Understanding Neshamah: Our Spiritual and Intellectual Essence
In Hebrew, the third level of the soul is called Neshamah (נְשָׁמָה), meaning “breath.” Yet this breath is unlike ordinary breathing—it symbolizes our distinct spiritual and intellectual awareness, our divine capacity to seek truth, wisdom, and deep understanding consciously and deliberately. According to the Torah, animals also possess a form of neshamah, granting them basic intelligence and perception. However, the human Neshamah is unique, infused directly by the Creator, and empowering us to cultivate profound wisdom, spiritual insight, ethical discernment, and purposeful living.
The Torah vividly describes this divine infusion in Genesis 2:7:
“Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath (nishmat, from Neshamah) of life; and man became a living being.”
This sacred breath distinguishes human beings by endowing us with responsibility and capability—to discern truth from deception, choose good over evil, and engage in a purposeful relationship with our Creator.
Knowledge and Clarity: Keys to True Healing
Our Neshamah guides us in the pursuit of truth—not merely religious truth, but practical wisdom across all dimensions of life, including science, health, nutrition, and societal realities. Authentic healing depends deeply upon clear discernment, for the modern world is saturated with misinformation, propaganda, and conflicting advice—often driven by powerful financial interests, including pharmaceutical corporations, medical institutions, mainstream media and governments.
The prophet Hosea’s warning remains strikingly relevant today:
“My people perish for lack of knowledge.” (Hosea 4:6)
Without true understanding—grounded in genuine spiritual discernment and careful investigation—we easily fall prey to lies, harmful medical advice, unnecessary illness, and emotional distress. Conversely, wisdom and clarity of mind, anchored in faith (emunah) and guided by prayerful pursuit of divine truth, lead us to holistic wellness.
King Solomon affirmed this foundational principle:
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and depart from evil. It will be health to your flesh, and strength to your bones.” (Proverbs 3:5–8)
The health and vitality of our bodies and minds are deeply connected to the clarity and purity of our Neshamah.
Personal Reflection: Healing through Faith, Prayer, and Discernment
My awakening to the profound importance of the Neshamah began with my own severe health crises. When I was suffering from debilitating migraines, conventional doctors initially suspected a brain tumor. Yet, after extensive testing, medical professionals offered no relief or genuine solutions. Feeling abandoned by the conventional medical system, I turned directly and deeply to God, earnestly praying for divine guidance.
Recognizing the overwhelming confusion of opinions even within holistic health circles, I knew I needed divine wisdom. Through persistent prayer, study of Scripture, and cultivating emunah—trust in the Almighty’s ability to guide me—I gradually discerned which paths of knowledge were truly beneficial. My healing came not merely from human wisdom, but from divine direction toward accurate nutritional information, recognition of deficiencies (especially vitamin B12), and awareness of emotional triggers rooted in worry and anxiety. God answered my prayers by leading me to truthful sources amid the many conflicting claims about health, nutrition, and herbal medicine.
Years later, I again faced a major health challenge—severe hypothyroidism. This condition arose after taking on responsibility for two additional children who came into our care, causing significant family stress. I knew extensive information about holistic health, yet my symptoms persisted. Through renewed prayer and spiritual reflection, I came to realize my health issues were linked directly to unresolved emotional and relational tensions, particularly anger and frustration that had been left unaddressed.
With divine help, and guided by earnest prayer, I received clear direction to seek marriage coaching and holistic life coaching—further restoring my emotional and relational clarity. Guided by emunah, prayer, and practical wisdom, I addressed underlying spiritual and emotional issues, leading ultimately to complete physical recovery.
These experiences reinforced for me a powerful truth: Our Neshamah—our spiritual and intellectual clarity—requires nurturing through persistent prayer and trust in divine guidance. God alone knows exactly what each of us needs, and it is only through sincere prayer and reliance upon His leading that we discover genuine, holistic healing amid confusing and conflicting human advice.
The Biblical Imperative: Pursuing Truth in All Areas
The Scriptures consistently exhort us to pursue truth, wisdom, and knowledge in every realm of life:
Proverbs 4:7 emphasizes: “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore, get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding.”
Proverbs 24:5 further confirms: “A wise man is strong; yes, a man of knowledge increases strength.”
Psalm 119:105 declares: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path,” underscoring that divine wisdom guides us practically in every decision we face—health, emotional, relational, and societal.
Our pursuit of knowledge must always be guided by spiritual principles and unwavering trust in God, who illuminates truth and exposes falsehood. Only with divine assistance can we confidently discern authentic knowledge from harmful misinformation, safeguarding our holistic health and spiritual integrity.
Cultivating Your Neshamah: A Lifelong Commitment
Nurturing your Neshamah involves an ongoing dedication to pursuing knowledge and truth through constant prayer, study, and active discernment. Such a pursuit encompasses spiritual understanding, practical knowledge about health and nutrition, scientific truths, and societal realities. We must courageously challenge prevailing misinformation, especially when institutions—medical, governmental, or corporate—place profit or power above truth and health.
Biblical figures like Daniel and Joseph illustrate the transformative power of holistic wisdom—knowledge obtained through divine revelation, practical study, and spiritual discernment. They thrived amid adversity by seeking truth not only spiritually, but practically and scientifically, blessing their entire communities through their wisdom (Daniel 1:17–20; Genesis 41:39).
Joe Dispenza: Your Mind and Your Body
The neshamah is the level of mind: what we believe, what we expect and what we tell ourselves is true. Few modern teachers have done more to show how belief reaches into the body than Dr. Joe Dispenza. He is a chiropractor and author who studied neuroscience and biochemistry, and he tells a remarkable story. In 1986, during a triathlon in Palm Springs, he was struck from behind by an SUV while cycling and broke six vertebrae. Surgeons recommended rods along his spine. He refused. Lying face down for weeks, he spent hours each day mentally rebuilding his spine, vertebra by vertebra, in as much detail as he could imagine. Less than ten weeks later he was back on his feet and back to work, and he spent the rest of his career asking how the mind could do such a thing.
His two books on this question are Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself (2012) and You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter (2014).
Thoughts, feelings and the “habit of being yourself”
Dr. Dispenza explains the loop that runs most of our lives:
- A thought fires a pattern in the brain.
- The brain sends chemical signals to the body, and we feel an emotion that matches the thought. A worried thought produces the chemistry of worry.
- The body, feeling worry, signals the brain, which produces more thoughts that match the feeling.
Round and round it goes. Repeated for years, the loop becomes a state of being: the body becomes so used to the chemistry of worry, guilt or resentment that it craves it, the way a body craves a drug. Dr. Dispenza says that by midlife most of us are a set of memorized behaviors, emotional reactions and unconscious beliefs that run on their own. We wake up and think the same thoughts as yesterday, make the same choices and get the same results. Our personality, he says, creates our personal reality.
The brain is shaped by what we repeat. “Neurons that fire together wire together” is how scientists summarize the work of the psychologist Donald Hebb. Every time you rehearse a thought or a reaction, you strengthen it. Every time you interrupt it and choose a new one, you begin to build a different brain.
Mental rehearsal
Dr. Dispenza points to studies showing that practicing in the mind changes the brain and body much as practicing in the body does. In a well-known 1995 experiment, the neuroscientist Alvaro Pascual-Leone had one group practice a simple five-finger piano exercise for two hours a day for five days, and another group only imagine playing it. The brain maps for the fingers grew in both groups. In another study, people who only imagined exercising a finger gained a large part of the strength gained by people who actually exercised it. Athletes, musicians and surgeons use mental rehearsal for this reason.
So, Dr. Dispenza teaches, you can rehearse the person you want to become: how you will think, choose, speak and feel, before the circumstances in your life have changed. He asks students to feel the elevated emotions of that future, such as gratitude, joy and love, now, in advance, so that the body begins to live in the chemistry of the future instead of the past.
