Alternative and Complementary Medicine Commons^™

The Emergence Of The Legitimacy Of Religious Healing Knowledge In Taiwan, Wei-Cheng Chiu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates how religious healing knowledge has been defined and used by scholars, physicians, and New Agers and how religious healing knowledge emerged as a legitimate area of knowledge in Taiwan. The key position of religious healing knowledge within the entanglement between religion and spirituality is also examined. After the martial law was lifted in 1987, Taiwan’s society had rapidly diversified, and its religions were at the transition point between the old and the new. Meanwhile, the new spirituality culture was introduced into Taiwan in the 1980s and got popular in the 1990s, and it inherited the trend of …

Investigation Of The "Cultural Appropriation" Of Yoga, Olivia Bartholomew

Honors Projects

With our world becoming increasingly globalized and cosmopolitan, practices that were once very traditional and spiritual are much different when they confront Western societies. Many yoga instructors and practitioners around the world are concerned about the issue of cultural appropriation within their practice. The researcher defines cultural appropriation to mean the process of a dominant culture manipulating aspects of a marginalized culture for its benefit. Traditionally, yoga comes from India, but it has become popularized throughout the world in our recent human history. Through interviews with nine yoga instructors, each from different yogic traditions, who teach in a variety of …

Modern Yoga In America, Emily Parkinson Perry

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Yoga’s immense growth and popularity during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, along with its proliferation into countless varieties and styles, presents teachers, students, and scholars with the question: “What is yoga?” Answering this question requires the investigation of a number of cultural, historical and philosophical tensions at play in modern expressions of this ancient tradition: (1) Is modern postural yoga (MPY)—the yoga widely practiced in studios across the country today—an authentic expression of yoga or is it simply another form of physical fitness? (2) Does the modern focus on the physical dimension of yoga forsake its original purpose of …

Indigenous Healing In New Zealand: An Anthropological Analysis Of "Traditional" And "Modern" Approaches To Well-Being, Lillian T. Brice

Honors Theses

Drawing on contemporary anthropological approaches used by scholars of well-being and medical anthropology (i.e. Michael Jackson and Lisa Stevenson), I explore how indigenous healers in New Zealand blend “traditional” and “modern” elements to establish a creative and inclusive system. Specifically, I explore the use of herbal treatments, ritual chanting, and ceremonies that encapsulate Māori cultural values. I also explore the impact of biomedicine and New-Age wellness approaches on indigenous healing. I argue that Māori healing moves beyond the binary of “tradition” and “modern” as healers merge the past and present and combine the foreign and native. My research is based …

Hear Me Roar, Abigail R. Seethoff

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Hear Me Roar, a compilation of personal essays interspersed with short forms, grapples with the nuances of compliance versus autonomy in the context of the male gaze, beauty standards, and pop culture. The collection also explores what it means to treasure something—another person, an object—and how to express and deepen that affection.

Socioeconomic Status's Impact On The Experience Of Loneliness, Tessa Samuels

Sociology & Anthropology Theses

Loneliness is a feeling that is nearly universal, yet some people are more vulnerable to prolonged exposures of the experience of loneliness. Due to the subjective nature of loneliness, there is minimal literature on loneliness without the variable of social isolation (Hawkley et al. 2008, Ryan et al. 2008, Kearns et al. 2015, Lee and Ishii-Kuntz 1987) or social capital (Benner and Wang 2014, Andersson 1998, Ryan et al. 2008, Kearns et al. 2015) involved. There are numerous variables that impact loneliness. One must consider age — there has been solid gerontology research that reveals that elderly people are less …

Assessing Spirituality Among Hospice Patients: A Phenomenological Study Of Hospice Nurses, Isabel Esther Kaufman

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The shift in health care and nursing philosophy and practice from a holistic approach to a highly technological, cure-oriented approach has been attributed to effective pharmaceuticals made to prolong life. Recently medical professionals have shifted their focus to a combination of spiritual healing and medicine. Hospice care in particular have taken a key interest in integrating spirituality within their health care. The problem is that due to the complications in defining spirituality and appropriate training and education of spirituality within nursing curriculum, assessing patients' spiritual distress may be difficult for many hospice nurses which may be at a loss when …

Start With The Heart, Michael A. Steiner

Selected Honors Theses

There is something happening in the chapel services of Southeastern University, the largest Assemblies of God university in America. The question is, is it orthopathy? The goal of this thesis is to determine if 1st Chapel consistently provides the space for students to be engaged in Orthopathy in such a way that their affections are changed from egocentricism to theocentrism. To prove this, the first goal will be to establish what Orthopathy is both historically and theologically, something which has never been fully accomplished in the academic world. This will include defining what a proper transformational experience with the Holy …

The Spirituality Of Food And Nutrition: A Critique Of The United States' Food Practices Through An Analysis Of Three Asian Religions And Philosophies, Kiley G. Hagerty

Senior Theses and Projects

There is no question that the United States is a country that is currently faced with serious health epidemics, such as hypertension and diabetes, associated with being overweight and obese. It has been the assumption of the government and the public that the large food corporations are to blame for the country’s poor health. However, it is too simplistic to believe that tighter regulations upon corporations would alone lead to improved health. There needs to be a change at the individual level, and of the practices of most of the country’s citizens. Through an analysis of three Asian religions (Hindu …

Folk Healing In The Tradition Of The Fidencista Movement, Katherine Brittain

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The Fidencista Movement is a religion in process . Like in many other medico-religions whose primary ministry is healing, women hold the highest positions of authority. The shamanic channeling of the spirit of the folk saint, Niño Fidencio , plies Fidencistas' belief in the spirit world and ameliorates physical and emotional healing. Fidencistas are concentrated in the Texas/Mexico borderland region where they are facing a passing of traditionalism, the social matrix in which folk healing thrives. However, the signature of the Movement, the penitential trek up the Vía de Dolores in Espinazo, is a cohering bi-annual ritual that fortifies devotion …

Toward A Seventh-Day Adventist Theology Of Health, Hedrick J. Edwards

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The Seventh-day Adventist Church espouses the Three Angels' Messages of Revelation 14 as its raison d'etre. In its view the special mission of its members is to take these messages to the entire world. Yet about twenty-five percent of the church's financial worth and a much higher percentage of its paid employees are involved in the healthcare enterprise. Does this fact represent a dichotomy in the church's mission, or is it theologically defensible?

This investigation submits that the denomination's involvement in healthcare and training in the healing arts is theologically defensible and does not represent a departure from or a …