Religious Therapeutics: Body and Health in Yoga, Ayurveda, and Tantra » (1st Edition)

Religious Therapeutics explores the relationship between psychophysical health and spiritual health and presents a model for interpreting connections between religion and medicine in world traditions. This model emerges from the work's investigation of health and religiousness in classical Yoga, Ayurveda, and Tantra-three Hindu traditions noteworthy for the central role they accord the body. Author Gregory P. Fields compares Anglo-European and Indian philosophies of body and health and uses fifteen determinants of health excavated from texts of ancient Hindu medicine to show that health concerns the person, not the body or body/mind alone. This book elucidates multifaceted views of health, and-in the context of spirituality and healing-explores themes such as mental health, meditation, and music.

Booknews

After an overview of ideas connecting religion and medicine, Fields (philosophy, Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville) offers a model of religious therapeutics and consideration of Western philosophies of healing (including a detailed look at Descartes on the subject), and traditional Indian views of person and body. The scholarly investigation that follows details three Indian traditions, examining the meanings of health in Ayurveda<-->including biological, ecological, socio-cultural, metaphysical, and religious determinants; classical yoga<-->its meanings and forms; and tantra and aesthetic therapeutics, including, among other topics, sacred music as a religious therapeutic. Open-minded physicians might find food for thought, but the primary audience is probably scholars involved in religious studies, philosophy, and alternative medicine. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)