Cooperative Inquiry (CI) is a radically collaborative, experiential research approach suited to spirituality and contemplative studies. Founded by John Heron, CI unfolds through cycles of action and reflection, engaging somatic, emotional, intuitive, and imaginal faculties. Action phases are open-ended, allowing co-inquirers to use contemplative, interpersonal, or creative practices. Reflection phases enable personal contemplation, collaborative design, and intersubjective meaning-making. The chapter positions CI within post-positivist and participatory paradigms, describes its three main phases (initiation, action-reflection cycling, meaning making), discusses validity considerations, and presents a case study exploring the experience of the authentic self. The method is gaining validation across disciplines and is well suited for continued application in spiritual and contemplative research.
This chapter introduces Embodied Spiritual Inquiry (ESI) as a novel participatory research method for spiritual and contemplative studies. ESI combines interactive embodied meditations with Cooperative Inquiry to access multiple human faculties—somatic, vital, emotional, mental, and contemplative—through mindful physical contact among practitioners. Contemplation serves as the primary means of multidimensional inquiry rather than a preparation for intellectual learning. The method seeks intersubjective access to epistemic power across body, vital world, heart, mind, and consciousness. The chapter describes ESI's methodology, epistemology, inquiry tools, session structure, and implications including intrapersonal epistemic diversity and participatory validity, concluding with a summary of a published case study on relational spirituality.