Counseling Faculty Publications and Presentations

A Phenomenological Investigation of Centering Prayer Using Conventional Content Analysis

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-20-2015

Abstract

Centering prayer is a contemplative practice pioneered by Thomas Keating, William Menninger, and M. Basil Pennington (Pennington et al. 2002). Despite the popular appeal of centering prayer, relatively little research exists investigating its effects on practitioners from a social science perspective. This study sought to describe the lived experience of centering prayer by conducting a phenomenology of 20 centering prayer practitioners. The results of the conventional content analysis yielded 50 codes that the researchers clustered into five categories: (1) The Divine, (2) The Mystical, (3) Spiritual Development, (4) Action-Contemplation, and (5) Contemplative Life. Based upon the study’s findings, future research could better understand how centering prayer affects people by including measures of practitioners’ experience of God, faith development, and important demographic variables like age, religious affiliation, and socio-economic status, as well as measures assessing quality of interpersonal relationships and positive and negative affect.

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Publication Title

Pastoral Psychology

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-015-0657-1

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