Interactive Meditation Practice as Research Method: An Introduction to Embodied Spiritual Inquiry

Abstract

This article presents Embodied Spiritual Inquiry (ESI), a participatory approach to integral education and transpersonal research that has been offered since 2003 as a graduate course at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), San Francisco, by core faculty Jorge N. Ferrer. Inspired by elements of participatory research (e.g., Reason, 1994a; Reason & Bradbury, 2008) and cooperative inquiry (Heron, 1996), ESI applies Albareda and Romero’s Interactive Embodied Meditations (Ferrer, 2003) to access multiple ways of knowing (e.g., somatic, vital, emotional, mental, spiritual) and mindfully inquire into collaboratively decided questions about the human condition. Past inquiries have included diverse psychospiritual topics including the experiential features of relational spirituality (Osterhold, Husserl, & Nicol, 2007), the nature of human boundaries within and between co-inquirers (Sohmer, Baumann, & Ferrer, 2018), felt-sensed markers discerning genuine versus unreliable spiritual knowledge, experiential understandings of the personal and collective “shadow,” and the multidimensionality of the human condition. After presenting an overview of the ESI methodology and two case studies, this article discusses the merits, limitations, and future horizons of this approach for integral education and transpersonal research. KEYWORDS Transpersonal Research, Integral Education, Multiple Ways of Knowing, Interactive Embodied Meditations, Cooperative Inquiry, Participatory Research, Embodied Spirituality.