Harald Walach – författare

The use of complementary therapies is exploding, increasing the pressure to establish a rigorous science to support its practice. Clinical Research in Complementary Therapies: Principles, Problems and Solutions provides students with the tools they need to research complementary and integrative medicine (CIM) and so fill this gap. Essential for both undergraduate and postgraduate students, this second edition is significantly updated and enhanced.

Part 1 deals with research strategies and methods, explaining the major types of clinical research in CIM and how these inter-relate. New chapters are included on whole systems research, qualitative research and questionnaire development. Not all therapies can be treated the same way nor channeled through the signal process of randomized controlled trials. Therefore, detailed description of mixed methods approaches including observational, qualitative, cost-benefit and comparative effectiveness research are described. Part 2 deals with specific complementary therapies and how they are invested by experts in each field.

The book analyses the key questions asked and the controversies debated in complementary medicine research and offers clear and innovative guidance for answering these questions.

FEATURES

. Provides an overarching synthesis of methods in CIM and how they are to be used collectively including the role of comparative effectiveness research. Suggests both general and specific factors which need to be considered in assessing or planning complementary therapy research . Pinpoints aspects of research which are different in orthodox research and complementary therapy research . Reviews the types of research carried out in specific complementary therapies and analyses issues which arise . Includes information on measuring the economic cost and benefits of complementary medicine, clinical audit and the role of placebos use . Builds upon recent research results, looks at the lessons these provide for all complementary therapies and suggests key issues to address in future research.

This volume features a collection of essays on consciousness, which has become one of the hot topics at the crossroads between neuroscience, philosophy, and religious studies. Is consciousness something the brain produces? How can we study it? Is there just one type of consciousness or are there different states that can be discriminated? Are so called “higher states of consciousness” that some people report during meditation pointing towards a new understanding of consciousness?

Meditation research is a new discipline that shows new inroads into the study of consciousness. If a meditative practice changes brain structure itself this is direct proof of the causal influence of consciousness onto its substrate. If different states of consciousness can be linked with properties and states of the brain this can be used to study consciousness more directly. If the sense of self is modifiable through meditative techniques and this can be objectively shown through neuro-imaging, this has profound implications for our understanding of who we are. Can consciousness, in deep states of meditative absorption, actually access some aspect of reality which we normally don''t? Meditation research can potentially foster us with a new access to the phenomenological method in general. This has even been branded with a new catch-phrase: Contemplative Science. It brings together the most modern neuroscientific approach and the most advanced phenomenological methodology of studying the mind from within, through highly skilled self-observation that has gone through many thousand hours of honing the capacity to look carefully, without distraction.

This book addresses these issues by bringing together some of the leading researchers and thinkers in the field. The scope of the volume reaches from first person neuroscience to Indian philosophy, from pedagogic applications to epistemological aspects and from compassion meditation to the study of brainactivity.

Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality presents a variety of perspectives by leading thinkers on contemporary research into the brain, the mind and the spirit. This volumes  aims at combining knowledge from neuroscience with approaches from the experiential perspective of the first person singular in order to arrive at an integrated understanding of consciousness.  Individual chapters discuss new areas of research, such as near death studies and neuroscience research into spiritual experiences, and report on significant new theoretical advances.

From Harald Walach’s introductory essay, “Neuroscience, Consciousness, Spirituality – Questions, Problems and Potential Solutions,” to the concluding chapter by Robert K. C. Foreman entitled “An Emerging New Model for Consciousness: The Consciousness Field Model,” this book represents a milestone in the progress towards an integrated understanding of spirituality, neuroscience and consciousness.

It is the first in a series of books that are dedicated to this topic.