Spiritual wellness can seem so subtle that some people ignore it altogether. But those who practice daily self-care for their spirits know the feeling: more love, tranquility, openness and clarity. And researchers are starting to see it as well. The latest studies show that people who regularly care for their spirits with healthy habits experience decreased anxiety and depression, increased resilience and a heightened sense of purpose.

When you take time every day to nurture your spirit with exercises like affirmations and mindfulness, you also benefit your mind and body, creating more complete sense of wellness. That’s why we created Skylight.

‍Is this a religion?
‍Skylight uses spiritually healing practices found in many world religions to help you grow your spirit’s receptiveness, resilience and strength. Whether you’re non-religious, sort of religious, or totally into your religion, we think Skylight can help your spirit thrive. Think of us as the gateway to spiritual fitness through guided spiritual mediation.

‍Will Skylight tell me what to believe?
‍No. But Skylight builds on a couple of spiritual basics: one, that all people are spiritual by nature and, two, that our individual spirits resonate and grow when we “reach out” to others and “reach up” to a higher power. BTW, we call this higher power “God” because we’ve found that’s what most people prefer. No problem if you use another word.

‍Who are the people behind Skylight?
‍We are a small team of creative types and technologists scattered throughout the U.S. Some of us are religious and some of us aren’t. What we all share is this: we’ve each experienced times when we felt spiritually awesome, and other times when it was not so good. Skylight is built for our spiritual health and yours. Enjoy the feeling!

Steve Martorano 
The Behavioral Corner is produced in partnership with Retreat Behavioral Health -- where healing happens.

The Behavioral Corner 
Hi, and welcome. I'm Steve Martorano, and this is the Behavioral Corner. You're invited to hang with us as we discuss how we live today, the choices we make, what we do, and how they affect our health and well-being. So you're on the corner, the Behavioral Corner. Please hang around for a while.

Steve Martorano 
Hi, everybody, welcome again to the Behavioral Corner. It's me right where you left me last time, hopefully, on the Corner, the Behavioral Corner, a podcast about as we say everything because everything winds up affecting our behavioral health. So made possible by our great underwriting partners Retreat Behavioral Health, you'll hear more about them a little bit down the road. Hey, it's that time of the year again, guys. You know, if you're if you're following us, and we hope you are we always do a yearly Home for the Holidays program. And this year, we're going to sort of broaden that rather than taking individual cases. That's the way we used to do it and describe what it was like going home. In those early stages of substance abuse or mental health disorders, we're going to take a look at a macro view of that. And to that end, I would point out that the executive director of an app called Skylight is with us, John Dye. Hello, John.

John Dye 
Hello, Steve.

Steve Martorano 
Skylight describes itself as a spiritual self-help tool, which you know, there's an app for everything. And now we have it for this, and I daresay it's much needed. So we're gonna talk about the holidays and dealing with it. We all have to deal with the holidays. And one of the expressions or quotes, it has lingered in my head for many years. Someone once said, "Well, the holidays have us by the throat again." Which is not exactly, you know, it's the most wonderful time of the year, you know, but I always thought boy, that that rings a bell with me, because it does feel like that it feels like an assault. Skylight, as I understand it, is a tool that helps us get through these things, or manage them, because you can't ignore the holidays, they will come rolling in, whether you like it or not. So that's what we're going to be talking about. John is the Executive Director, we'll get into the nuts and bolts of how this works in a bit. But let's talk about the size of the problem. We all more or less have the same feeling here they come. Even for those of you who can't wait for the holidays to begin, it comes rolling in, and we have to start dealing with it. For those who have trouble during this period of time. And I mean, you know, whatever extent that is, how large a problem is that?

John Dye 
You know, it's like you said it's very pervasive. Specifically, as we talk about the holidays, some of the best memories we create are during this time of year, but some of the biggest pressures we feel also come as well. So those who don't traditionally deal with mental disorders still have the stress and anxiety, right that accompanies this time of year. So it's that weird uncle, right sitting down next to you that wants to talk politics, or religion, or something very divisive next to you at the Thanksgiving table, or as you're opening your presence on Christmas morning. Somebody says something very volatile. It's a Molotov cocktail, they throw into the room, and everybody leaves, you know, deflated. And so as we think about this, just getting together in these social situations, yeah. How do you best deal with this? How do you deal with the anxiety and those stressors that inevitably come with family, friends with close associates?

