The dialectical dance : a heuristic exploration of the spiritual healer's journey

This study sets out to explore and describe the process of becoming a spiritual healer. The research question is motivated by my contact with spiritual healers at a time of ill health and seeks to understand how the five participants presented here became healers. I do this through employing Moustakas's (1990) methodology of Heuristic Inquiry. One of the central tenants of this methodology is that it explicitly acknowledges the importance of the lived experience of the researcher as a guiding and mediating presence in the research process. The research explores how the healers' stories and experiences elicited and illuminated a response within me. The combination of the healers' accounts, and my experience of them, created a dialectical movement within the research which shaped how the research unfolded. Consequently the research illustrates how the investigation into the experience of becoming a spiritual healer, facilitated the internal search within me to understand the question. It offers an overarching theme that understanding the complexity and challenges of bringing dialectical opposites into balance may be one way of appreciating a healer's journey. This overarching theme is explored and expressed through sub themes of wound and shadow, leap of faith, love, shaman in the world, the body, death and transformation.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo