Spirituality Levels Vary Throughout Day – We are Most Spiritual in the Morning!

A man with hands raised to greet the sunrise.

Spirituality varies according to the time of day – and we feel it most in the morning

University of Connecticut researchers used data from the ongoing SoulPulse study, which collects data using participants’ smartphones tracking spiritual awareness in real-time during peoples’ normal activities.

They found people are at their most spiritual in the morning as well as while listening to music, reading, exercising, meditating and praying, however, working and playing video games was found to be distracting.

You might expect spiritual souls to have God on their mind all day but the new study says people are at their most religious in the morning. Researchers also found individuals were most spiritually engaged while listening to music, reading or exercising, as well as while praying or meditating.

However, spiritual people – defined as a self-reported awareness of God, a higher power or larger ideal – reported feeling less connected with a higher power while working or playing video games.

A total of 2,439 people in the US took two surveys each day for two weeks between November 2013 and May 2015. The results, which will be presented at the 110th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA), showed that being at work reduced participants’ spiritual awareness.

Those who worked the most appeared to have the lowest awareness.

The study also found that people who watched the news were more spiritually aware than those who did not, but the act of watching the news lowered awareness for everyone in the short-term.

‘What surprised us is how much people vary in awareness of God across the day and across activities,’ said Bradley RE Wright, an associate professor of sociology at the university and a co-author of the study.

‘There is a complex interplay between spiritual awareness and the situation.

‘Sometimes the situation you are in affects your spiritual awareness.

‘Other times your spiritual awareness affects the situation you’re in.’

by Sarah Griffiths – Mail Online