Relations Between Spirit and Adult Development in Healing Techniques in Several Cultures

Describes a need to examine healing approaches of other cultures to discover new connections between spirituality and adult development. The context chosen for this examination is that of healing of a physical, emotional, identity, and existential kind. The three complementary healing systems chosen for description, relation to adult development, and discussion were selected because of their current popularity in the United States. These complementary healing systems, and many others, involve the spiritual. Developing complex postformal cognition permits use of all these cultural approaches, rather than choosing only one or the other of them or choosing only a more standard US approach. In this paper development and spirituality are examined within Shamanism, Chinese medicine, and Vipassana Buddhism, to suggest some aspects each might add to standard Western systems of healing of mind and body. KEY WORDS: cross-cultural psychology; shamanism; meditation; Chinese medicine; development; cognition; healing. There has been a tremendous increase in ex-ploration of complementary healing systems in the United States and elsewhere in Western industrial