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Paper short abstract:

This paper questions the notion of validity of the action in reiki as seen by the practitioner. I suggest that ensuring that the session is correctly carried out is fundamental for the practitioner, and that it takes the form of a reflection on his/her own bodily feelings.

Paper long abstract:

The popularity of reiki, a Japanese set of spiritual and healing techniques, is literally booming on the “well-being scene”, mainly because it is simple, easy to learn, appliable to oneself and others equally, and compatible with everyone’s personal beliefs.

In this presentation, I will focus mainly on the practitioner's perspective through different aspects of his/her experience. As a trained practitioner myself, I will proceed in an auto-ethnographic way.

Based on the account of typical reiki sessions as seen by the practitioner (in this case, myself), I would like to propose some ideas on the notion of effectiveness or validity of the action. How can the practitioner evaluate a “good” reiki session? Indeed, I hypothesize that the question of validation, i.e. ensuring that the session has been correctly carried out in order to have effects, is fundamental for the practitioner. What allows this validation and what form does it take?

This validation, in my opinion, takes place during the session itself, independently of the client's verbal feedback, and takes the form of a reflection by the practitioner on his or her own bodily feelings. The analysis of this reflexivity implies the construction of an attention that is (1) diffuse, involving physical sensations, memories, theoretical knowledge acquired during one's training, and (2) shared between the practitioner and the client by means of instructions given before the session, and possibly after as well, and of an exacerbated awareness of the reciprocal attention that both are paying to one another during the session itself.

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Paper short abstract:

More than adherence to Tenrikyo dogma, presence and participation were prioritized as to what to immediately strive for in this religious context. This outside-in approach and the purported connection between the sensing, acting body and the spiritual self will be discussed and explored.

Paper long abstract:

“Tenrikyo is not something one understands through the mind, but little bit by little bit through experience and by doing.” This statement, made to me by a key research participant charged with guiding me in the Tenrikyo faith was one I occasionally heard echoed by others throughout the span of my research at the main European center of the Japanese new religion of Tenrikyo, situated in a Parisian suburb. This quotation highlights the outside-in approach to religious transformation and engagement at this religious center and in this religious tradition in which emphasis was often placed on what one does, rather than what one believes. Notably, participating in the choreographed dance ritual of the “Service” was positioned as a key point of importance, largely secondary to questions of religious conviction or belief. Likewise, participation in other religiously-linked activities was also highly encouraged and sought after, again largely eclipsing the question of belief. More than adherence to a set of religious teachings or a particular cosmological model, presence and participation were prioritized as what to immediately strive for. This is reflective of a view that while one’s embodied self is affected by one’s inner heart, one’s inner heart can, in turn, be affected by one’s embodied actions. By cultivating one’s outer, embodied self, one was also cultivating one’s inner heart and one’s spiritual growth. In this paper, this outside-in approach to spiritual engagement and the purported connection between the sensing, acting body and the spiritual self will be explored.

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Paper short abstract:

Through an autoethnographic process within a Catholic practice of Ignatian spirituality, we reflect on learning, which is fundamental for achieving an "inner feeling" and a way of being-in-the-world that is developed through different body-mind-spirit techniques.

Paper long abstract:

Four years ago I began an ethnography on spiritual seekers in contexts of "new spirituality". Finally, after attending an informative seminar at a centre that hosted different therapeutic and lay spirituality practices - which turned out to be Jesuit - I began to attend a Catholic practice: the Journeys of Experiencing God. It is the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, but brought to everyday life and adapted to modern times.

Through these Journeys, divided into 5 stages, I began an autoethnographic process that has been the point and place of all kinds of reflections, especially methodological ones. These Spiritual Exercises, thought of as a mystagogy, allow us to adopt a way of being-in-the-world. Ignatius, 500 years ago, wrote: "it is not much knowledge that fills and satisfies the soul, but rather the feeling and tasting of things interiorly" (EE 2); it is one thing to know something intellectually and quite another to have experience of it. For this reason, the Exercises, and their version adapted to daily life, are anchored in a transformation of feeling, which becomes more deeply interior as one is initiated into the mystical experience. A feeling that does not exclude the senses, but integrates the bodily perception, transforming it, referring in turn to the plane of affections and understanding.

The different ways of praying, the spiritual discernment required to detect motions through the emotions, as well as affection or imagination, are some of the fundamental elements for incorporating mind-body-spirit techniques.

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Paper short abstract:

Since the 19th century, Islam has become a formalist religious tradition that allowed for a body culture codified in the Sunna. This paper aims to analyze the modes of Islamic body construction and the strategies applied to the body of Muslim women in the city of Buenos Aires.

Paper long abstract:

Since the 19th century, Islam has become a formalist religious tradition. This vision built a body culture codified in the Sunna that proposes models that guide bodily uses. This paper aims to analyze the modes of Islamic body construction and the strategies applied to the body of Muslim women in the city of Buenos Aires.

In non-Islamic contexts such as Argentina, these strategies are expressed in specific forms of purification, gestures, and actions. They are adapted to everyday life and are legitimized in the observance of an Islamic ethic. From this ethic, definitions about the body are derived that are produced in Islamic countries and have an impact on the ways of living the religion in contexts where Islamic communities are minorities. The tradition and its normativity are reproduced in the daily practice of the members of the Muslim community but materializing in bodily and sensorial aspects that shape a specific Islamic identity.