The Phenomenological Relationship Between Health, Wellness, and Spirituality: Reclaiming Embodied Knowing through Gurmat Praxis

This article investigates the phenomenological relationship between health, wellness, and spirituality, with a focus on Gurmat Therapy as an integrative approach tand health model that transcends biomedical objectification. Drawing upon Sikh spiritual epistemology and ontology, it critiques the Cartesian dualism embedded in conventional health paradigms and proposes a spiritually-informed self-inquiry rooted in Naam, Shabad-Vichaar, and Mann-di-Sudhi. By restoring the primacy of lived, embodied experience (anubhav), Gurmat Therapy repositions wellness as a state of existential sovereignty (raj jog), offering pathways for transformation beyond diagnostic reductionism. Phenomenological analysis reveals that healing is not simply symptom alleviation but a conscious re-alignment with Hukam (divine order) and Naam (existential resonance).

1. Introduction

The separation of mind, body, and spirit within biomedical discourse has shaped a fragmented understanding of health. This detachment has epistemological roots in Cartesian rationalism and ontological assumptions of the mechanistic body. However, spirituality, as a lived, affective, and embodied dimension, remains a vital but often excluded thread in healing.

Phenomenology, as a philosophical method, centres first-person lived experience and consciousness. Within the Sikh wisdom tradition, Gurmat offers a phenomenological approach grounded not in abstraction, but in the shabadic unfolding of self-awareness through experience. This paper explores how Gurmat Therapy reclaims health and wellness as ontologically spiritual conditions, accessed through anubhav (direct insight) rather than objective measurement.

2. Phenomenology and the Nature of Health

Phenomenology resists the medicalisation of illness as mere dysfunction. Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the lived body (le corps propre) challenges biomedical detachment, emphasising that health is not the absence of disease, but a sense of bodily attunement with one’s world (Leder, 1990). Similarly, Gurmat posits maan da rog (the illness of the mind) as the root dysfunction - manmukh behavior emerges when the self is lost in cognitive entanglement (vichaar da jala). According to the Guru Granth Sahib:

"Man jeetai jag jeet.""One who conquers the mind, conquers the world." (Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 6)

Health, then, is not a passive biological state, but an active spiritual orientation toward truth (sat), coherence (sehaj), and existential alignment with Hukam.

3. Biomedical Epistemology vs. Gurmat Ontology

The biomedical model is epistemological, it derives meaning through empirical observation, data collection, and external validation. Gurmat, by contrast, is ontological, it inquires into the nature of being, asking who is unwell, rather than what is wrong.

Biomedical psychiatry may diagnose “major depressive disorder” based on symptom clusters, but from a Gurmat lens, this is an expression of inner dislocation—Haumai Rog (egoic disease):

"Haumai deeragh rog hai, daaroo bhi is maahi.""Ego is a deep illness, but its cure also lies within it." (Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 466)

This self-reflexivity is core to Gurmat Therapy. It invites the client not to escape their suffering, but to become intimate with its roots through Naam-Simran (attentive recitation) and Shabad Vichaar (inquiry into divine sound). This self-reflexivity in Gurmat Therapy, directly maps onto emerging neuroscience and psychophysiology through the mechanisms of attentional regulation, interoceptive awareness, and vagal tone modulation.

From a neuroscientific perspective, sustained meditative focus on Naam engages the prefrontal cortex and default mode network, enhancing meta-awareness and emotional regulation (Lutz et al., 2008). Shabad Vichaar, a disciplined inquiry into meaning, mirrors cognitive reappraisal strategies used in neurocognitive therapy, activating cortico-limbic pathways that reduce amygdala-driven reactivity.

In psychophysiological terms, Simran induces parasympathetic dominance, reflected in increased heart rate variability (HRV), reduced cortisol, and vagus nerve stimulation (Porges, 2011). This somatic quieting facilitates introspection and the re-patterning of trauma-induced autonomic loops, offering a bottom-up path to coherence. Thus, Gurmat’s ontological inquiry is not abstract, it is a deeply embodied rewiring of perception and physiology.

4. The Embodied Phenomenology of Spiritual Wellness

Spiritual wellness, from a Gurmat perspective, arises when mind-body-heart are in sahaj avastha (equilibrium). The nervous system (autonomic) plays a vital role in either perpetuating states of contraction (fear, anxiety) or expansion (trust, surrender). Recent psychoneuroimmunology research affirms that mindfulness and spiritual practices regulate the vagus nerve, reduce cortisol, and enhance homeostasis (Porges, 2011).

The Gurmukh (truth-oriented being) is one whose body becomes the gurdwara, the dwelling of truth:

"Gurmukh rom rom har dhiaave.""The Gurmukh meditates upon the Divine with every hair of the body." (SGGS, Ang 941)

Such embodiment reflects a phenomenological shift, a felt, not merely conceptual, re-orientation of perception. One’s “wellness” is not imposed by treatment but awakened from within.

5. Re-Inhabiting the Self through Gurmat Therapy

Gurmat Therapy leverages atam-vichaar (self-inquiry) as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool. When clients articulate not just their “problems” but their lived estrangement from self, Gurmat practice helps disidentify from mind-content (vichaar), enabling deeper states of witnessing (sakshi bhav), a capacity neuroscientifically linked with prefrontal regulation and vagal tone.

For instance, someone experiencing chronic anxiety may describe a baseline of hypervigilance. Rather than suppressing symptoms, Gurmat Therapy would trace this vigilance to duality (dooja bhaav), and guide them toward naam abhyaas(internal repetition), which cultivates present-moment anchoring and a return to apni surat sambhaali (self-remembrance).

6. Implications for Integrative Health Models

If wellness is relational, experiential, and ontological, then health systems must evolve beyond a pill-for-symptom model. Gurmat Therapy suggests three domains of integration:

1. Ontological Inquiry – Who is experiencing this? Self-inquiry as foundational.

2. Embodied Practice – Naam, breath, posture, and rhythm as medicine.

3. Existential Relationality – Realignment with Hukam as ultimate coherence.
   

This reframing honours both phenomenological authenticity and the neurobiological realities of suffering, bridging spirituality and science.

7. Conclusion

Health is not a destination, but a mode of being. Wellness is not measured in metrics but in Anubhav, direct experience of truth. Spirituality, in this context, is not supplementary but central. Gurmat Therapy offers a radical reclamation of lived knowledge, grounding individuals in their sacred wholeness. It is in the merging of shabad and saarir, word and body, that true healing unfolds.

Author: Sonya Sanghera

References

• Leder, D. (1990). The Absent Body. University of Chicago Press.

• Merleau-Ponty, M. (2013). Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge.

• Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. Norton.

• Sri Guru Granth Sahib. (Various Angs as cited).