Paper short abstract:

Through my participant-observation study of a sacred cocoa ceremony in Montreal with active participation, I was able to discover a new form of spirituality focused primarily on feminine bodily experience, called the “sacred feminine”.

Paper long abstract:

In an attitude of resistance to biomedical care in the West today, women are increasingly turning to a network of holistic medicines, including for example acupuncture, osteopathy, massage therapy and naturopathy. These practices consider the individual through psychological, physical, environmental and societal factors, etc., in order to offer the most comprehensive support possible. From a methodological point of view, I have chosen to adopt an active participation, or more precisely a radical empiricism, in order to envisage research that combines empathy, emotion and embodiment within the framework of spiritual experience. This methodological reflection presented itself for my research, as I was joining familiar ground as a regular client of holistic therapists myself. For this reason, I propose to explore the effects of my involvement in the field, notably through the study of my participant observation within a sacred cocoa ceremony at a yoga studio in Montreal. I also undertook a reflexive approach to my own experiences with holistic medicine in Quebec City, where I had four osteopathy sessions, one massage therapy session, four yin yoga sessions and four sessions with an Ayurvedic therapist. Preliminary results suggest that adopting a radical empiricist approach gave me a better understanding of the different nuances of the body. What’s more, I’ve discovered a new form of spirituality that focuses on the feminine bodily experience, called the “sacred feminine”.