Steve Martorano 
All of which is exacerbated, made much more acute. If you are suffering from some sort of mental or substance abuse disorder. We're going to focus primarily on the behavioral or mental health aspect of this. Because if there's ever a time of the year that can appeal pardon the expression drive one crazy, it's the holidays, John, with regard to the holidays, we're talking about them in the present tense they're going on right now. But the stresses and the anxieties begin some, at some point out in the future correct? When typically when do most of us start to begin to stress? Oh, here they come that seems to be getting longer.

John Dye 
Because it really does. It really doesn't. A lot of that, to be quite honest, is because a lot of the stores you know you walk in before Halloween into a major retail store and you start seeing things for Christmas literally two-plus months in advance. And so you're saying yourself, man, it's coming. I haven't even given out the Halloween candy and, and we've got to worry about getting the tree up. So there's a lot of that that does occur from a retail perspective. Also, this is big all year round, right? We know that specifically, as we at Skylight are, are focusing on people 18 to 35. We call them the GenXenial generation, it affects everyone Gen Xers, the baby boomers, etc. But we also know we've been able through the app to look through the times of year, the seasonality of when the stress occurs. And it really does ramp up right around finals. And those times, but also, you know, as people are getting ramped up for the holidays, getting ready to go home, we know finals and the finish of the term and semester coming up. A lot of it's happening in our own head, though. We make the monster 10 times bigger than it actually is usually, because we try to think of all the things that may happen, not the things that aren't happening. And that's what we talked about, you've got to center yourself, you've got to be in the present. It's really a lot worse if you assume that again, that gorilla is 800 pounds, and it's really only 80 pounds.

Steve Martorano
Yeah, you know, and the notion of beginning to worry about something well in advance of it actually happening is a trap we all fall into that young people though it's one of the most fraught times of the year for all the reasons you mentioned, not least of which is that the trip home, which is made during the most chaotic and difficult travel time of the year, kids gotta get home. And I guess it's no wonder that the biggest going out night I think in the entire year is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. When bars and sports bars and all kinds of places are packed with young people who are fortifying themselves. Right? Absolutely.

John Dye 
Yes. They enjoy getting back they see people they haven't seen in years. Right? And it's a chance to reconvene, get together and, and have a lot of good time. And again, as you mentioned, though, that Wednesday before, then you have all of the close family and acquaintances the following day. And so that exacerbates some of those issues, again, that are traditionally in your mind, that's where it starts.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, well, I hear you. I mean, everything's in our minds. You're right. I mean, there are real stresses associated with financial, logistic, and personal, I mean, not everybody in your family gets along with everyone else in your family. So there are real problems. I know that among the things that...let's talk about Skylight immediately, because the term spiritual is right there in your descriptor, you're not hiding that a spiritual self-care tool online, or through the app that seeks to help people with mindfulness and spirituality. Let's take them apart here. Now, first of all, are we talking about faith-based techniques?

John Dye 
Yeah, it great question. So there is no one single sponsor, this is not a bait and switch by religion. It truly is spirituality is you know, spirituality can have many connotations based on the individual. So those are believers, right, in a higher power. So there is...we do believe that a person that is going to benefit most from what skylight has to offer is somebody who does believe in a creator or divine or transcendent or a higher power. Now, that's not a traditional Christian view of God, or, you know, Jewish or Muslim or whatever. But we do believe that as you deal with stressors like anxiety, sleep issues, loneliness, and self-esteem issues, you can overcome those you can help center yourself and be present if you have affirmations if you have meditation if you have music, and movement, and of course prayer, that that accompanies that. So we believe just like you can't expect to go into a gym and do a few biceps and have a muscle spiritual practice is required daily, to center yourself. So I liken it somewhat to AA because there is a belief in a higher power, right? You have to think outside yourself. You have to be humble enough and succumb to a higher power, which makes you able to overcome some of the things in your life very similar.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, we just got we obviously are intimately aware of the 12 steps and the greater power. And the fact that this is not, strictly speaking, a religious concept, but a spiritual one. There's a difference for sure. You guys also mentioned mindfulness, which is another kind it's not it's a real thing, but it is a buzzword. I don't know that everybody really knows what mindfulness is. So discuss that a little bit. How do you at Skylight find mindfulness? And then is it not in conflict with the notion of a higher power? If mindfulness is you putting yourself in a particular place in time. How does that jive with looking outside yourself for some answer?

