Journal of Religion and Health
June 1, 2023
Jeff Levin
This paper advocates for a renewed focus into the experiential domain of religious and spiritual expression in research on physical and mental health. Most studies, up to now, have investigated risk or protection associated with behavioral measures of religiousness, whether public behaviors such as religious attendance or private behaviors such as personal prayer. Religious attitudes, beliefs,...
Religions
August 25, 2022
Jeff Levin
10 citations
This paper discusses the concept of New Age healing. Its emergence into popular culture in the 1980s can be traced to burgeoning interest in human potential and holistic health in the 1960s and 1970s. These phenomena in turn, were rooted in the appearance of Theosophy, New Thought, and spiritualism in the 19th Century. Rather than a social movement, or even a singular phenomenon, the New Age is...
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
February 18, 2022
Sam Parnia, Stephen G. Post, Matthew T. Lee et al.
68 citations
An inadvertent consequence of advances in stem cell research, neuroscience, and resuscitation science has been to enable scientific insights regarding what happens to the human brain in relation to death. The scientific exploration of death is in large part possible due to the recognition that brain cells are more resilient to the effects of anoxia than assumed. Hence, brain cells become...
Explore (New York, N.Y.)
2021
Jeff Levin
This article, the first of a two-part series, explores the subject of Western esoteric healing. First, conceptual background is offered on Western esotericism and traditions of esoteric healing. Second, the concept of therapeutic knowledge, which emerged from the philosophy of medicine and medical anthropology, is introduced and described in detail, including its application to the study of...
Explore (New York, N.Y.)
2011
Jeff Levin
47 citations
This paper surveys the landscape of energy healing, offering a taxonomy and conceptual overview of the work of practitioners. First, systems of energy healing are classified under four categories: an East Asian tradition, a Western professional tradition, a bioenergy tradition, and a contemporary metaphysical tradition. Examples of each are provided. Second, the possibility of core concepts in...
2011
Jeff Levin
1 citation
Unitive, mystical, or transcendent experiences; subjective perceptions of connection with God or the divine; spiritual rebirth - for biomedicine these concepts are regarded as wholly subjective, perhaps products of delusion, and thus intractable from a research standpoint. As even sociologists of religion focus their psychometric efforts elsewhere, there is little extant scholarship on...
Explore (New York, N.Y.)
2008
Jeff Levin
38 citations
This paper presents, for the first time, a comprehensive scholarly examination of the history and principles of major traditions of esoteric healing. After a brief conceptual overview of esoteric religion and healing, summaries are provided of eight major esoteric traditions, including descriptions of beliefs and practices related to health, healing, and medicine. These include what are termed...