By introducing the human body and its unique way of knowing into Christian spirituality this workbook offers all Christians an inviting path beyond their often divisive debates and poisoned histories.
Many Christians today want more than religious information. They seek a transformational new reformation. Longing for a spirituality no longer disconnected from what their body knows they cry out for help in changing the relationship to their body’s feelings. They search this fresh holy ground to rediscover their own body within the Body of the Whole Christ.
By slowly journeying at your own pace through the body-learnings and exercises in this workbook—whether alone with a companion or in a group—your steps in personal wholeness and the body-feel of grace open as one unifying organic experience. The implications for building peace-filled communities and a dedication to the global common good are enormous.
Edwin M. McMahon Ph.D. and Peter A. Campbell Ph.D. hold doctoral degrees in the psychological study of religion and spirituality from the University of Ottawa Canada. This field of inquiry addresses the issue of what in religions and spiritual practices contributes to health and human wholeness—and what generally leads to pathology.
Both men are native Californians born in 1930 and 1935—teachers authors theologians Catholic priests ordained as Jesuits and members of that order for 25 years as well as cofounders of The Institute for Bio-Spiritual Research Inc..
Their published books include Becoming a Person in the Whole Christ The In-Between—Evolution in Christian Faith Please Touch Beyond the Myth of Dominance— An Alternative to a Violent Society and BioSpirituality—Focusing as a Way to Grow. Ed’s little book for children but equally cherished by many adults for their own use—The Little Bird Who Found Herself—has drawn numerous sensitive and touching reviews at amazon.com. Peter and Edwin also authored nineteen published booklets as well as five video series based upon their psychological research. They have been drawn to explore how a meaning that is felt in the body (a gut or belly story) even before it can be thought and analyzed in the mind affects human development—especially within family life education child development religious practices and within the world-wide problem of increasing violence.
During the last 20 years they have concentrated their attention on developing a more effective inner body-learning process within which those who share a common Christian faith can best learn a new habit in their own bodies of noticing and nurturing their important feelings. The priority here is no longer simply one of acquiring more new information but including as well how our body can know and expresses Christian faith. This practical missing piece is crucial for all transformational religious maturation within the whole human organism.
It took years of experimentation as well as personal use before Drs. McMahon and Campbell felt they had enough experience and evidence that they could then put together this integrated workbook for companioning each person into their own inner body-process of wholeness as their experiential bridge into a deepening faith-experience of the Body of Christ.
