6533b858fe1ef96bd12b6dc8

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Embodied Spirituality

Dagfinn Ulland

subject

religious ecstasyVDP::Humanities: 000::Theology and religious science: 150Religious studiesPsychology (miscellaneous)ritual theorybodily knowledgepsychology of religion and spiritualityhabitusembodiment

description

Published version of an article in the journal: Archive for the Psychology of Religion. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157361212X645340 The main findings on embodied spirituality within the Toronto Blessing are presented in this article. The aim of this study is to interpret ecstatic religious experiences from a psychological point of view. The theoretical framework is interdisciplinary, using theories from ego-psychology, social psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology, and ritual theory. Regarding the latter notion, Thomas Csordas has developed cultural phenomenology, which is a culturally constructed way of understanding a situation through using bodily senses in a sort of sensory engagement that is linked with inter-subjectivity. This way of thinking assumes that the body can impart knowledge and help us understand apparently non-rational phenomena. Ecstatic phenomena can be interpreted as bodily knowledge, a habitus, stored or saved in the body to be later activated in a cultural and ritual context.

https://doi.org/10.1163/157361212x645340