Not all chills come from cold autumn nights amid the eerie Halloween season. Sometimes it’s the mystery of the unknown. But what if the unknown wasn’t something to fear, but something that could bring peace, meaning, and connection? 

This episode, we’re exploring spiritual well-being; a kind of well-being that’s definitely not spoken about enough, almost like those who avoid mentioning ghosts just in case it one appears. Spiritual well-being can feel just as intangible; something you sense but can’t always explain. It’s woven into our values, our sense of purpose, and even the quiet moments when we look for meaning beyond ourselves. But how do we define it? What shapes it? Is it the same as religiosity, or do they intersect? Does culture play a role? So many questions, and we’re here to unravel the mysterious aura of spiritual well-being. 

In this Halloween season special episode, our host Susu B. sits down with Dr. Cindel White, Assistant Professor in Social and Personality Psychology at York University and leader of the Culture and Belief Lab. Together, they dive into the psychology of religion and spirituality, the cultural roots of belief, and how embracing curiosity about the unknown can help us feel more grounded, all from a researcher’s perspective. 

By the end of this episode, we hope you’ll see that you put the meaning into spirituality and that it has no limits, just like the sky you can sit under, pondering, “What are we?” which, in its own way, is practising spiritual wellness. 

Resources:

• https://www.yorku.ca/scld/student-engagement/club-policies-and-guidelines/multi-faith-space/ 
• Faith Based organisations: https://yuconnect.yorku.ca/club_signup?category_tags=6551649&group_type= 
• https://www.yfswellness.ca/mental-health 

Susu B.: Hey,YU. Welcome to your future favorite podcast, if it's not already Well-being and YU with your host, Susu B. Once upon a time in an alley I wouldn't call distant or far as scary man stood still holding a crowbar. Do we run? Do we stay? Someone yelled, it's okay. I asked the guy, what do you mean? He said, it's fine. It's Halloween. Whether you're wondering York U's campus during spooky season, or hearing whispers of one of our famous ghost stories echo through the walls, you're reminded that spirits and spirituality have always lingered in the background of our lives.

And sure, navigating spirituality can feel like stepping into the unknown. Kind of like walking through that eerie alley from our intro. Maybe that tail give you goosebumps or may your heart skip a bit. But just like that physical reaction, spirituality also touches your body and your mind. Not with fear, but with benefits that ground you and gives you a sense of peace and purpose. In this episode, I had the distinct pleasure of speaking with Dr. Cindal White. Dr. White is an assistant professor in the area of social and personality psychology at York University. She leads the Culture and Belief Lab, where her research explores the cultural evolution of diverse worldviews, including religion, supernatural belief, morality, causal thinking, and pro social behavior. She also teaches courses such as cultural psychology and the Psychology of Religion and spirituality, offering students unique insights into how belief systems shape human thought and behavior. I really hope you can join us on this journey. A few mindful minutes can really make a difference. So, let's dive into our conversation with Dr. White.

Susu B.: Dr. White, how are you doing today?

Dr. White: I'm good. How are you?

Susu B.: I'm great. I feel like this is a flashback from being in one of your classes. I was one of the lucky students who, got to get taught by you, cultural psychology. So, we'll get right into it. Right.

Dr. White: Sounds great.

Susu B.: So, today's episode is about spiritual well-being. So maybe we can impact that abstract concept word, by word. so, if you can define what spirituality is for us.

Dr. White: Yeah, so the problem with defining some of these concepts is that there's no clear definition that works for everyone. And as scientists, we love having a clear idea of what we're studying. But something like spirituality or religion, we know it's a fuzzy concept where lots of people experience this in different ways, but there seem to be some core features that are widely shared and show up for most people. So, for spirituality, usually people use this word when they're talking about a search for meaning or Something sacred or transcendent beyond themselves. So, they might be searching for connections with the divine being, with some sort of ultimate reality or truth or connections between themselves and other people, or with the natural environment or the universe that goes beyond the way we, in our ordinary scientific way of understanding things, feel we are connected.

