Meditation Techniques- A Text

Meditation Techniques- A Text
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Meditation Techniques- A Text
Product Description
This textbook has been used in a team-taught course offered at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock since 2000. Primarily designed for students in the health professions, the course couples selected,traditional meditative techniques drawn from the world’s religions with modern psychological interpretations.
The instructor-authors are J.Frank Kenney with a PhD in Religious Studies and Tommy H. Poling who holds a PhD in Psychology.
The 128-page text has 12 chapters.
Chapter One provides a working definition of meditation synthesized from the world’s meditative traditions and interpreted within the contemporary framework of transpersonal psychology.
Chapter Two offers a model of the meditation process.
Chapters Three, Four and Five discuss specific breathing, sound, sight and movement techniques, such as zazen, mantras, the Jesus Prayer and mandalas. These are
interpreted in the contemporary work of Wilhelm Reich, Stanislav Grof, Transcendental Meditation, the relaxation response of Herbert Benson, Carl Jung, Giuseppe Tucci and Carl Simonton.
Chapter Five discusses both classical and modern body-movement techniques, such as hatha yoga, tai ch’i, hand gestures (mudra), the Gindler and Alexander methods of sensory awareness and Eugene Gendlin’s technique of focusing.
Chapter Six is devoted to a single Buddhist technique, insight meditation (vipassana). Contemporary connections include the work of Herbert Benson with Joan Borysenko as well as the contributions of Jon Kabat-Zinn in behavioral medicine.
Chapter Seven discusses two aspects of dreams: dreams as revelatory communication systems and dreams as sources of health and well-being. Classical references are drawn from the Bible, the Upanisads, the Greek temples of Asclepius and Native American peoples.Modern dream theorists discussed include Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Erik Erikson, Fritz Perls, Stanley Krippner and the work of Frederick Van Eeden and Stephen LaBerge on lucid dreaming.
Chapter Eight describes Carl Jung’s concept of synchronicity and his use of the Chinese classic, the Yijing, as a synchronous text.
Chapter Nine treats of paranormal powers (siddhis) associated with meditation and kundalini yoga in the experience of Gopi Krishna.
Chapter Ten explores the use of teaching stories in two meditation traditions: the koan, anecdote and mondo of the Zen tradition and the zany exploits of enlightened individuals in Sufism.
Chapter Eleven discusses two examples of what Naranjo terms “the Way of Surrender”: the exxperiences of the shaman and channeling in the life of JZ Knight. Psychological explanations are provided by Richard Noll and Claude Levi-Strauss.
Chapter Twelve unpacks the teacher-disciple relationship, discusses criteria identifying true as opposed to false teachers and concludes with questions raised by contemporary psychology about the spiritual teacher.
Each of the 12 chapters ends with a set of study questions.
The text contains photos and diagrams, a bibliography of sources cited and an index.
Meditation Techniques- A Text