The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion: How Feelings Link the Brain, the Body, and the Sixth Sense

by Michael A. Jawer, Larry Dossey (Foreword)

A cutting-edge examination of feelings, not thoughts, as the gateway to understanding consciousness • Contends that emotion is the greatest influence on personality development • Offers a new perspective on immunity, stress, and psychosomatic conditions • Explains how emotion is key to understanding out-of-body experience, apparitions, and other anomalous perceptions Contemporary science holds that the brain rules the body and generates all our feelings and perceptions. Michael Jawer and Dr. Marc Micozzi disagree. They contend that it is our feelings that underlie our conscious selves and determine what we think and how we conduct our lives. The less consciousness we have of our emotional being, the more physical disturbances we are likely to have--from ailments such as migraines, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and post-traumatic stress to anomalous perceptions such as apparitions and involuntary out-of-body experiences. Using the latest scientific research on immunity, sensation, stress, cognition, and emotional expression, the authors demonstrate that the way we process our feelings provides a key to who is most likely to experience these phenomena and why. They explain that emotion is a portal into the world of extraordinary perception, and they provide the studies that validate the science behind telepathic dreams, poltergeists, and ESP. The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion challenges the prevailing belief that the brain must necessarily rule the body. Far from being by-products of neurochemistry, the authors show that emotions are the key vehicle by which we can understand ourselves and our interactions with the world around us as well as our most intriguing--and perennially baffling--experiences.

Genres: Health, Spirituality, Psychology, Emotion, Nonfiction

579 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 15, 2009

Reviews

[Chanita]

I recommend that NEW SCIENCE/NEW AGE be removed from the summary of this book. Categorizing it thusly restricts potential readers to a very narrow market and alienates the general public.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great book in principle but the reality was really long and painful. It's written by a non-medical practitioner summarizing medical and research studies about the supernatural. It was way too long and often very boring despite this being a topic of major interest to me as a Ph.D. and a sensitive. The author's goal is noble and one I appreciate: To induce scientists to look at paranormal and supernatural phenomenons as extensions of the bodymind. However, quite often even Jawer misses the reality of experience for sensitives in the questions he asks. His book would have been better informed had he spoken to more sensitives of high academic standing rather than just talking to his wife and reading studies. The end of the book has a concise summary of the points of the book; I'd recommend just reading that last chapter to get a summary and then go back and read any particular sections that are of interest. It's a good place to start for a discussion on the topic, but there is a long way left to go.

[Helen W · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has been so significant to me that I almost don't know where to start. I took my time over it in order to savour every word and really feel into it since I was finding myself in almost every page. Truly, Jawer enabled me to find some of the least explainable aspects of my lifelong catalogue of anomalous (out of the ordinary) experiences and gave them scientific credibility. Why is that so important? Because I am "in" a human body and these experiences are very real, within that body, even if they are only just being made sense of by the most open-minded of scientists, and having this validated helps to ground me, as is so necessary for us all...at least for the duration of our human lives. Without such a sense of reality/groundedness, in fact when our version of reality is broadly denied by others, we feel as though we are always in the process of leaving or that our connection to our bodies is, at best, tenuous; which is no good for our health at all!

My only disappointment with this book is that Jawer discounts the spiritual perspective from his scientific investigation. In my view, they are not mutually exclusive...at all, as I feel confident we will be shown (and as some of us are already being shown, through our daily experiences "in a body") in the fulness of time. If you agree, don't let that put you off reading the book. If you have ever been beset with strange electric symptoms in the body, for instance, or the ability to feel things that others don't notice, if you "see" northern lights in your energy field (when you are nowhere near) and all manner of other anomalous experiences, this is the book for you. Enjoy!

Incidentally, I must have referred to this material half a dozen times in the context of various blog posts that I shared over the same time-frame that I was reading Jawer's book; you will find my various discussions on related topics on www.living-whole.org, just search for "Jawer".

[Tami · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of us live by the notion “I think therefore I am”. However, when you look closely at emotions, the thought-reaction sequence doesn’t necessarily explain everything. When you really look at it, our emotions play a huge role in our lives, probably more than we even recognize. That’s incredibly ironic being as we as a society tend to encourage hiding or masking our emotions.

The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion begins by looking at our assumptions and misassumptions about emotions. In particular, I was intrigued by the dialogue about sensitivities. Simply put, not everyone experiences light, colour, sound, etc in the exact same way. We tend to assume this is so but our personal experiences are actually quite unique. Some people are more or less sensitive to certain stimuli or may actually find that the sense experiences get a bit muddled.

The question then becomes “why?” Why do some people experience extrasensory perception and others do not? Why are those who suffer from Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome more sensitive to pain, light, electricity, etc than the average person? Is there reason or a link? It would seem that the answer may have to do with trauma and stress, especially that in early childhood. To me, that’s very interesting and well worth more examination.

[Eduardo Candeias · Rating 1 out of 5]

Misleading title, there is nothing spiritual to be found in this book, consciousness is no longer an hallucination of the brain, but of the immune system. More of the same old materialistic theory with a twist, it seems that conventional science is running out of ideas.

[Mattie · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the sake of full disclosure, I must report that the principal author is a friend of mine.

The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion is a scientific exploration of the role of feeling and emotion in connecting our physical selves to our spiritual selves and both of those to the world around us. Jawer and Micozzi bring an open mind to "out there" phenomena, yet strive to always check in with their inner skeptics. They are willing to say "just maybe" and "what if", while grounding their conclusions in the science they have available to them. This approach allows the reader to come along on a fascinating journey to the realm of psychoneuroimmunology where emotion manifests in the body, and perhaps in the greater world.

I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the mind-body connection, perception and conciousness and some scientifically based speculation about the "weird stuff" that happens out there.

[maile · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only read half, the information was interesting, but it wasn't going in the direction of what I was looking for.

[Rita Hickman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love it so far! It brings a lot of great body/mind info together for my bodywork nerdiness.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-documented. Illuminating. Many great conversations have come from this book.