This volume represents a selection of papers that were presented at the Yoga & Psyche International Conference: The Future of Psychology, held in San Francisco, USA, in April 2014. This was the first academic conference in the Western world focused on the integration of Western psychology and yoga, and attracted an international presence from over 15 countries. With the increasingly widespread permeation of Eastern philosophy into Western society and the spread of Western values around the world, the time was ripe for a deeper investigation into the intersection of these subjects. This collection of articles serves as a foundational text for an emerging field of inquiry that begins to integrate the vast context of yoga--which includes ethics, the study of canonical texts, self-inquiry, breath management, physical postures, and meditation, to name but a few-with Western psychological theory and clinical practice, including the breakthroughs in somatic psychology and trauma research, and insights from neuroscience. This book will appeal to psychologists, neuroscientists and researchers, sociologists, scholars of comparative religion and Indic studies, physicians and health practitioners interested in complementary medicine, and those interested in joining the conversation of a new field of investigation that integrates the perennial wisdom of yoga with the practice of modern Western psychology.
About the Author: Mariana Caplan, PhD, MFT, RYT 500, is a psychotherapist, yoga teacher, and the author of seven books within the fields of psychology and spirituality, including the award-winning Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path (2010), Halfway Up the Mountain: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment (1999), and Yoga & Psyche (2016). She is the founder of the Yoga & Psyche Conference, the Yoga & Psyche Method, and Yoga & Psyche International, a web-based educational resource created to integrate these subjects on a global level. Gabriel Axel Montes, MSc, E-RYT 500, is a neuroscientist, yoga teacher, and educator at the intersection of neuroscience and yoga philosophy and practice. He has trained extensively in various yogic methods, and has created theoretical and experimental links between these and neuroscience research. He has been featured in the Huffington Post and U.S. News, and is the author of a book on the fusion of neuroscience and yoga.