"Just sit down and feel your breath," suggests teacher and author Sharon Salzberg. "We tune in, we connect, we come back."

"I think there is something beautiful and magnificent in silence," says meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg. "Meditation opens up our attention so we can see things differently."

"The spiritual value of seeing God in the other cannot be stressed enough in politics today."

Jewish singer and songwriter Debbie Friedman, who died in California on January 9, once said that "spiritually if you don't have the opportunity to exercise your heart and soul you don't really fully understand all that you are."

"Deep down there is only one faith that all human beings have, and that is deep trust in life."

Benyamin Cohen wrote a book about his year-long exploration of Christianity and used what he learned to reflect on the meaning of his own Jewish faith.

Photography, according to Abbot Barnabas Senecal of St. Benedict's Abbey in Atchison, Kansas, is an exercise in monastic mindfulness, and he says his pictures express "being aware of the presence of God with you and in the world."

Abbot Barnabas Senecal, a Benedictine monk, reflects on the Psalms, prayer, photography, and the Benedictine desire "to seek God daily."

“Being religious or spiritual has a very profound effect on our biology and our brain,” says neuroscientist Andrew Newberg. “It can change our brain and change ourselves over time.”

Watch more from New Orleans Roman Catholic Archbishop Gregory Aymond, Margaret Dubuisson of Catholic Charities of New Orleans, and Rev. John Dee Jeffries of the First Baptist Church of Chalmette on the spiritual toll of the Gulf Coast oil spill crisis.