Podcasts about sensuous perception

Unpacking the transformative insights of adventure psychology.  Adventure Psychologist Dr. Eric Brymer shares insights from his research on the impact of adventure and the human-nature relationship on health and well-being, as well as effective interventions to promote personal growth and development. As a leading expert on the subject, Dr. Brymer unpacks the transformative effects of adventure psychology and discusses how thrilling pursuits can help individuals find meaning in their lives. Dr. Eric Brymer is an endorsed sport and exercise psychologist at Southern Cross University in Australia and a chartered psychologist with the British Psychological Society. Eric is interested in the psychology of performance, wellbeing and learning in adventure and nature-based contexts. His research is particularly focused on the impact of adventure and the human-nature relationship on health and wellbeing and the design of effective interventions. Themes and topics: The impact of adventure and the human-nature relationship on health and well-being. Understanding how thrilling pursuits can lead to personal growth, development, and transformation. The connection between human nature, meaning, and the desire for adventure. Strategies and interventions that harness the benefits of adventure. The profound connections between individuals and the natural world. Insights on the process of conducting research in the field of adventure psychology. How. the findings from adventure psychology research can be applied to improve individuals' well-being and quality of life. Like this episode? Share it with someone who needs it! Share Like the podcast and want to do your part? Send us a tip here or consider a recurring paid subscription. Your support helps us cover the time and resources it takes to create free long-form content. Resources mentioned in this episode: Ecological psychology, which is a school of psychology that rejects cognitive psychology's mainstream explanations of perception Listener Scott's beautiful message about the moment that was meant for him Parkour Why Do You Ride? A Characterization of Mountain Bikers, Their Engagement Methods, and Perceived Links to Mental Health and Well-Being research paper (I've also summarized a few of the findings of that one here.) Hämeenlinna, Finland Phenomenology  Phenomenology and the Extreme Sport Experience by Dr. Eric Brymer and Robert Schweitzer David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World Max van Manen Phenomenology and Nursing Research by Michael Crotty  Let's connect! Please don't forget to rate, subscribe, and share this if it resonates, and you can DM Danielle now directly on Substack! If you've found value in the podcast, consider sending us a tip, here.

David Abram is an American cultural ecologist, a philosopher and an activist. He is author of Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (2010) and The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (1996). Grounding his work within the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, he seeks to reanimate our senses, teaching us how we have been shaped in tandem with the more-than-human world, and how by forgetting it we create a profound loss both for ourselves and for the world in which we live. Having taught and lectured all over the world, he is currently Senior Visiting Scholar in Ecology and Natural Philosophy at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University. Podcast by Lacuna Magazine Interviewer: Adam Weymouth Producer and musician: Ulli Mattsson Further Reading: Alliance for Wild Ethics On Being Human in a More-Than-Human World

Sarah Woodbury and Georgie bond over Borel toads while discussing the collection of engaging programs Sageland Collaborative has to offer, including mimicking beaver damns and catching wildlife on camera. Follow on Insta @sagelandcollabConscious Content Consumption for this episode includes:Ologies, a podcast hosted by Alie WardThe Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, a nonfiction book by David AbramFollow on Insta @longhairdocarepodcast

Breathe in, breathe out. In this speech David Abram talks about what usually stays unnoticed - the omnipresent invisible mass of air we are immersed in. He talks about the air as an organ of the Earth, its sacredness; about climate as the commonwealth of breath as well as about the affinity between air and awareness. Is consciousness really the special possession of our species, or is it rather a property of the breathing biosphere in which we all participate?David Abram is a cultural ecologist and philosopher, founder and creative director of the Alliance for Wild Ethics. He is best known for his work bridging the philosophical tradition of phenomenology with environmental and ecological issues. David is the author of Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, and The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-human World. His essays on the cultural causes and consequences of ecological disarray have appeared in a number of publications and anthologies. Abram coined the phrase “the more-than-human world” as a way of referring to earthly nature, a term that has become a key phrase within the lingua franca of the broad ecological movement.Follow us on  Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.___Nádech, výdech. V tomto díle hovoří David Abram o tom, co běžně zůstává nepovšimnuto - o všudypřítomné neviditelné mase vzduchu, ve které jsme ponořeni. Abram mluví o vzduchu jako o orgánu Země, o jeho posvátnosti; o klimatu jako společném bohatství dechu (commonwealth of breath), o spřízněnosti dechu a vědomí. Skutečně vědomí náleží výlučně našemu druhu? Nebo spíš patří dýchající biosféře, na níž jsme všichni účastni?David Abram je kulturní ekolog a filozof, zakladatel a kreativní ředitel Aliance pro etiku divočiny. Je známý především díky své práci propojující filozofickou tradici fenomenologie s environmentálními a ekologickými tématy. Je autorem knih Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology a The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-human World. Jeho eseje o kulturních příčinách a důsledcích ekologického chaosu vyšly v řadě publikací a antologií. Je autorem slovního spojení „více než lidský svět“, kterým označuje pozemskou přírodu a který se stal klíčovým výrazem jazyka environmentalistů*ek po celém světě.Sledujte nás na sociálních sítích Facebook, Instagram a Twitter.

