“In its zealousness to explore the brain, contemporary neuroscience is missing the boat – namely the body,” asserts emotion researcher Michael Jawer in The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion. “Of even greater importance than the brain is the degree of connectedness between head, heart, and all the bodily systems. That’s the real key to personality, and to the quality of our lives.”
Jawer has spent the past 10 years delving into the subject of how bodily feeling underlies consciousness – and how the energy of feelings plays an integral role in immunity, stress reactions, and numerous psychosomatic conditions, including migraine headache, synesthesia (overlapping senses), chronic fatigue, phantom pain, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Most startlingly, he and his coauthor, Marc Micozzzi, MD, PhD, argue that paranormal perception -- apparitions, telepathy, poltergeist disturbances, and ‘out of body’ experience -- also arises from distortions in the way individuals process feeling. “Although they have long resisted explanation, each of these phenomena involves a discernable pattern and is amenable to scientific inquiry,” Jawer posits.
A professional communicator, Jawer has, over the last twenty years, written on diverse subjects for trade and professional associations as well as the Federal government. His guidebooks have sold more than 75,000 copies…he has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times…he has presented to scores of audiences nationwide…and composed remarks delivered verbatim by a sitting U.S. President. His success stems from the ability to master specialized knowledge, frame it in a way that makes it widely understandable, and put it across compellingly.
Jawer has diligently applied this strength in the development of The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion. Sifting through reams of research in disciplines ranging from biology to anthropology, he consulted with numerous scientific authorities and conducted his own research – findings that have been published in a trio of peer-reviewed journals. The result is an entirely fresh take on the mind, on emotion, on immunity -- on all the elements that make us sentient and, indeed, human.
Jawer’s thesis came together gradually, and from a most unlikely source. In the course of his 'day job' at the time – which was developing indoor air quality guidance for office building owners and managers – he was researching so-called Sick Building Syndrome and another poorly understood condition called Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. (In the former, groups of people feel unwell inside buildings for no immediately discernable reason; in the latter, people claim to be ‘allergic’ to trace amounts of chemicals, aromas, even electricity.) Jawer read various accounts and went on to speak with people who said they were affected by these conditions. Rather than chalk up their complaints to a hyperactive imagination or some shade of mental illness, he suspected they might have a threshold sensitivity much lower than average. When several individuals confided to him that they’d had apparitional experiences, the wheels started turning.
Since then, Jawer has delved deeply into the possibility that a variety of odd sensitivities may have a common neurobiological foundation – stemming at least as much from the body as the vaunted brain. The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion blends cutting-edge scientific concepts, first-person accounts, and systematically gathered data into a pioneering explanation of perceptions that people have had for centuries, and yet have been told by science to ignore, doubt or dismiss. “By taking renewed account of our bodily senses, bodily energy and bodily feeling, we have the means to understand experiences that would otherwise elude and confound us,” Jawer believes.
The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion supplies a bold and timely counter to neuroscience’s assertion that the brain rules the body and alone determines the self. But the mind is not solely mental, emphasizes Jawer. “The bedrock determinant of who we are is our sensory apparatus, the experiences that inform us, and the flow of feeling that literally moves us.” The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion offers a fresh – and much needed – market adjustment to the brain-dominated worldview of our age.
09/25/09 |
The Spiritual Anatomy Of Emotions |
|
www.emotiongateway.com
|