John Dye 
Yeah, no great question. And I'll answer that in this way. Because I think, as we think about Skylight, it's really aligning within yourself with others, you know, so we talked about within yourself with others, your community, but also vertically with heaven. So we, as we discussed mindfulness, it is being in the present, it's really being able to calm your thoughts and really think through, you know, the things that are happening and being able to understand what's happening around you that way. But we do feel that the variable of allowing a higher power into your life is important because we do believe just like a band-aid, you can band-aid over these issues time and time again, right? Mindfulness helps you deal with the situation in the here and now. But we believe one variable that needs to be present in this equation toward healing and toward wholeness is a higher power. And we believe they're not, they're not at odds with one another. They can be rectified, would you?

Steve Martorano 
would you say then to someone who's listening, that if they are agnostic, or if they're atheistic, that Skylight is not for them?

John Dye 
We do believe that one key variable is that you believe in a power outside yourself, right? A higher power. So it doesn't, again, have to take a certain prescribed form that culture agrees with, or everybody stacks hands on. So I do believe that there is power in this for an agnostic or an atheist, who is willing to concede that there is a power outside of themselves, that can indeed help them.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, you know it when you think about that question, and it's so full of an answer just popped into my head that if someone were completely unable or unwilling to acknowledge a power higher than themselves. They probably don't think they have any problems anyway. Yeah, right?

John Dye 
I mean, yeah, I would agree with you there. I think, Steve, if...f, if they can't conceive of that, they may not even recognize that there is a problem. Right?

Steve Martorano 
Exactly. Exactly. The ignorance, I suppose, is bliss. Let's talk about some of the nuts and bolts that you'll find or suggestions you'll find available on Skylight for people who want to manage some of these things. Before we get to them, though, what are some of the absolute triggers? For people's Is it the music in the stores is the commercials? What is?

John Dye 
Yeah, so, by the way, I should mention, Skylight is free of charge. We have some very kind donors, this is something we're doing, I believe, from an altruistic perspective, because of these kind donors we have behind us. You know, some of the triggers. And when you say triggers, I should ask some of the things that people experience most on the app or how people find us and what they...what they want to do. No,

Steve Martorano 
I mean, what, what, people who want to sort of tamp down the anxiety before that, to see it coming. And I know for me, it's the one song that sets my teeth on the edges. You know, it's the most wonderful time of the year because God bless, Andy Williams, I guess that's who it is. He sounds like he really means it. Yes, I'm generally stuck in traffic when he sees this. I'm not feeling it. So it sort of gets me in a bad mood already. But there are other triggers and can Skylight help people notice what they are and manage them?

John Dye 
Yes, yes. A lot of this, as you know, is very introspective, right? Understanding what your personal triggers are, like you said in traffic, listening to Andy Williams sets your teeth on edge. Doing that is more important, I think, and more introspective. Once you can recognize that I believe that's where Skylight comes in. Again, spiritual daily practice just like going to the gym is something that you can't do if you want to run a good marathon, you can't just go out and run 26.2 miles, right you've got to have a training plan. We believe the same is true of spiritual wellness and mental health you've got to do a regimen in the morning in the afternoon or in the evening. We noticed that morning and evenings are the time most people do this. But even short exercises like we have on Skylight three to five minutes. We have actually scientifically shown that that reduces anxiety and people it helps them center themselves, get their thoughts together, connect with that higher power, and be their best selves.