Susu B.: Yeah, I guess that really asked, the question itself, which is the follow up question. Is spirituality the same as religiousness or religiosity?

Dr. White: Not quite so usually people use both of these terms to mean somewhat separate things. It's true that most people who are religious also describe themselves as spiritual, but lots of people also describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. And usually what they mean is that when people are talking about religiosity or being religious, they're talking about being committed not to just their personal quest for the sacred, but to some broader tradition, to uh, a community, to a cultural heritage where they are given a religious system of beliefs and practices, where they are shown that cultural tradition gives them a pathway to spirituality. So, for many people, spirituality is more about their individual orientation towards sacred things, whereas religion is more about the community, and the traditions that they share with other people and with other institutions.

Susu B.: I'm glad you made that distinction because I remember we were tabling uh, a lot of times to just promote the podcast and uh, we would ask some students just a question like, oh, what do you do to take care of your spiritual well-being? And all of them are like, ah, I'm not religious. I'm like, that's not what I asked. so it is good to know that yes, they are connected, but at the same time they're not quite the same. Right.

Dr. White: For some people they find it useful to rely on their religious heritage. So maybe religious practices or religious scriptures or relating to the religious community as a almost like pathway to spiritual connection.

Susu B.: This is how one pathway that worked for, my people worked. And maybe it works for me or prompts me to also achieve that connection.

Dr. White: Exactly. Whereas for other people, they're not getting their spiritual needs met by those formal institutions, by those existing scriptures. So, they might rely on other things. They might have more individualistic practices that don't have anything to do with organized religion that also allow them to have the same spiritual emotions, these same sacred connections.

Susu B.: Got it. Yeah. So, I guess the second word in spiritual well-being, now that we define spirituality comes the well-being part. So, what are the benefits of spirituality? And in other words, why should I be interested in spirituality?

Dr. White: Yeah, we do actually have a lot of evidence, at least correlational. So, we don't necessarily have the strongest causal evidence that spirituality or in spiritual practices cause people to have greater well-being. But at least at a correlational level, we know that people who describe themselves as more spiritual or also people who describe themselves as more religious are also more likely to show other indicators of psychological well-being. so if you think about things that psychotherapists might care about or medical professionals might care about rates of depression or positive mood or positive social relationships or even physical health and longevity, all of these things seem to be at least correlated with people being more spiritual, more religious and there's a few different practices or reasons why this might be. If you're interested in some of these pathways.

Susu B.: That's why I'm here.

Dr. White: So, it's again lots of correlational evidence, unclear how much of these pathways we can confirm using really good experiments.

Susu B.: Yeah, that has been the thing in psychology from psych and correlation does not equal causation. It's very difficult, but it is still relevant to our topic.

Dr. White: Yeah, and it's especially hard with something like spirituality or religion where the thing that you think is causing these outcomes is either a community of people doing something together. It's hard for us as psychologists get a bunch of people together to do the same spiritual activities and force them to do something that they wouldn't have already chosen to do themselves. It's hard to create mystical experiences in the lab, although certainly psychologists have tried.

Susu B.: Sounds fun though.

Dr. White: Yeah, fun to try, although not so satisfying when your experiments don't work. But at least at a correlational level, there seems to be these pathways where for example, in terms of physical health, sometimes the argument is that religion often or spiritual practices often give people clear guidance about what they should do to live a better life. And some of that could involve things like not smoking or not using certain types of drugs which could have negative impacts on health or strong social norms against things like suicide which is sort of an extreme example where there's obviously lots of different factors that go into people's well-being and people's challenges and struggles in life. But if you have very, very strong social pressures from your religious traditions from what's important to you, that this is the right way to live my life and this is the wrong way, sometimes that leads you to avoid behaviors that might otherwise have been tempting.