In this episode, astrologer and avant-garde thinker Anya Kaats and I... share Anya's journey from her Jewish upbringing to her gender and sexuality studies, marriage, divorce, food blogging, chronic illness, agnosticism, and astrology talk about the comfort of ritual and connection to something higher, the nature of belief, and the comfort found in belief discuss the rise of spiritual influencers, spiritual bypassing of trauma, influencers promising life-changing psychic readings and secret "codes, and Instagram shamans circa 2017 discuss the nuances of responsible spirituality and how fragile spiritual spaces and practices can be without radical responsibility share some of Anya's experiences in spiritual spaces with questionable boundaries and ethics talk about some general red flags to watch out for so listeners can better discern and find a spirituality that honors reconnection to Self, Others, and the Planet discuss the ancestral connection to the natural world in pre-historic, hunter-gatherer spirituality vs. capitalism and scientism share various opinions on abundance as a potential for hoarding wealth and resources Anya's website #110: Responsibly Navigating Metaphysical & Extrasensory Realms Using the Akashic Records with Jenny Kellogg Anya's podcasts: A Millennial's Guide to Saving the World and Whore Rapport Anya's Substack Power in the Helping Professions by Adoph Guggenbuhl-Craig Inner Gold: Understanding Psychological Projection by Robert A. Johnson Spell of the Sensuous: Perception & Language in a More-Than-Human World by David Abram

V kontextu klimatické krize čím dál intenzivněji hledáme způsoby, jak přehodnotit svůj vztah k přírodě a prostředí, jehož jsme součástí. Cítíme, že oddělení člověka jako samostatné jednotky od okolního světa, je fikcí. Byl to americký geofilozof David Abram, který svými myšlenkami rozčeřil navyklé způsoby přemýšlení. Ve vztahu člověka s “více než lidským světem” zdůrazňuje fenomén vzduchu a dechu jako matérie propojující veškeré planetární organismy. To s sebou nese řadu reálných implikací i pro každodenní svět, jak jej známe. V podcastu Davida Abrama provází environmentální výzkumník Ľuboš Slovák, aby pomohl konkretizovat a projasnit jeho myšlenky českému posluchači.David Abram je kulturní ekolog a filozof, zakladatel a kreativní ředitel Aliance pro etiku divočiny. Je známý především díky své práci propojující filozofickou tradici fenomenologie s environmentálními a ekologickými tématy. Je autorem knih Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology a The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-human World. Jeho eseje o kulturních příčinách a důsledcích ekologického chaosu vyšly v řadě publikací a antologií. Je autorem slovního spojení „více než lidský svět“, kterým označuje pozemskou přírodu a který se stal klíčovým výrazem jazyka environmentalistů*ek po celém světě.Sledujte nás na sociálních sítích Facebook, Instagram a Twitter.