Steve Martorano 
You've mentioned you've used physical activity as sort of a metaphor. But here are some real things here on the site that you can avail yourself of. We've had many people on about yoga, and meditation, the physical part of it is interesting what's going on when we engage our bodies in this effort as well as our minds?

John Dye 
Yeah, the body is key. I believe a key piece to all of this as well, again, as you talk about your mind and your spirit and aligning those, that that is key with yoga, that helps you be aware and honestly to tamp down the physical piece, for example, with yoga, where you do stretching, and you do posing, and other things, these are things that actually help you be not only aware of your body, but your mind-body connection, and your spirit mind-body connection. So it puts you in a way, specifically when you do it by yourself or with others in a mode that I think really aligns those three in a way that is helpful.

Steve Martorano 
All of these exercises, and techniques are available through the app, right, you can talk about them, and you can see them, right?

John Dye 
Correct. Yeah. And it's, it's all videotape based. But we also have an audio option. So if you're on a walk, or we're doing something, you can experience that as well.

Steve Martorano 
What do you what do you tell young people, particularly young people who go yeah, there's a lot of praying in here. I'm interested in meditation, but not praying, if you need to, can you avoid that?

John Dye 
Absolutely, We, try to tailor this user journey in a way that is best for everyone. And actually, one thing that I'm excited about is when people do onboarding for the app, they can tell us what they're interested in, we're creating some AI modules to help us create that personalization. So that your journey, Steve would be different than mine would be different than a third person's, we need to create, I think, the optimal piece that looks right for everyone. And that's one area that AI can assist us with.

Steve Martorano 
Where do your contributors come from? Do they...do....are you out there looking for them? Are they calling you? How do you get it? How do you get people involved to contribute to the site/

John Dye 
You know what? There are multiple ways that we do outreach we have, as you know, NIHL name image likeness with college athletes, we do a lot of outreach to these individuals who who believe in the features and functionality of what we're doing. And so a lot of them are creating UGC or user-generated content on their own social media properties. Eventually, they'll send people into Skylight to do more. But we've just done outreach, mainly people 18 to 35, as who we focus on, from a...from a contributor perspective, because we want peers talking to peers, I'm a Gen X, or if I talk to a Gen Z person, they honestly it's sometimes like religion, or any other institution that they may be a little wary of, right? We want peers to talk to peers, our goal is really to help people in this area of their lives. And the best way to do that is talking to somebody that looks like them, feels like them, etc.

Steve Martorano  
What happens if someone outside that demographic stumbles upon Skylight? Will they immediately run screaming into the night? Or can they find something there for themselves?

John Dye
They definitely will. We're actually working with some fortune 100 companies here in the US and even abroad to adopt this into EAP --- employer-assisted programs that they give to their employees or associates. So yes, this is for everyone. We just realized that Gen Xenial, generation aged 18 to 35. They've done some unprecedented things and gone through unprecedented things with a pandemic during their formative years, right? For us, we were a bit older, I think, hopefully, we were we experienced it differently. But these young people, literally are going to make up the workforce of the future, right? Those 18 to 35 currently will make up 33% of the workforce by the end of this decade. And unless we can help them in some way, handle these mental health incidents, right, and hopefully create that spiritual wellness. We're really in I think, for some some rough waters in the future. And so if we can help them do that, understand the importance of practice daily practice, and centering themselves and connecting with that higher power. I think that's going to help us all individually and collectively.

Steve Martorano 
Our guest is John Dye. John is the executive director of Skylight. And you can find them by the way, wherever you find podcasts@spotlight.org They are a spiritual self-care app with a dual purpose of spiritual wellness, which is which is the two words you don't often think of together in this context. John, how am I so I know the demo you're talking about I know that those people were born into this technology. They live much of their lives, they're probably going to become more as we go further on, how much...what do you have data on how much time people who are using skylights spend on it?

John Dye 
Yeah, so we break this down by users and super users, right? Those individuals that are in a lot. We have found, though, that individuals who spend as little as seven minutes a week on Skylight, are realizing benefits from from what it has to offer. That's literally two exercises of our average length. Individuals who set time aside stopped the "doom scrolling" on social media. Again, social media is great, from my perspective, in many ways, it also has its downsides, right? Everything does. But those people who prioritize their mental and spiritual wellness, and spend as little amount of time as what I just mentioned, on the site, actually are benefiting from this, they're able to center themselves and do things that some of their peers are not able to do. So.