The placebo and the nocebo
A placebo is an inactive treatment, such as a sugar pill or a sham procedure, that brings real improvement because the person expects it to. You Are the Placebo collects the research:
- In a 2002 study in the New England Journal of Medicine, people with knee arthritis who had sham surgery (small cuts in the skin, nothing done inside the knee) improved as much as those who had the real arthroscopic surgery, and the improvement lasted two years.
- In a 2001 study in Science, people with Parkinson’s disease who were given a placebo injection released dopamine in their brains, the very chemical their disease lacks, because they expected a drug.
- In study after study of antidepressants, a large share of the benefit is also seen in people taking placebo pills.
The nocebo is the shadow side: expecting harm brings harm. People who are told about a drug’s side effects report more of them, even on a sugar pill. Dr. Dispenza tells stories of people who sickened after being given a wrong diagnosis, and recovered when the error was found. Words from a doctor, a parent or a coach carry power.
His conclusion is that the placebo is not “nothing.” It is the person’s own mind producing real chemistry and real healing because of what they believe. If belief can do that by accident, he asks, can we learn to do it on purpose? His answer is meditation: daily practice in which a person quiets the old thoughts and feelings, becomes “no one” for a while, and then rehearses the new self and the healed body with elevated emotion.
Ancient wisdom, modern science
None of this would surprise the sages. “As he thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). Emunah, trust in the Creator, is itself a state of being, rehearsed daily in prayer and blessing until it becomes who we are. Gratitude was built into Jewish life thousands of years before scientists measured it: the sages taught a person to say a hundred blessings a day. Each blessing is a small mental rehearsal of a world full of good.
The other side of the debate
Mainstream researchers agree that placebo effects are real and can be strong, especially for symptoms such as pain, nausea, fatigue and mood. They find much smaller effects on objective measures such as tumor size, blood counts or infections. A large review of placebo trials found little effect on objective outcomes. Interestingly, studies at Harvard have found that “open-label” placebos work even when people know they are taking a sugar pill. Scientists also criticize Dr. Dispenza’s use of quantum physics to explain his teaching, and point out that the healings reported at his workshops have not been tested in controlled trials. Arukah’s position: what you believe and expect has real effects on your body, and training your mind is good medicine. It works alongside care for the body; it does not replace it.
Coaching the neshamah
A coach working at the level of neshamah listens for beliefs: “I’ve always been sick,” “Nothing works for me,” “I’m just an anxious person.” These sentences are rehearsals. You don’t argue with them; you help the client notice them, question them and practice new ones. You help them design small daily practices: a morning of gratitude instead of the phone, a prayer or meditation, mental rehearsal of a hard conversation before it happens.
Two rules keep this safe. First, never tell a client that their illness is caused by their thinking, or that they are not healing because they don’t believe enough. That is the nocebo in a coach’s mouth. Second, belief never replaces needed care. A client with a serious diagnosis can rehearse healing and still follow through with the medicine, the nutrition and the professionals they need. Some medicines, including blood pressure, seizure, steroid, heart and psychiatric drugs, must come down gradually with the prescriber, never stopped all at once.
A Sacred Responsibility to Seek Truth
Job 32:8 beautifully summarizes our divine responsibility to nurture our Neshamah:
“But there is a spirit in man, and the breath (nishmat, from Neshamah) of the Almighty gives him understanding.”
The Creator entrusts us with spiritual and intellectual capacities to discern truth clearly. Nourishing this divine gift through earnest prayer, deep faith (emunah), and diligent pursuit of knowledge across every sphere of life is not merely beneficial—it is our sacred calling.
My personal journey from debilitating pain and chronic illness to vibrant health and clarity vividly demonstrates this principle. It was not mere human wisdom that healed me, but divine guidance—attained through prayer, persistent faith, and a deep trust in God’s leading toward truth.
Through the Arukah Method™, I invite you into this same transformative experience—trusting God, pursuing knowledge courageously, and experiencing authentic healing in every area of your life. May your Neshamah guide you, your family, and your community into lasting health, clarity, and purpose.