Personal "health", personal "spirituality" are the same thing. A human being isn't a conglomeration of parts, but one holistic integrated complex and dynamic working whole. And disagreeing with many traditional views, a human being isn't a "spirit" trapped in a physical shell.

In the views of many, the human "spirit" is what you experience as your total "person". It is your fullest sense of your own life, your passions, your specific experiences, your memories, values, your knowledge and wisdom, your talents, skills, imagination, goals, achievements, physical health, mental health, etc. "Spirit" is everything that makes you "you". Of course, like many others, I reject the idea of a "mystical" spirit. "Spirit" is all-natural but it is still as wondrous to me and to those who agree with me on the nature of "spirit" as it is to anyone else. In fact, I believe a full understanding of and appreciation for the "spiritual" isn't genuinely possible until one agrees "spirit" is and only can be a naturally based phenomenon. When you deny the material roots or material source of the spiritual, you cut yourself off from genuine spirituality in insurmountable ways until you recognize where "spirit" actually comes from and appreciate it for what it is.

"Spirit" as the sum total of a person is directly affected by one's physical and mental health and, of course, one's physical and mental health are directly affected by one's sense of "spirit". Our languages make it difficult to speak of such things but, suffice to say, I think of health and spirit as one thing rather than two, just as I reject the artificial division of "mind" and "body". Mind is body is mind. There is no affecting one without affecting the other. There is no infuencing one's health without harming or feeding the spirit and vice versa.

This has the meaning, at least in my own mind, that: taking an aspirin, taking a bath or shower, combing one's hair, applying lotion to one's hands or chapstick to one's lips, eating an apple or your vegetables or a hot bowl of oatmeal are spiritual acts as much as lovemaking, walking through a beautiful forest, collecting flowers, holding your ailing mother's hand, playing with a child, watching a fire burn down, or pleading in prayer and so many other things one might call "spiritual" experiences. Whatever it is you do or say or experience that nurtures, preserves or improves your life is for health, is for spirit.

They are one and the same.

I happen to whisper all the time. Truth be told, I think a piece of poetry is best if you are hesitant to speak it at anything louder than a whisper, especially haiku. Whispered poetry is the kind I'm most drawn to and I whisper them often both when I'm composing and writing them and when I'm simply reading them.

In my own poetry, if it does not sound best when it is whispered, I feel I have failed.

Of course, this isn't the way of many, but it is my way and it is the way I read the words of others. Writing words that whisper gives them a caress, an intimacy, a tenderness they need and cannot reach otherwise. I also think to read the words of others with a whisper gives their words something the author might or perhaps ought to have intended.

Many will disagree, and I do understand why they and even I do it but, I think shouted words are an ugliness we can much do without. If intentionally or unintentionally your words shout on the page, I think you - and I - can do better.

We ought to do better.