Susu B.: Yeah, no, I totally understand and relate to that as well. I feel like back home in Egypt because it's a very religious and I say religious that's not me mistaking it with spirituality. It is a very religious country. I really saw both sides when I came here. And there is a suicide helpline. I don't think in Egypt the approach would be similar to how suicide helplines approach it here. It will be primarily about, you should not do that because it won't end well in your afterlife. Not necessarily. Because right now, your life right now, is the focus.

Dr. White: There's sort of this cosmic importance to your actions, not just and some medical professional.

Susu B.: And somehow, they work. You would think here it's dismissive of the situation, but it actually could work in this cultural context.

Dr. White: Yeah. So, sort of different tools, different perspectives that can all sort of push towards healthier behavior. other things that religion gives you or spirituality gives you is social support. So, we know just generally for well-being in all sorts of ways, having a good social support network, strong relationships, positive relationships are really, really good for you. And religious communities or spiritual communities give people opportunities to connect with others, to bond with other people, to feel that they can trust other people around them, and then you can rely on these people when things are hard in your life. And a lot of spiritual religious communities give you more opportunities to do that than many secular communities do.

Susu B.: Yeah, no, that makes absolute sense. And, I remember a lot of people that I've met in Canada that would just. You shouldn't ask that question. But I would ask them like, oh, are you practicing in religion? And they're like, I don't practice it, but I go to and list the institution that they go to just for a community. And, , it is, a very valid thing to engage in. So, I know we have been trying to avoid saying religion or spirituality, and it has been difficult. But although we just explained that spirituality goes beyond religions, religiosity certainly encompasses many aspects of spirituality. Can you speak, of some of the major spiritual and religious events that we witness every year, but we do not necessarily understand? So, for example, what is Ramadan, Diwali, Easter, and how do they really connect to spirituality and cultural wellness? That was a long question.

Dr. White Yeah, no problem.

Susu B.: Yeah.

Dr. White: A lot of things that you just mentioned, like Ramadan, Diwali, Easter, Christmas, there are these annual festivals where people gather together. And often these have historically been religious festivals. They involve maybe religious rituals. Maybe it's time to gather and tell religious stories, about your gods, about gurus, about, important religious figures and what they've been through in life. These festivals give people an opportunity to recognize and reflect on those religious traditions, but also, they have all sorts of spiritual benefits and communal benefits that go beyond purely learning about your religion or reinforcing your religion so something like a lot of these festivals involve building that community with other people. So even if you maybe don't take the religious reasons for doing this super seriously, if that's not what you're most interested in, maybe you like this is a time of the year to meet up with family members, to meet distant relatives that you don't see very often and to do things with them that create bonds, that create positive feelings, that reinforce the social support structure. So, you might sing songs, you might do dances, you might share presents, you might um, share food together or share fasting together. So, abstaining from food and all of these are great ways to bond people into a community and that has great well-being benefits sort of separately from whether you were infusing religious meaning into these activities.

Susu B.: Right. No, that makes absolute sense. And yeah, even honestly, you're saying just within your community. But I've seen people who for example are not Muslim, but they fast Ramadan just because. Yeah, they're interested in being surrounded by this community one way or another. Are you able to tell us a little bit about the specific meanings behind some of these that I mentioned? Like Ramadan, Diwali, Easter. Personally, I know a little bit about Ramadan and Easter for example, but I don't necessarily know as much as about Diwali. Do you want to tell us a little bit about each?

Dr. White: Yeah, so I mean I'm also not super deeply familiar with all of these differentiations.

Susu B.: There's obviously a little just the person who teaches religion, I'm like, oh, she knows everything about all the religions.

Dr. White: No, I would love to, I'm trying to know more. Um, don't know everything. So, something like Diwali for example is a case where it's often a term a festival of lights where again there's get people gathering, they're putting out special decorations including lighting lamps and maybe having fireworks, doing things that are fun to do with the community together. I know as Canadians we also love to put lights on our houses and shut up fireworks at other times in the year because it's just a thing that brings joy to humans.

