Authors’ Biographical Notes


Edwin M. McMahon, Ph.D. and Peter A. Campbell, Ph.D. hold doctoral degrees in the psychological study of religion and spirituality from the University of Ottawa, Canada. This field of inquiry addresses the issue of what in religions and spiritual practices contributes to health and human wholeness—and what generally leads to pathology.

Both men are native Californians, born in 1930 and 1935—teachers, authors, theologians, Catholic priests, ordained as Jesuits and members of that order for 25 years as well as cofounders of The Institute for Bio-Spiritual Research, Inc..

Their published books include:  Becoming a Person in the Whole Christ, The In-Between—Evolution in Christian Faith, Please Touch, Beyond the Myth of Dominance— An Alternative to a Violent Society, and BioSpirituality—Focusing as a Way to Grow. Ed’s little book for children, but equally cherished by many adults for their own use—The Little Bird Who Found Herself—has drawn numerous sensitive and touching reviews at amazon.com. Peter and Edwin also authored nineteen published booklets as well as five video series based upon their psychological research. They have been drawn to explore how a meaning that is felt in the body (a gut or belly story), even before it can be thought and analyzed in the mind, affects human development—especially within family life, education, child development, religious practices and within the world-wide problem of increasing violence.

During the last 20 years they have concentrated their attention on developing a more effective, inner body-learning process within which those who share a common Christian faith can best learn a new habit in their own bodies of noticing and nurturing their important feelings. The priority here is no longer simply one of acquiring more new information, but including as well how our body can know and expresses Christian faith. This practical, missing piece is crucial for all transformational religious maturation within the whole human organism.

It took years of experimentation as well as personal use before Drs. McMahon and Campbell felt they had enough experience and evidence that they could then put together this integrated workbook for companioning each person into their own inner body-process of wholeness as their experiential bridge into a deepening faith-experience of the Body of Christ.

It took years of experimentation as well as personal use before Drs. McMahon and Campbell felt they had enough experience and evidence that they could then put together this integrated workbook for companioning each person into their own inner body-process of wholeness as their experiential bridge into a deepening faith-experience of the Body of Christ.  This has become their latest publication, a workbook: Rediscovering the Lost Body-Connection Within Christian Spirituality.

The Institute for Biospiirtual Research, Inc. is an international network—including parents, counselors, healthcare providers, hospice and other volunteer groups, clergy, teachers, pastoral caregivers, social workers and various therapists.  The Institute is not affiliated with any church, political party, country or vested interest.  It is a member supported, shared leadership community of peacemakers from the inside who have come to experience that this transformative, unifying and loving body-experience is grounded within the human organism’s awareness of being a living cell within a Larger Body—for Christians, the Body of the Whole Christ.  More and more today, Christians want to be nurtured by a Christian spirituality that ties their own process of maturing human wholeness (holiness) together with their body’s gift for recognizing the workings of grace inside this same Loving Process—the One “... in whom we live and move and have our very existence.”

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