Spirituality and Health

Doctoral Research 2005

Hypnotizability and Dissociation in Spirituality: Cross-Cultural Experiences Related to Health and Well-Being

                                                                                  Abstract
A foundational body-mind-spirit conceptualization is criticalforcross-cultural research in spirituality and health.
Thus, a static-group comparison between 294 students of Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment (RSE) in Yelm, Washington and 147 Sundo Taoists in South Korea was compiled via a descriptive body-mind-spirit profile. The SF-36 Health Survey assessed the “body.” Hypnotizability (Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory–Hypnotic Assessment Procedure), dissociation (Dissociative Experiences Scale), absorption (Multiple Personality Questionnaire), negative affect (Eysenck Personality Inventory), and repression (Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale) assessed the “mind.” Anomalous experiences (Anomalous Experiences Inventory) and spiritual behaviors (Psychomatrix Spirituality Inventory) assessed the “spirit.”

The hypotheses were: (1) increaseddissociation and increased hypnotizability would predict increasedanomalous experiences; (2)hypnotizability, negative affect, and repression would predict increased spirituality; (3) dissociation and hypnotizability would predict increased Psychomatrixfactors of divinity, mindfulness, childhood spirituality, and ESP (extrasensory perception);(4) dissociation would show a positive correlation to Psychomatrix trauma; (5) dissociation would not show a correlation to childhood spirituality; (6) hypnotizability would show a positive correlation to childhood spirituality; (7) childhood spirituality, dissociation, and hypnotizability would distinguish group membership; and, (8) females high in dissociation or hypnotizability would reportgreaterbodily pain and less emotional and social functioning than SF-36 norms. The hypotheses were tested with multiple regression, Z-tests, MANOVAs, and discriminant analyses.

Hypothesis 1-4 and 7 were supported. Hypnotizability and dissociation predicted anomalous experiences, but only dissociation contributed significantly to each group. Hypnotizability predicted increased spirituality overall and for RSE. Dissociation predicted increased divinity, mindfulness, and ESP overall, and predicted increased divinity and increased ESP for each group. Hypnotizability, negative affect, repression, dissociation, anomalous experiences, and mental health summary predicted 94% group membership. These findings suggest bi-directionality between spirituality and health, in that: (a) hypnotizability played a greater role than dissociation in self-healing, dependent upon the spiritual practice use of absorption, dissociation, and type of attentional focusing; (b) self-reported health was expressed via sociocultural dynamics and spiritual ideologies; and, (c) hypnotizability and dissociation assessments were moderated by each group’s attentional focusing.

Generalizability was limited by intensity sampling. Further research may clarify the role of attentional focus with other spiritually-oriented practices.