We approach the Middle Pillar on the Tree of Life as a possible guide to the dilemma of having a human identity, exploring: the contrast between identity and being; the advantages and drawbacks of emphasising one of these above the other; a parallel between the Pillar of Severity and identity, and the Pillar of Mercy and being; how these distinctions transcend politics; neurodiversity as a new and possibly radical category of human difference; neurodiversity as a possible recognition that the human being is not synonymous with the human mind; lack of mental imagery as a marker of neurodiversity; mental imagery in magick; Lionel Snell on seeing fairies; how the imagination does not depend upon mental imagery, because the imagination is universal; some ancient myths and other accounts of human nature; the changeability of human nature; David Abram on the separation of the human from nature; putting the blame on language and Plato; the primacy of forgetting in human nature; forgetting and remembering in Plato; remembering as resurrection; parallels between identity and remembering, being and forgetting, and the dilemmas of both; the Middle Pillar as an alternative to these; Kether as that which is beyond the human mind; Israel Regardie on the resolution of psychological conflict as a preliminary practice to magick; acceptance as the solution to conflict; Tiphereth as the model of acceptance and balance; the Middle Pillar as a combination of remembering and forgetting; Yesod as the unconscious and the storehouse of memory and images; the abyss and the enigma of Da'ath; the nature of Da'ath and a personal experience of it; Da'ath and the Holy Guardian Angel as useful fictions; the arrival at a useful fiction as a preliminary to the experience of Kether; the Middle Pillar as a pulsation of different kinds of remembering and forgetting. Support the podcast and access additional content at: https://patreon.com/oeith. Buy me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/oeith or https://www.buymeacoffee.com/dbarfordG. Or you could send me a lovely book from https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/1IQ3BVWY3L5L5?ref_=wl_share. David Abram (1996). The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-human World. New York: Pantheon. Anonymous (2002). Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism. New York: Tarcher. Ramsey Dukes (2011). How to See Fairies: Discover Your Psychic Powers in Six Weeks. London: Aeon. Israel Regardie (1945). The Middle Pillar. Chicago: Aries.

Rupert and David Abram probe the meaning and manifestation of magic. Recorded at Hollyhock on Cortes Island, Canada, on August 6, 2015.David Abram, PhD, is a cultural ecologist, founder of The Alliance for Wild Ethics and award winning author of Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, and The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World. An accomplished storyteller and sleight-of-hand magician David has lived and traded magic with indigenous sorcerers in Indonesia, Nepal, and the Americas. 

Claudia talks to Jeremy Gordon about the concept “Republic of Noise”. They discuss the relationship between noise and politics and think through how noise might be used as a tool that enables listening and democracy. They “riff” with each other trying to think through the tensions between noise and harmony as well as whose sounds are considered pleasant or not and how that shapes how one belongs to place.   Date Recorded: 9 February 2022 Jeremy Gordon is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Gonzaga University who studies and teaches where environmental communication, environmental studies, and critical animal studies get entangled. He is obsessed with questions of how ecological relations are “rhetorically” animated – by human and more-than-human messmates. Specifically, how urban ecologies and feral spaces are, and should be, shaped by everyday creaturely encounters. Jeremy has co-edited a special volume on “animal rhetoric” for Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and is currently enchanted by, and kinning with, the feral chickens of Tampa, Florida's Ybor City. Those chickens have scratched and strutted their way into The Journal of Urban Affairs and Dr. Laura Reese's edited book on Animals in the City. Find out more about Jeremy on his University website. Featured: A fowl politics of urban dwelling. Or, Ybor City's republic of noise; Of fowl feet, beaks, and streets: eyes on the ground in Ybor City by Jeremy G. Gordon; Ybor Chicken Society ; The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening by Jennifer Lynn Stoever; Practices of Space and Walking in the City by Michel De Certeau; The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World by David Abram; Wild dog dreaming: Love and Extinction by Deborah Bird Rose; When Species Meet by Donna Haraway Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast; the Sonic Arts Studio and the Sonic Arts of Place Laboratory (SAPLab) for sponsoring this season; Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @_con_sol_) for the bed music, Jeremy John (Website) for the logo, and Hannah Hunter for the Animal Highlight. 

