Introduction

Abstract

This book presents a unique collection of chapters examining the relationship among chronic illness, spirituality, and healing from interdisciplinary, multicultural, and interreligious perspectives. Contributors to this volume include medical anthropologists, physicians, nurses, psychiatrists, and pharmacologists working in holistic and integrative health care settings, as well as religious studies scholars and spiritual practitioners from diverse religious and cultural contexts. The authors consider how biomedical care might be balanced by spiritual practice that attends to the unique, long-term dimensions associated with chronic illness experiences. The chapters survey the historical and contemporary connections between spirituality and coping with chronic conditions in terms of both mental and physical health through the mind-body-spirit-environment relationship. The chapters explore the direct relationship between spirituality and healing, covering such topics as the role of yoga, meditation, mindfulness, chanting, prayer, music, and a host of distinctive rituals in cultivating well-being in the lives of people living with autoimmune disease, mental illness, addictive illness, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, pain, and other chronic conditions. Religious perspectives integrated into the book include Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern-Orthodox Christian analysis; Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism; Filipino, Native American, and African Indigenous traditions; and Goddess-centered practices.