Susu B.: yeah. You're making me realize how many connections we have. For example, Christmas lights and Christmas is a thing. So, it just, it makes me realize like we're more connected than we think.

Dr. White: There ‘certain celebrations, there are certain types of festivities and Types of things we do during celebrations that just feel good to humans and show up repeatedly in lots and lots of different religious traditions. Beside like Diwali, the specific reason why people say they're doing it is a bit different. So, it's something that is practiced by many South Asian communities including Hindu, Sikh, Jain, some Buddhist communities. And when you ask them what special religious event is this commemorating, they'll give different explanations. So maybe it's commemorating, time to focus on an event in their religious history from maybe a mythological story about a God who did certain actions. These are different reasons are given by different traditions. But the way it's actually practiced in terms of just a communal bonding festivity seems pretty similar across lots of traditions.

Susu B.: Yeah, no, I understand the idea of each person giving a different reason. Ramadan, someone could say that it's just for a connection or someone could say that some people actually fast. Like that person who's not even Muslim and who fast just for because they believe that is good. Cleansing for the body or cleansing for the soul is another different way of explaining it. So, I completely understand that. Actually, I find it interesting. My manager at work, one of the questions I was going to ask you was, if Halloween could pass as a spiritual event. And she actually explained.

Dr. White: For some people, definitely it does, apparently.

Susu B.: Because paganism is considered a uh, religion in itself or a belief. And um, that was the Celtic festival of Saan if you're interested in that, look it up. Because honestly I had a whole uh, exploration of that when my manager told me about that.

Dr. White: Yeah, so paganism is a case where it ‘at uh, least the way it's currently practiced is largely a modern creation within the last 100 years, sort of trying to revive supposedly ancient traditions and reinvent pagan rituals and beliefs for modern life for modern needs. And something like the idea that you can add extra spiritual significance to something like Halloween that is already very common, very widely practiced, very fun to engage in, just shows how you can overlap different types of religious interpretations or spiritual meanings to these festivities or you can engage in them for other sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with spirituality.

Susu B.: And just for the listeners that don't know, paganism is all religions that are preceding Christianity. Is that how you would define it?

Dr. White: So often paganism is used as a generic term for typically European religions that preceded Christianity. So, religions that were practiced in various parts of Europe and the Middle east before Christianity dominated Things and modern neo pagans are trying to revive some of those traditions. So maybe you could think of the gods of ancient Greece or ancient Rome or Celtic religious beliefs and Celtic festivals like ancient Egypt, Ancient Egypt for example. All of these are sort of biased. Yeah, definitely though. All these modern movements are trying to integrate some of those rituals, some of those beliefs about God, some of those ways of understanding or connecting important pieces in their life to divine beings by talking about how they're embodied in these ancient divine beings that preceded Christianity.

Susu B.: Right, yeah. Which is why an episode like this is needed because I don't know personally, I didn't know much about paganism until I, I was humbled by my manager who explained this to me.but yeah, there is more beyond like even when we talk about like Ramadan, Diwali and Easter, these are just like, you know, the main ones that uh, we could think of as examples. But there's more, way more historically and like concurrently that are very different from what we always think of when we think of spirituality or religion. so I'm glad you're the person sitting in front of me because you're a researcher so you know that unlike other direct and measurable forms of well-being, such as physical well-being, for example, spiritual well-being is not as easily identified. Are there ways to realize that? Oh no, my spiritual well-being is not in good shape right now potentially.