In today's episode we are diving deep into spirituality and nature. I am so excited to bring you this episode as it has been one of my favourite conversations to record.  Catherine Potter is a marriage celebrant, yoga teacher, retreat facilitator, ecologist and spiritual teacher. As you will come to find she is incredibly passionate about her connection to spirit and earth and believes that by cultivating a spiritual practice closely aligned with nature she is able to bring more meaning and purpose into her own life and helps others to do the same. This episode dives into the history of the spiritual as well as introduces us to many different practices and the connection and intention behind each. I really enjoyed talking with Catherine and I hope that her words inspire you to dive a little deeper into your own practices. Let's dive in… Find Catherine: www.radiantsun.com.au Extra notes: Books David Abram The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More Than Human World (1996) Becoming Animal : an Earthly Cosmology (2011) Sharon Blackie   If Women Rose Rooted: A Journey to Authenticity and Belonging (2019)   James Endredy Ecoshamanism: Sacred Practices of Unity, Power and Earth Healing (2005) Earthwalks for Body and Spirit. Exercises to Restore Our Sacred Bond with the Earth (2002) Sandra Ingerman   Awakening to the Spirit World: The Shamanic Path of Direct Revelation (2019) Joanna Macy A Wild Love for the World and the Work of Our Time (2020) Bill Plotkin Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (2008) Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries and Revolutionaries (2021) Mary Reynolds Thomson  Reclaiming the Wild Soul. How Earth's Landscapes Restore Us to Wholeness (2019) John Seed, Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming and Arne Naess Thinking Like a Mountain: Towards a Council Of All Beings (1988) David Tacey Re Enchantment (2000) Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee (editor)  Spiritual Ecology – The Cry of the Earth (2016) Robin Wall Kimmerer   Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)   Websites, Podcasts and Video  David Abram - wildethics.org/dynamic-media/ Sharon Blackie - sharonblackie.net/podcast/ Isla Macleod - Nature–based Spirituality  Joanna Macy –  joannamacy.net/main#multimedia The Work that Reconnects Bill Plotkin - www.animas.org/podcasts/ John Seed – Deep Ecology video   Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann - Dadirri -  miriamrosefoundation.org.au/about-dadirri miriamrosefoundation.org.au/about-dadirri/dadirri-film Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee - workingwithoneness.org/video/ Louise Wiggins – Chakra Yoga  The Earthing Movie: The Remarkable Science of Grounding

Meet https://www.linkedin.com/in/gigi-stafne-07703011a/ (Gigi Stafne) on today's episode of Entelechy Leadership Stories.  Gigi is Executive Director of http://greenwisdom.weebly.com/ (Green Wisdom) School of Natural & Botanical Medicine and https://www.linkedin.com/company/women's-environmental-institute/about/ (Women's Environmental Institute). Gigi has a commitment to improving global health and wellness in a completely sustainable organic holistic way versus a technical, singular, and unempathetic way. Weaving complete answers from multiple sources to fix our cosmology.  Gigi discusses the importance of looking at what truly feeds and nourishes your soul. Core competencies of healing the human soul are deepened by utilizing intuition, sensing, compassion, and empathy. This supports the listening and responding to a person's needs in a greater way. Part of the work is emitting heart-felt energy. Being an exquisite empath. The personal commitment to self-awareness enables one to look at the deeper commitments in the Soul and heart. Going beyond the self and cultivating and serving a greater purpose a larger calling. Healing the full cosmology allows one to thrive versus survive. It is not enough to have a personal passion, think bigger, have a bigger Soul purpose, what is the collective requirement and how does my Soul purpose support and fulfill this.  Utilize contemplative time and silence as well as nature for self-awareness and growth. Be in counsel with nature to understand the ecological and environmental requirements. Deepen your connection to nature and earth as the environment and planet have messages for us.  Primary ways to connect deeper and communicate with nature and our earth: o  Create and cultivate spaciousness to hear messages o  Silence – being quiet o  Be in nature - unplug o  Receive and transmit – connecting with plant spirit allies o  Understand how you receive and transmit – develop your intuitive skills Recommended good reads to deepen your wisdom: https://www.humansandnature.org/david-abram (David Abram) - https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Animal-Cosmology-David-Abram/dp/0375713697 (Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology) https://www.humansandnature.org/david-abram (David Abram) - https://www.amazon.com/Spell-Sensuous-Perception-Language-More-Than-Human/dp/0679776397 (The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World) https://www.amazon.com/Language-Older-Than-Words/dp/1931498555 (Derrick Jenson – A language older than words) https://www.amazon.com/Name-Chellis-Recovery-Western-Civilization/dp/087773996X (My Name is Chellis and I am in recovery from western civilization) To connect with Gigi and/or learn more about Green Wisdom you can find her at: Website: http://greenwisdom.weebly.com/ (http://greenwisdom.weebly.com/) Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gigi-stafne-07703011a/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gigi-stafne-07703011a/) Join https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirstingooldy/ (Kirstin) for "http://www.pureentelechy.com/classes/ (Soul Tea -- Conversations On the Soul)” Discussion to support your Soul's Journey and its Evolution Meets online every other Friday 12pm – 2pm Eastern Free -- please register at https://www.pureentelechy.com/classes/ (pureentelechy.com/classes) Connect with Mark Stinson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stinsonmark/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/stinsonmark/) Connect with Kirstin Gooldy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirstingooldy/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirstingooldy/)

