This study sets out to explore and describe the process of becoming a spiritual healer. The research question is motivated by my contact with spiritual healers at a time of ill health and seeks to understand how the five participants presented here became healers. I do this through employing Moustakas's (1990) methodology of Heuristic Inquiry. One of the central tenants of this methodology is that it explicitly acknowledges the importance of the lived experience of the researcher as a guiding and mediating presence in the research process. The research explores how the healers' stories and experiences elicited and illuminated a response within me. The combination of the healers' accounts, and my experience of them, created a dialectical movement within the research which shaped how the research unfolded. Consequently the research illustrates how the investigation into the experience of becoming a spiritual healer, facilitated the internal search within me to understand the question. It offers an overarching theme that understanding the complexity and challenges of bringing dialectical opposites into balance may be one way of appreciating a healer's journey. This overarching theme is explored and expressed through sub themes of wound and shadow, leap of faith, love, shaman in the world, the body, death and transformation.

The aim of this thesis is to critically investigate spiritual healing in a Camphill Community setting with children who have special needs. The research methodology comprises two in-depth instrumental case studies. This methodology takes into account the complex multifaceted context of the Camphill setting. Moreover in the Literature Review I also identify three key contextual 'themes' in which the study is located, namely Spiritual Healing, Spirituality, and Holistic Health and Social Care, which run like red threads throughout this inquiry. My research participants were selected from pupils at Norwood Camphill School on the basis that they were below sixteen years of age, that they might be likely to benefit in some way from this complementary therapy, and that they were already known to be willing to receive healing or else considered likely to be willing to do so. Originally three participants were identified, but in the course of the study it was agreed that two would be sufficient given the quantity and richness of the data generated. Both participants were diagnosed as having autistic spectrum disorders and severe learning difficulties. Data was constructed by respondents within Norwood and also by the parents/guardians of the children. A third-party observer and myself in my dual-role of healer/researcher contributed data from the children's observed responses to their individual healing sessions. These were arranged in block- periods within the three school terms over the course of the Healing Year. The sessions were also videoed, providing an invaluable source of audio- visual data. All the qualitative data was rigorously analysed through a process of thematic analysis and data triangulation to reveal emerging and emergent themes. Each case study is unique to each participant but both are structured within the same five-stage design framework. Subsequently the two cases were compared through the strategy of Cross-Case Analysis and Synthesis. As the study is naturalistic and exploratory in nature it does not seek to establish any direct causal links between healing and any progress shown by the participants over the Healing Year. Nonetheless it does provide a unique and detailed presentation of their individual responses within the healing sessions. Although the study is grounded in a particular philosophical context underpinned by Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy (or spiritual-science) and the curative education based upon it, my hope is that it will encourage further robust inquiries in the field of Healing Research with vulnerable and special children. The study is suggestive of some potential benefits for such children, including those on the autistic spectrum, and in a wide variety of educational and health and social care contexts.

No description available.

Mindfulness practice is becoming used increasingly as a treatment in clinical psychology. However there are problems with the research on mindfulness, and until recently there were no measures of mindfulness. The Literature Review analysed psychologists' conceptualisations of the construct of mindfulness, and compared these with Buddhist understandings. It reviewed recently developed methods of assessment of mindfulness, and concluded that there was need for a state measure of mindfulness, one that specifically included assessment of mindful concentration. The Research Report was concerned with the first stage in the development of a state measure of mindfulness, including mindful concentration. It was concluded that further development needed to be done, to establish adequate reliability and validity. A Critical Appraisal is submitted, exploring difficulties in the process of research and the limitations of the research study.

Sickness and healing expenence is universal, but the context in which both are perceived and dealt with is particular. Culture and the individual constitute the universal context. The social structures, values, beliefs, the symbol system of a culture and the tendency of the individual to act upon his existence within cultural parameters, inform the particular context. The relationship that exists between culture and the individual is best described as dialectic. The concept of dialect is the theoretical tool to analytically show how this relationship works out in real life. At the base of this relationship operates conflict. Sickness, or permanent ill health since early childhood as shown in an in-depth case study, triggers conflict on at least two levels: the personal-psychological and the socio­ cultural level. To effectively deal with sickness and the inner conflicts caused by it, is to channel the motivation to resolve them by way of employing a symbolic idiom, a cultural symbol that attains personal meaning. G. Chewe P. of Bemba ethnicity, the main actor of this thesis, demonstrates how his life experience of sickness made various symbols become operational, how he filled them with personal meaning, and that there was no hiatus between the public and private domain. Healing requires more than medical aid. Cultural symbols that become personal symbols are often tied into religious experience of some kind. Individuals who successfully employ personal symbols eventually achieve healing because the symbolic idiom helps them to resolve intrapsychic conflict. Missiology cannot escape from two realities: culture and the individual. If anything, missiology must be interested in culture and the individual. Missiology, in the role of aide-de-camps of the Christian Mission, shows the history of how individuals connect to God, and how God transforms them in their cultural environment. To be able to achieve both goals, the issues of context and conflict must be addressed. This thesis seeks to account for the dialectic between culture and the individual, how context and conflict shaped the person and the Christian G. Chewe P. of Bemba ethnicity, and how he acted upon this context to resolve his travail. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th (Missiology)

Sickness and healing expenence is universal, but the context in which both are perceived and dealt with is particular. Culture and the individual constitute the universal context. The social structures, values, beliefs, the symbol system of a culture and the tendency of the individual to act upon his existence within cultural parameters, inform the particular context. The relationship that exists between culture and the individual is best described as dialectic. The concept of dialect is the theoretical tool to analytically show how this relationship works out in real life. At the base of this relationship operates conflict. Sickness, or permanent ill health since early childhood as shown in an in-depth case study, triggers conflict on at least two levels: the personal-psychological and the socio­ cultural level. To effectively deal with sickness and the inner conflicts caused by it, is to channel the motivation to resolve them by way of employing a symbolic idiom, a cultural symbol that attains personal meaning. G. Chewe P. of Bemba ethnicity, the main actor of this thesis, demonstrates how his life experience of sickness made various symbols become operational, how he filled them with personal meaning, and that there was no hiatus between the public and private domain. Healing requires more than medical aid. Cultural symbols that become personal symbols are often tied into religious experience of some kind. Individuals who successfully employ personal symbols eventually achieve healing because the symbolic idiom helps them to resolve intrapsychic conflict. Missiology cannot escape from two realities: culture and the individual. If anything, missiology must be interested in culture and the individual. Missiology, in the role of aide-de-camps of the Christian Mission, shows the history of how individuals connect to God, and how God transforms them in their cultural environment. To be able to achieve both goals, the issues of context and conflict must be addressed. This thesis seeks to account for the dialectic between culture and the individual, how context and conflict shaped the person and the Christian G. Chewe P. of Bemba ethnicity, and how he acted upon this context to resolve his travail. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th (Missiology)