPsychological benefits of spirituality“Mechanisms of change”Benefits mediated through relationships with other people“Young people need relationships.”What is the nature of healthy spiritual community?“But increasingly, with the fragmentation of our society and our very transient and digital affiliations, we don't have the richness and the thick connections that we once did.”Polarization and culture wars and Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone”Transcendence: ”something beyond the self”Spirituality: “experiencing and responding to transcendence”Habits and rhythms.Creativity and music“The reality is, as humans, we often find freedom with some structure.”Atomic HabitsContemplative neuroscienceFight, flight, freezeBuilt in rhythms of work and restSabbathAncient rhythms and practical wisdom that give us permission to restListen to Pam and Dan discuss facets of “Relationships and community” and “Identity and narrative” in the Patron-only second half of the conversation, available via patreon.com/dankochVocation and purpose.Teleology and Telos (end, goal, purpose)Reciprocating relationshipsPursuing purpose as an “enduring goal that is actionable”Mary Helen Immordino Yang (USC) and the default networkMeaning making“The moment that I was able to admit that I was a theological liberal was when I felt through contemplative practice directly accepted by God.”“If God exists, then I’m God’s kid.”“And if there is God, and if these spiritual experiences actually correlate to something, then the clearest thing I know is I'm good. I'm loved. I'm accepted.”Ultimate transcendence and connection to divine love“Ultimately spiritual health involves an identity in which we are the beloved.”Contemplative practicesHow to make changing diapers a spiritual practice: “Oh, we got a pooper!”Directionality to narrativeEthics and virtues.Ethics as “real-world application to moral thinking.”Virtues as “building up certain regular capacities in ourselves such that we will naturally make good ethical choices.”Intercessory prayer and loving-kindness meditationHow youth approach morality in the context of community and family About the Thrive CenterLearn more at thethrivecenter.org.Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenterFollow us on X @thrivecenterFollow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter About Dr. Pam KingDr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking. About With & ForHost: Pam KingSenior Director and Producer: Jill WestbrookOperations Manager: Lauren KimSocial Media Graphic Designer: Wren JuergensenConsulting Producer: Evan RosaSpecial thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.
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    50 mins
  • A Practice: Dr. Cynthia Eriksson Body Scan for Awareness

    A Practice: Dr. Cynthia Eriksson Body Scan for Awareness
    Jun 10 2024

    • Close your eyes, press your feet into the floor, notice your bottom in your seat, feel your lower back in the chair.
    • Notice other sensations in the body and any tension in various places.
    • Notice the movement of your chest.
    • Starting at the top of the head and moving through each area of your body - paying attention to any sensations, energy, numbness, cold, hot, slowly moving your attention, noting the sensations.
    • Notice and accept what is in your body.
    • Bring attention back to the feeling of the body in your seat.
    • Allow awareness to return to any sounds and the space around you.
    • Open your eyes.

    S1:E9 Responding to Trauma: Psychological Tools for Resilience and Recovery with Dr. Cynthia Eriksson. Here Dr. Eriksson guides you through a body scan to identify places of tension and discomfort in order to access and identify complicated emotions you might be experiencing.

    About the Thrive Center

    • Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
    • Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
    • Follow us on X @thrivecenter
    • Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

    About Dr. Pam King

    Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

    About With & For

    • Host: Pam King
    • Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
    • Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
    • Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
    • Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

    Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.
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    5 mins
  • A Practice: Dr. Lisa Miller on Closing Doors so Others Can Open

    A Practice: Dr. Lisa Miller on Closing Doors so Others Can Open
    Jun 3 2024
    • Invite a time when you really wanted something - a job, a person to say, “yes,” or an acceptance letter.
    • Imagine that you grabbed the handle of the red door and it was stuck. You kicked the door because it was stuck. You were prepared to go through it but couldn’t,
    • You shifted 180 degrees because it was stuck - and saw a yellow door, wide open.
    • You crossed over to an opportunity that was open and good.
    • On the other side there was someone who was more right for you, or you got into a better school program, or got a better job - better for you than you had wanted.
    • When you think about the time of the stuck red door and the hairpin turn to the yellow door - was there anyone there who was your guide encouraging your turn?
    • This is a trail angel who guided you to a hairpin turn.
    • How are these moments formed, or are some of the most important parts of our lives guided in some way - who helps us discover our journey?
    • Where in your road of life is God or your higher power? Are they in the open yellow door and in the stuck red door?
    • Are they in the trail angel?
    • What are the guiding moments and deep kind of knowing and perceiving that is our birthright?

    Listen to the Full Episode - S1:E1 Loved, Held, Guided, and Never Alone: The Science of Spirituality with Dr. Lisa Miller. Here Dr. Miller guides you through a practice that will help you understand how to recognize doors that are open to you and doors that are closed, so helpful for finding a path forward when facing obstacles.

    About the Thrive Center

    • Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
    • Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
    • Follow us on X @thrivecenter
    • Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

    About Dr. Pam King

    Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

    About With & For

    • Host: Pam King
    • Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
    • Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
    • Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
    • Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

    Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.
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    7 mins