David Abram is a cultural ecologist and geophilosopher, author of "The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World" and "Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology."

Oh, what a shimmering, gorgeous, living, and enlivening conversation with one of the great embodied thinkers of our time! We loved interviewing David Abram and know you’ll enjoy this episode in which we explore, through David’s unique and gorgeous way with language, ways to be embodied and fully alive in our over-civilized world. We explore ideas about our use of language and the possibilities for “wielding our words” in ways that hold our senses open rather than shutting them down. We speak about recovering the wisdom of our animal senses; “tickling forth a way of being” in the world that is sensory, intimate and alive. David treats us to a reading from Becoming Animal, and shares the invitation to slow down and have patience even during the emergency we find ourselves in. He addresses the importance of leaving space in our lives, pulling the plug on our gadgets regularly to encounter the living world, and he speaks about why not only embodiment matters, but matter matters. We hope you enjoy being under the sensuous spell of David’s language and beautiful mind as much as we did! You can find more about him at http://wildethics.org. We highly recommend his beautiful books The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World and Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology.

“For some, there may be a kind of engineer’s satisfaction in the streamlining and networking of our entire lived experience,” writes Jenny Odell. “And yet a certain nervous feeling, of being overstimulated and unable to sustain a train of thought, lingers.” Odell is the author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. And she’s a visual artist who has taught digital and physical design at Stanford since 2013, as well as done residencies at Facebook, the San Francisco Planning Department, the Dump, and the Internet Archive. All of which is to say she’s the perfect person to talk with about creativity and attention in a world designed to flatten both. In this conversation, we discuss the difference between productivity and creativity, how artists orchestrate attention, the ideologies we use to value our time, what it means to do nothing, restoring context to our lives and words, why “groundedness requires actual ground,” lucid dreaming, the joys of bird-watching, my difficulty appreciating conceptual art, her difficulty with meditation, and much more. Book recommendations: Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer by Barbara Ehrenreich The Nature and Functions of Dreaming by Ernest Hartmann Cults: Faith, Healing, and Coercion by Mark Galanter The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World by David Abram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happens when a friendly anthropologist conducts an ethnographic study of contemporary contemplative Christianity in America, looking at subjects both in monasteries and in secular life? Paula Pryce does just this kind of work in her insightful book The Monk's Cell: Ritual and Knowledge in American Contemplative Christianity. Spending several years of research with teachers like Cynthia Bourgeault and Thomas Keating, along with monasteries like the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Massachusetts, Pryce offers a detailed exploration of how contemplative spirituality is making a profound transformation in our time. From previous days when such practice was almost exclusively found within cloistered walls, to the increasing (if still marginal) presence of contemplation  in churches, centering prayer groups, online forums, and educational offerings such as the Center for Action & Contemplation's Living School or Bourgeault's own Wisdom School, contemplative practice is a vibrant subculture within Christianity — and Pryce, to our knowledge, is the first ethnographer to write about contemplative Christianity in a scholarly, yet accessible, fashion. I always meditated before I wrote... I go back in my mind, meditate, and then enter in through memory to those places where I was doing research, and that allowed me to give language to these non-verbal situations. — Paula Pryce What emerges from her research is a recognition that contemplation (and, by implication, the practice of silence) invites the practitioner into a new way of knowing, that is marked by qualities such as embodiment, community, humility, and ritual. I'm always after trying to understand the beauty of humankind. We have lots of messages about how awful we are! And we can't ignore that and I wouldn't want to. But I honestly think we need to embrace how wonderful humans are. — Paula Pryce In this conversation, Paula joins the Encountering Silence team to explore not only her own relationship with silence, but also how her research deepened her knowledge of contemplation as a transformational practice. She movingly speaks of her Anglo-Indian father as her silence hero, and draw connections between his lifelong meditation practice and his commitment to social action. She reflects on the paradox of writing about silence (expressing a non-verbal phenomena through the verbal medium of language), and on how ethnography, as a discipline, can help us to understand silence better. One can use anything as a contemplative practice. That's the main point of this book: people are trying to train themselves in everyday life as contemplatives, in every action and every way of being. — Paula Pryce Some of the resources and authors we mention in this episode: Paula S. Pryce, The Monk's Cell: Ritual and Knowledge in American Contemplative Christianity Eleanor H. Porter, Pollyanna Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and Other Religious Writings The Beatles, Abbey Road Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage Cynthia Bourgeault, The Heart of Centering Prayer: Nondual Christianity in Theory and Practice David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World Seneca, The Stoic Philosophy Joseph Cassant, L'Attente Dans Le Silence Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms: Translation with Commentary Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain Hadewijch, The Complete Works Mary Oliver, Devotions: The Selected Poems Episode 27: Silence, Bodily Knowing, and Ritual: A Conversation with Paula Pryce Hosted by: Kevin Johnson With: Cassidy Hall, Carl McColman Guest: Paula Pryce Date Recorded: May 29,

