Remembering Presence: The Spirituality of Everyday Life

There’s a moment I’ve witnessed many times in both therapy and coaching. Someone sits across from me and says, “I’m not a spiritual person.”

They usually mean it sincerely. Often, they mean they don’t belong to a religion, don’t pray in a traditional sense, or feel wary of anything that sounds like a belief system or abstraction. I understand that hesitation.

But as the conversation unfolds, something interesting often happens. They begin describing moments in their lives where they feel more present, connected, and alive. They talk about walking in nature and noticing their nervous system settle. They describe losing time while painting, writing, gardening, or listening to music.

One client recently spoke about playing the violin and how, in those moments, she feels more connected to her soul — “something deep within me,” she said, “that I lose touch with when life becomes too fast or overwhelming.” A friend once described something similar while painting, explaining that it was one of the few times she felt fully present, fully herself, and connected to something larger than her day-to-day worries.

Others describe yoga, science, caregiving, meaningful conversation, movement, or creative work. And without changing anything about their beliefs, something begins to soften.

Not into “you are spiritual,” necessarily.

But into something more honest and expansive: that they already experience moments of meaning, connection, awe, and presence. They simply may not have used the language of spirituality to describe them.

This is where I find language starts to matter less than experience.

Spirituality, as I understand it in my work, is not a belief system someone must adopt. It is a human capacity — the ability to experience meaning, connection, coherence, wonder, and depth in ways that move us beyond pure survival mode.

For some people, that happens through religion. For others, through nature, music, art, science, meditation, relationships, or creativity. Some experience these moments as connection to the soul, to God, to the sacred, or to something larger than themselves. Others experience them without needing spiritual language at all. None of these experiences are inherently “more spiritual” than another. They are simply different pathways through which human beings encounter meaning, depth, and connection beyond the immediacy of survival.

What I’ve also seen, especially in trauma work, is that people can lose access to this capacity when life has felt unsafe, fragmented, or overwhelming for too long. In those moments, even meaning itself can begin to feel distant or inaccessible.

So part of healing is not necessarily about adopting new beliefs. Often, it is about restoring access: access to presence, connection, curiosity, creativity, and moments where the nervous system softens enough to experience life as more than endurance.

That restoration often begins in very ordinary ways, such as a walk outside, a conversation or taking a moment to contemplate while listening to the song of birds. The connection was never absent. In many cases, it was simply waiting beneath the noise, the fear, and the pace of survival to be felt again.