Invitation to Thrive
Intro to Thriving: A Practice of Becoming
Thriving isn’t something we achieve—it is the fullness we experience from a daily practice of investing in our spiritual health. It happens when we create space to slow down and open fresh eyes to the people and world around us.
Decades of research reveal immense psychological benefits available through spirituality and faith. By putting knowledge into practice, we learn to pay attention to our deepest human needs, strengthen our connection to transcendence and community, and grow from healing to whole both for ourselves and for the sake of others.
Join us in exploring what follows and find how spiritual practices create breathing room for thriving to become possible.
What does it mean to truly thrive?
Begin your journey
From healing to whole
We have developed a research-backed, six-part framework using our name, Thrive, that encapsulates categories, or “facets,” that have emerged as important components of healthy spirituality. The THRIVE facets are an invitation to explore what it means to grow and thrive.
Transcendence & Spirituality
Awareness of and connection to a source of invigorating love that inspires purpose.
Habits & Rhythms
Healthy spiritual practices and regular rhythms that allow us to slow down to gain insight, connect to love, and energize into purposeful endeavors.
Habits & Rhythms
Healthy spiritual practices and regular rhythms that allow us to slow down to gain insight, connect to love, and energize into purposeful endeavors.
Relationships & Community
Connections that provide a space of belonging where we can be fully known to ourselves and others and learn to give and receive love.
Identity & Narrative
Growing in clarity about who we are as a beloved, unique, embodied person.
Vocation & Purpose
Contributing our strengths to the world by living out our response to love.
Ethics & Virtues
Our beliefs about love and how we live out love through values, views of right and wrong, and priorities.
Transcendence & Spirituality
Awareness of and connection to a source of invigorating love that inspires purpose.
The Thrive Center Podcast
With & For
A Podcast on Spiritual Health, Wholeness, and a Life of Thriving
We’re eager to grow into a life of fullness and discovery. Conversations with experts that plumb the depths of psychological science and spiritual wisdom to offer practical guidance towards spiritual health, wholeness, and a life of thriving.
A Practice: Dr. Cynthia Eriksson on Grounding in the Body
Dr. Eriksson guides a meditation practice to connect you to your body and space in order to cultivate a sense of safety and calm. The twisting motion and identification of the space grounds and settles the parasympathetic nervous system.
A Practice: Dr. Richard Davidson on Developing Awareness
Dr. Davidson leads a practice to bring awareness into our bodies and into the present moment. This practice is intended not only to build capacities for awareness but to develop compassion for others.
The Big Picture on Thriving & Spiritual Health — Season One Wrap Up with Dr. Pam King & Dr. Jill Westbrook
Dr. Pam King and Dr. Jill Westbrook take a look back on the first season of With & For and its unique approach to exploring thriving and spiritual health. Together they draw upon insights from the twelve expert guests featured in this inaugural season—reflecting on their wisdom, and pulling key moments from each conversation to weave a tapestry of interdisciplinary scientific research, diverse spiritual perspectives, and practical guidance for a life of thriving.
The Power of Patience: How to Wait Well, Persevere Through Suffering, and Navigate a Fast-Paced World with Dr. Sarah Schnitker
What are you willing to wait for? What are you willing to suffer for? Research psychologist Sarah Schnitker (Baylor University) has done groundbreaking work in the science of patience. By exploring the ways to become more patient with others and ourselves—and discovering the role of this timeless virtue in a flourishing life—she offers us a freeing and stabilizing approach to thinking about goals, perseverance, and navigating our fast-paced world.
Redeeming the Past: Owning Your Story, Cultivating Courage, and Finding Peace with Dr. William Damon
How does where you’ve been contribute to where you’re going? How does your story shape your sense of purpose? Developmental psychologist William Damon (Stanford University) has spent his career studying the human lifespan, and has found both in his research and personal experience, that by courageously exploring our personal histories, we’ll stay on a path toward purpose and peace.
Dreaming Together: Dealing with Conflict, Finding Belonging, and Doing Justice with Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra
“If your community is not well, then you are not well.” Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra (Fuller Theological Seminary) is an organizer, activist, and pastor whose career has shown how individual thriving is intertwined with collective justice. With respect for marvelous human complexity, she’s encouraging us to get out of our heads and into our bodies and emotions… and is inviting us to compassion for the marginalized, and to ground our spiritual health in our connectedness to the human family, across cultural and economic lines.
Backed by research
The mind behind the method
We hold that science can provide insight needed to understand spiritual health and develop practices that lead to thriving in everyday life. We’re researchers and psychologists that live real lives and come face to face with the same questions you have.
Love what we’re doing?
It takes a community to thrive! Every gift helps combine the science of psychology and theology to build more spiritually healthy leaders and communities.