Dr. White: And one caveat on all of this is that spiritual well-being is important for many people, but not important for everyone. So, lots of people are neither spiritual nor religious and they're just fine by lots of other indicators of well-being., especially in largely, secular societies like in northern Europe, where many people are non-religious, being religious or spiritual doesn't seem to have the same well-being benefits. Whereas if you're in a very religious community where lots of people around you really value religion, that's where also being a religious person yourself or a spiritual person yourself seems to have benefits. but if you are interested in spirituality as a pathway to well-being, or if you're interested in making sure you have a positive, healthy orientation towards your spirituality generally, the way researchers have focused on this is just focusing on the other indicators of well-being that we already care about. So, things like what is your mood, what is your frequency of depressive symptoms or anxiety, or what's your physical health or do you feel like you're satisfied with your life? Do you feel like you have purpose? These are all questions that psychologists have been interested in for as long as we've been psychologists, and there's definitely a lot of research looking at how these not overtly spiritual forms of well-being are connected to spirituality and religion. There do seem to be these associations.

Susu B.: Yeah, no, that makes absolute sense. And personally, if I was to be asked like if I'm the guest today and yes definitely I think that that's your perspective. I think that for example, when I think of spirituality, I think of something as simple as staring at the sky and thinking what are we? I know it's a little bit of philosophical view, but I feel like even that is something that you will need to. Personally, I believe that you will need to engage with at some point and when it doesn't happen, you will feel even if you're not religious, I'll also be mysterious and not tell people what I am. But even if you're not religious, or spiritual, I think you will need to have this sort of connection with your identity because it is a part of identity, whether you believe or not this is your identity. I am a not believer is an identity. That's how you define the word identity. So, I think it is definitely something that. It's a tricky question because I don't think there is an answer to that. There is no way direct way to measure it. It's just like physical well-being. But there are a lot of correlations. I know you mentioned earlier that physical well-being itself is something that spirituality or spiritual well-being impacts. So especially if you are a person, who cares about spirituality, I think that would be something that you should definitely check out.

Dr. White: and it's also important to note that this is a case where maybe in psychology especially we like to harp on self-report measures not being super informative. That may not be the best indicator of certain things because people's subjective experience of themselves doesn't always match how other people view them. So, you might think everything's going fine and other people may in your life, others may not, or vice versa. You may think everything is terrible and everyone around you thinks everything is totally fine.

Susu B.: Not being grateful or something. Yeah.

Dr. White: So, there's definitely lots of good reasons to look for non-self-support measures. But it is also important that your subjective experience of the world is positive and fulfilling. And in that case just asking people to describe how they're feeling about various aspects of their life that might be tied to spirituality could be helpful. and it's also important to note that there isn't a guarantee that Spirituality is always the solution to these types of mental health challenges. So, if you're not feeling good about your life in various ways, maybe engagement with spiritual practices or religious practices is a pathway to give you tools to increase your wellbeing, but maybe it's not. For some people, engaging in spiritual practices is just not really what captivates them. It's not what they relate to for other people. Also, engaging in religious and spiritual practices can feel constraining and create other distress. So if you're engaging in a community of people and they're all telling you, to believe something that you don't really believe in your heart to, if you're feeling anxiety about, I should be more religious, I should be more connected to God, but I'm not feeling it in my heart right now, that can create even more distress. if you are told by people in your religious community that maybe your struggles are due to demonic forces or to witchcraft at the hands of other people, which seems again, maybe wild based on many people's spirituality. But does this is an explanation that people talk about when they talk about why bad things happen? These are ways you can use spirituality to really sort of double down on negativity in a way that can be unhelpful.

Susu B.: No, I'm glad you're mentioning that because I remember you were re mentioning communities, for example. And let's be honest, not all communities are great. Sometimes not for all people, for sure. For sure. Like, sometimes you don't feel like you belong. and that doesn't mean, okay, that's it, you can find another community that you belong in so that it's not, like I said, or a bad and I completely understand, for example, my culture is. Because I know your research focus on that. My culture is a believer of evil eye. And I guess you will definitely give a better, explanation of that. But from my experience, it just the idea that someone's literally just like their vibe impacted something good that I have. And, it is distressing, very distressing. Like when I am posting something on Instagram, it's not the same as someone who doesn't know what evil eye is. I post something on Instagram and I'm thinking, what's going to happen now? Someone is going to look at the party I'm having. Someone isn’t look at the happy emotions that I'm having in this picture and maybe, give me the evil eye or impact me in a negative way, or give me negative vibes. That's another way of Saying it, so I totally understand how it is connected to your well-being, even on the negative side as well.

