Abstract:

This study was designed to demonstrate the potency of giving the body its own voice in transpersonal research. The researcher shows that, by learning to think and communicate in a way that more fully accounts for embodied experience, transpersonal researchers can engage their work in a way that not only describes, but also reveals, the transformative nature of transpersonal development. Asking the question, "How does physical embodiment as a human being contribute to transpersonal understanding and development?" the researcher implemented heuristic and phenomenological methods to elicit, record, and tabulate rich descriptions of transpersonal experience as discovered through the processes of meditation, contemplation, and general reflection. The research instrument throughout the study was the embodied self of the primary researcher--what she came to refer to as the felt-sensing body --trained through the practice of Focusing to discern the nuances of spiritual/transpersonal experience. Data were synthesized using a process method known as "Thinking at the Edge" (TAE), originally developed as a philosophical practice by Eugene T. Gendlin, Ph.D., in which one learns to generate fresh concepts out of direct bodily experience and thereby to express what s/he deeply knows but has not yet been able to say. The nascent theory developed by the conclusion of this study was shown to have relevance in terms of transpersonal psychology, human development, and the phenomenological notion of the lived body. The theory finds a firm foothold from which it is able to extend and energize current thinking and practice in each area, pointing the way for future research and highlighting the transformative nature of engaging transpersonal inquiry.