With and For hosted by Dr. Pam King

Latest Episodes:

Assessment: How to Reflect on Our Progress Toward Spiritual Health with Dr. Pam King Oct 28, 2024

Show notes

“How did it go?” As we pursue purpose and spiritual health, we need regular opportunities to take stock and understand how our efforts are making an impact in our lives and in the lives of others.

In the process of pursuing purpose, cultivating joy, and connecting more deeply to ourselves, we need to learn how to audit and assess how its going as we live out our spirituality and refine our values.

In this episode, Dr. Pam King explains assessment—the final (and absolutely essential) step in the process of cultivating agility and adaptivity for spiritual health. At this stage, we take stock, adapt, and flex, ready to start fresh and begin anew each day.

Show Notes

Audit and assess
Take stock, adapt, and flex, ready to start fresh and begin anew each day.
Consider cycles and frequencies of assessment
The Ignatian Prayer of Examen
Becoming aware of where God is most fully active in our lives
Slow down, connect with God, and take a different perspective
What are we made and created to do?
What is our purpose as full human selves?
The importance of patience and pausing
Accountability
Utilize emotions as signposts
Drawing on the first step of attunement
How to facilitate the final step of the cycle and move toward beginning again

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

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

Activation: Intentional Steps Toward Your Purpose with Dr. Pam King Oct 21, 2024

Show notes

“Activate your skills, gifts, and passions for the benefit of others.”

Activation is the practical step in the cycle of 5 A’s for Agility in Spiritual Health—where we implement a practice or exercise, make a move toward our values, or experiment with something to help us grow.

In this episode, Dr. Pam King walks through the fourth step of the 5 A’s: Activate. This step in the cycle draws from each previous step, going from non-judgmental observation, internally connecting to our values, and then puts our values into action for the sake of living out our purpose.

Show Notes

Implement a practice or exercise, make a move toward our values, or experiment with something to help us grow.
“What is one thing I can do today to more clearly align my life to those values and those sources of joy and mattering that I thought about when I was considering alignment.”
An attitude of discovery
Enacting intentional behavior; bringing our values into real life
“Activate your skills, gifts, and passions for the benefit of others.”
Activating your purpose
What will get us one step closer to our purpose?
Stay mindful of the feelings we attuned to in the first step of the 5 A’s.
Positive, expansive feelings
Small microsteps forward
Moving toward what matters most

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

About With & For

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

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

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

Show notes

“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.

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

About With & For

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

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

Awareness: Non-Judgmental Reflection on Our Emotions and Thoughts with Dr. Pam King Oct 07, 2024

Show notes

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

About With & For

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

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

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

Show notes

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.

Show Notes

Jill Westbrook introduces the episode

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

About With & For

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

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

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

Show notes

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

About With & For

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

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

A Psychology-Backed Framework for Healthy Spirituality with Dr. Pam King Sep 16, 2024

Show notes

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 & Spirituality

2. Habits & Rhythms

3. Relationships & Community

4. Identity & Narrative

5. Vocation & Purpose

6. Ethics & Virtues

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

About With & For

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

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

The Six Facets of Spiritual Health with Pam King & Dan Koch (You Have Permission) Sep 09, 2024

Show notes

Pam King joins licensed therapist Dan Koch on his podcast, You Have Permission, for a discussion of the six facets of spiritual health.

Show Notes

Subscribe to Dan Koch’s podcast, You Have Permission and his Patreon at patreon.com/dankoch
Pam’s research interests: positive developmental psychology and theology
How 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 group
The Thrive Center’s rubric of Six Facets of Spiritual Health
What are the six facets of spiritual health?

Contemplative neuroscience
Fight, flight, freeze
Built in rhythms of work and rest
Sabbath
Ancient rhythms and practical wisdom that give us permission to rest
Listen 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/dankoch

Contemplative practices
How to make changing diapers a spiritual practice: “Oh, we got a pooper!”
Directionality to narrative
Ethics 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 meditation
How youth approach morality in the context of community and family

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

About With & For

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

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

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

Show notes

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

About With & For

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

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

A Practice: Dr. Lisa Miller on Closing Doors so Others Can Open Jun 03, 2024

Show notes

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