Dr. White: Yeah. And a lot of religious traditions or spiritual beliefs Incorporate both positive forces and negative forces Operating in the universe and sometimes relying on those positive forces and taking comfort in positive forces and believing that everything will work up for the best is a very adaptive form of spirituality that can help you deal with struggles. But some of these more negative attributions. So, the way you're talking about, if I show off my success towards other people, maybe I'll get good feelings from them as they congratulate me. They feel proud of me, they feel happy with me, they want me to succeed. But maybe if there's someone out there who doesn't like that I'm successful, feels envious of my success, and then I'm afraid that that will create this negative spiritual force that will harm me later on, that can be really distressing to you as an individual and also potentially destructive for social relationships.

Susu B.: If you think of people that way.

Dr. White: If you think of someone specifically maybe.

Susu B.: You are worried about, that makes absolute sense. So, I guess you have been kind of giving tips as we go, on how to approach, spirituality, or spiritual well-being at least. So, in what way can we invest in our spiritual well-being? Do you have any tips, or practices that you would advise students to engage in?

Dr. White: Yeah, I mean, the core of this is always you need to find what works for you. So, there's no one solution that works for everyone. And people are often also really heavily influenced by the traditions that they grew up in. So, there's no one religious tradition that is best for everyone. But there's many pathways towards spiritual well-being. largely the things that work well involve finding community. as we said, some communities are maybe healthier than others. So, finding the one that works for you, engaging in maybe shared religious rituals, spiritual, practices like maybe yoga, meditation. These are things that can be done in groups of people, not just by yourself. And that communal bonding can be really helpful. also engaging in some of these practices yourself, just engaging in things like prayer, yoga, meditation, Contemplation of spiritual scriptures, or the teachings of spiritual leaders. Doing that on your own can be a helpful way to take a step away from your ordinary concerns, give you new perspectives on things, help you sort of reset your emotions and form better ways to approach struggles in your life. And also engaging in a lot of spiritual and religious practices has these benefits for providing you with a sense that your life has meaning. And generating other self-transcended positive emotions. So really, if you find it really spiritually meaningful to sing songs in a religious ritual with other, people in your community, or go into nature with a group of people and look at the sky like I do, or alone and look at the sky and sot feel that sense of being small relative to the vastness of the universe, all of these are positive emotions which can lead to lots of good downstream consequences.

Susu B.: Yeah. And I'm glad that you said again, I'm just putting an emphasis on this community part. whenever one of my friends asked me, just because they come to me because I'm a psych major and apparently, I know everything,

Dr. White: we learn How to read minds and solve everyone's problems.

Yes, thank you for confirming you do to.

Susu B.: So, whenever they ask me and they're like, o, oh, I'm going to try therapy, I always tell them first thing, if you're not comfortable with this therapist, it's not that therapy isn't for you, it's that this therapy is not for you. So that's one thing I just want to relate to, the community. If you try a community and it happens to be a religious or spiritual community and it doesn't work for you.

Susu B.: It’s not that community is not for you.

Susu B.: It's just, you need to just go try another community, that might be believing in the same thing or not. Whatever it is. That's just a little disclaimer. That's my tip for the day. Yeah.

Dr. White: And it could be about the beliefs they're holding. It could be about the social norms that they're pushing on you. It could be about the types of way you're practicing, be it more individualistically by yourself, or could it be more ecstatically, communally engaging with other people. Different things work for different people and there isn't one best solution.

Susu B.: Yeah, this is the quote of the day that different things work for different people. Um, because even for me, for example, spiritual practice that I'm open to talk about is I always write letters to the universe. This same letter, if it's not Dear universe, could be Dear Diary. And then it has no spiritual meaning whatsoever, so you put the meaning into things, that's for sure. and yeah, that's my.