What happens when a friendly anthropologist conducts an ethnographic study of contemporary contemplative Christianity in America, looking at subjects both in monasteries and in secular life? Paula Pryce does just this kind of work in her insightful book The Monk's Cell: Ritual and Knowledge in American Contemplative Christianity. Spending several years of research with teachers like Cynthia Bourgeault and Thomas Keating, along with monasteries like the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Massachusetts, Pryce offers a detailed exploration of how contemplative spirituality is making a profound transformation in our time. From previous days when such practice was almost exclusively found within cloistered walls, to the increasing (if still marginal) presence of contemplation  in churches, centering prayer groups, online forums, and educational offerings such as the Center for Action & Contemplation's Living School or Bourgeault's own Wisdom School, contemplative practice is a vibrant subculture within Christianity — and Pryce, to our knowledge, is the first ethnographer to write about contemplative Christianity in a scholarly, yet accessible, fashion. I always meditated before I wrote... I go back in my mind, meditate, and then enter in through memory to those places where I was doing research, and that allowed me to give language to these non-verbal situations. — Paula Pryce What emerges from her research is a recognition that contemplation (and, by implication, the practice of silence) invites the practitioner into a new way of knowing, that is marked by qualities such as embodiment, community, humility, and ritual. I'm always after trying to understand the beauty of humankind. We have lots of messages about how awful we are! And we can't ignore that and I wouldn't want to. But I honestly think we need to embrace how wonderful humans are. — Paula Pryce In this conversation, Paula joins the Encountering Silence team to explore not only her own relationship with silence, but also how her research deepened her knowledge of contemplation as a transformational practice. She movingly speaks of her Anglo-Indian father as her silence hero, and draw connections between his lifelong meditation practice and his commitment to social action. She reflects on the paradox of writing about silence (expressing a non-verbal phenomena through the verbal medium of language), and on how ethnography, as a discipline, can help us to understand silence better. One can use anything as a contemplative practice. That's the main point of this book: people are trying to train themselves in everyday life as contemplatives, in every action and every way of being. — Paula Pryce Some of the resources and authors we mention in this episode: Paula S. Pryce, The Monk's Cell: Ritual and Knowledge in American Contemplative Christianity Eleanor H. Porter, Pollyanna Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and Other Religious Writings The Beatles, Abbey Road Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage Cynthia Bourgeault, The Heart of Centering Prayer: Nondual Christianity in Theory and Practice David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World Seneca, The Stoic Philosophy Joseph Cassant, L'Attente Dans Le Silence Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms: Translation with Commentary Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain Hadewijch, The Complete Works Mary Oliver, Devotions: The Selected Poems Episode 27: Silence, Bodily Knowing, and Ritual: A Conversation with Paula Pryce Hosted by: Kevin Johnson With: Cassidy Hall, Carl McColman Guest: Paula Pryce Date Recorded: May 29, 2018