The cross-cultural evidence on "extreme behaviors": what can it tell us?
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.
Jackson
Jean E
JE
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. jjackson@mit.edu
D001519:Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D001938:Brazil; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D003243:Consciousness / Q000502:physiology; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D008519:Medicine, Traditional; D018609:Tibet