Practices have accompanied humans from our first steps up from Eden to the present. A practice entails some form of disciplined action, repeated custom, or regular exercise performed with intention. Spurred by the irresistible desire to improve oneself and the world, each generation of human beings have invented new practices for growth. Thanks to the globalization of knowledge, a person can access the world’s entire collection of growth techniques—across cultures and through time. The diversity of transformative practices is truly astounding, from the complex to the simple, the mainstream to the obscure, the scientific to the artistic, the traditional to the outrageous. All of these are available to us right now. An Integral understanding of practice honors all forms of health. On the one hand, an Integral view is an evolutionary perspective, one that implicitly values practices that transform capacity and spurs humans to progressively more complex stages of development. … [Read more...]