Steve Martorano 
You just mentioned something. It's a great, it's a great expression that's suddenly become widely, widely used. And that's "doom scrolling.' What does that mean? I know what you mean, explain it to someone who might not know what you're talking about.

John Dye  
Yeah, yeah. So Doom scrolling some of it, it's just, that they've set it up. So it's literally addictive social media, right? If you look at Meta, or TikTok where you just keep scrolling, it's an infinite scroll. And you start at nine o'clock AM and you look up, and it's 1030. Because you've, you know, you have not realized you've been on the platform that long. And as we all know, a lot of the content that we see online, too, makes us...makes us we're looking at somebody's best moments and compare that to our average moment. And that's really where that delta comes in that differential and it makes us feel so bad about ourselves. So again, use some of that time, you some of the time to do something intentional to some of these exercises, some of these practices that allow you to center yourself, and it'll help immensely.

Steve Martorano 
It's sort of self-evident that if you were to take 10% of the time you spend scrolling through Instagram or TikTok, and apply it anywhere else, particularly into a place like Skylight where you're reinforcing positivity, rather than look, you know, you're right, you see people living a life you think you should be living in or not, or you see people at their absolute horrible worst, the feeling is nothing but negative in that context. So it's plain to see why if you could just stroll through a place like a spotlight for a while you would be much, much, much better off. Final question. And because this is, in everybody's mind, particularly as these apps get stronger, what do you...what do you do with the data that you're you accumulate on people who visit the site?

John Dye 
Steve, it's all private, we do not release it at all. But the goal for us, honestly, what we're trying to do, Steve is we would love to create a playbook of our findings, just as we see common trends and what topics people are interested in when they're on the app and doing that the practices, the, you know, the times of day, the amount of time that they spend, etc, some of those things that we just discussed, we're compiling those together so that other people that have similar goals to help this rising generation, right with some of these issues that they're having, we want to create a playbook that we can give to them, and utilize with them and help train them so that they start out on the I'll use a football analogy, if they start out on the 20-yard line. You know, we want to get them up to the 50-yard line, whatever their goal is, right? In the end zone, we want to help them move farther faster. Because we have primary data and secondary data we can draw from but the primary data, we really want to create a playbook to help people because we do believe strongly as I mentioned before, gosh, this rising generation needs the help that we have available. We need to create a journey that personalizes to their needs, and not do it the way that our parents and our grandparents did, which was very prescriptive, right, this generation Z, we have to be more descriptive and understand what they're looking for in need, and try to provide that to them in a way that they will accept that.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, it's a great...it's a great...it's a great goal. I wish you the best of luck. How old is Skylight, now?

John Dye 
You know, we are...we are under three years. We started right about when the pandemic hit, and we've got our wheels underneath us and we're just adding momentum day by day.

Steve Martorano 
Skylight.org That's how they find you?

John Dye 
That's exactly right. You can find us on the web, and download the apps there. Find us on social media. as well.

Steve Martorano 
And again, free, free is good.

John Dye 
Free of charge.

Steve Martorano 
John, happy holidays. Thanks for your time. We appreciate it good luck with the app. You know, it certainly looks like something that a lot of young people could benefit from and not so young people as well. Appreciate your time.

John Dye 
Thank you, Steve.

Steve Martorano 
And thank you guys as well. Don't forget, you know, follow us like us. Subscribe, do the whole thing. And try to try to enjoy you know, I know it's got you by the throat but have a good time. It'll be over sooner than you know. That's, that's as positive as I can be. Thanks, guys. See you next time on the Behavioral Corner. Bye bye.

Synergy Health Programs 
Millions of Americans are negatively affected daily by their mental health. Retreat has served the community for over ten years, offering comprehensive mental health programming through our mental health division, Synergy Health Programs. To learn more about Synergy, please reach out today at 855-802-6600.

The Behavioral Corner 
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