Dr. White: And for some people, it is giving it that bigger spiritual meaning that is really impactful. So, for example, people also talk about this in the context of things like marriages or relationships where separate from spirituality, there's lots of reasons why you might care about this person, be devoted to this person. But some people find it helpful to also think about their personal relationships as having this sacred bond that allows them to transcend the mundane reasons why you love them or the mundane reasons why you get annoyed by them sometimes and have this deeper meaning to that whole relationship.

Susu B.: No, that makes absolute sense. And since you are a faculty member, do you have any recommendations for faculty members and the university and embracing, encouraging spiritual Ness?

Dr. White: I'm not sure I have any great suggestions other than what York is already doing to try and allow people to practice their diverse religious and spiritual activities as they want. So, I know there's lots of clubs here at York for people to connect with people. Yeah. And there's chaplaincy

Susu B.: There are places to pray as well. I'm pretty sure. Yeah.

Dr. White: And the important part too is, as I said, there isn't one right answer that works for everyone. So, making sure that diverse perspectives are represented and aren't stigmatized. So, there's also potential risk with some of. When you treat religion or spirituality with well-being. There's a risk that especially some medical professionals might view that as, spirituality is irrelevant to people's well-being or people. As you discuss the therapist you find might not be the right therapist for you because maybe they don't understand your religious background, maybe they don't connect with it so it is really important for people who are interested in secular forms of well-being to also acknowledge that a lot of York students are coming to their well-being needs having a religious orientation, having religious commitments. So, it's important to support those spiritual forms of well-being alongside, more mundane forms of well-being and make sure it's respected and included.

Susu B.: That makes absolute sense. And I know there's also a lot of accommodations. So, make sure if you're a student. For example, I remember, some students were fasting during Ramadan and it was literally exam season and they were exempted to go and break, their fast.

Dr. White: and it's something to definitely be in touch with your professors about. If you think there is something really important in your religious or spiritual community that is interfering with your studies, that's fine as long as you communicate it with your professors and see what they're open to accommodating and adjusting. And I know we are required to make certain reasonable adjustments to people. For example, during Ramadan.

Susu B.: Yeah, no, that makes sense Okay, that's coming from a professor.

Dr. White: Just communicate. If you're struggling, if you think you're going to have issues, tell us ahead of time. And we definitely, at least most professors should be willing to figure out solutions that work for everyone.

Susu B.: And we have a lot of resources for you guys in the show notes, so you should definitely check those out and yeah, with this being said, this concludes our interview.

Dr. White: Can I plug one final thing?

Susu B.: Sure.

Dr. White: this coming fall and probably next year while I'm teaching a course on religion and spirituality from a psychological perspective.

Susu B.: Perfect.

Dr. White: Please sign up, for courses on this topic if you are interested. This course is new at York. It didn't exist before, but it does now. So, I'm really excited.

Susu B.: Yeah. Shout out. Thank you for bringing that course here. Yeah. So, thank you very much, uh, Dr. White, for being here with us today. It was great having you.

Dr. White: Thank you for having me.

Susu B.: Thank you.

Dr. White: Bye.

Susu B.: I really want to thank our Special guest today, Dr. Cindal White, an assistant professor in the area of social and personality psychology at York University. I really enjoyed our enlightening conversation. Thank you, Dr. White, for being such a valuable resource. You can also find links to all the services Dr. White mentioned in the show notes for this episode along with more valuable information, tips and resources. Go to our website go.yorku.ca/wbpodcast. Click on the episodes link and look for the episode Spiritual well Being Spooky season Navigating the Unknown. This episode was co-produced by the Well Being and YU podcast team.

Our podcast coordinator is Prabhleen Luthra. Our technical editor is Jonathan Varlas Gonzalas. And I'm your host Susu B. And we'll leave you with the quote of the day.

“Different things work for different people” Thank you for listening.