Spirituality and Lifestyles

In the past and still today, many people have sought and often found in religion – in their cults and in their beliefs – a source and a means for changing their lives for the better: a prospect of self-transcendence.

This usually entailed the use of anthropotechnics: that is, of mental and physical exercises, special training, varieties of asceticism, with the aim of shaping new habits and a new life-form. Here is rooted the link between spirituality and lifestyles that can be seen in the return of interest in religion in the West nowadays.

In this sense, the study of the mutual influence between religious attitudes and social practices offers a privileged point of view to understand better the changes undergone by the contemporary self.