Culture, Spirituality, Reflexivity, and Funeral Rituals

Abstract

This document is a pdf of the finalised, published version of the article 'Culture, Spirituality, Reflexivity, and Funeral Rituals'. It first appeared in the Summer 2017 issue of the journal Thresholds, which is published by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy©. This pdf may not be adapted and is supplied for non-commercial use only.Culture is like the air we breathe, we are not aware of it until it is missing” (Robbins, Chatterjee, & Canda, 1998, p. 122) Moustakas’ (1990) idea that something ‘calls to us’ when we begin a research journey proved prophetic in my own experience of doing my doctorate research. I discovered there was something to intuit about my own personal experience that needed to become known and opened up areas of my experience that I had taken for granted or not really engaged with in any significant way. There was a great deal of self-discovery, making connections to childhood experiences and aspects of cultural influences that had hitherto been out of my conscious awareness