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The cross-cultural evidence on "extreme behaviors": what can it tell us?
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
Short Title: Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci.The cross-cultural evidence on "extreme behaviors"
Format: Journal Article
Publication Date: 2009/08//
Pages: 270 - 277
Sources ID: 95246
Visibility: Public (group default)
Abstract: (Show)
Many kinds of body/mind practices are capable of producing remarkable behaviors and altered body states. A typology of such behaviors and states, defined as observable and intentional "extreme" alterations to the body, is presented. Epistemological and methodological issues are discussed: limitations of observational data, and role of meaning, intentionality, and consciousness. Rapprochement between Western medicine and Indo-Tibetan medicine requires rethinking biomedicine's radical grounding in physicality and reliance on "evidence-based medicine," and guarding against an ethnocentric Western intellectual hegemony motivating medical science and clinical practice to colonize and subvert non-Western traditions like Indo-Tibetan Buddhist medicine.