Tongues of Fire

We know so little about speaking in tongues, a spiritual practice widely used in the United States and around the world. Brahinsky is a fluid writer and a careful listener who has worked with tongues-speakers for years. He has much to say about the way people feel speaking in tongues in their bodies and experience it in their minds. We are in great need of a good book which will explain the practice, and explain how the practice changes those who use it. This is that book. – Tanya Luhrman * author of How God Becomes Real and When God Talks Back *Tongues of Fire tells fascinating stories that draw you in. It provides a remarkable coupling of anthropology and neuroscience that skillfully explores how modern Christians train their bodies to transform their consciousness. In the process, Brahinsky expands our current understanding of how related meditative practices and psychedelic experiences can shape both our immediate experience of the world, and our sense of human potential. This kind of forward-thinking research, told in terms we can all understand, is deeply needed in our field and in our world today. – Michael Lifshitz * Professor of Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University and the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal *Christian mind-body practices have been largely ignored by the recent explosion of research on contemplation. And yet, as some of the world’s most skilled and influential contemplative practitioners, Charismatic Christians are all around us. This close exploration of their understudied high arousal practice asks us to rethink what is healthy, what is normal, and what is possible. Brahinsky’s vital blend of anthropology and neuroscience charts new terrain in the field of contemplative science. – Michael Murphy * co-founder of Esalen Institute, author of Golf in the Kingdom, The Kingdom of Shivas Irons, and In the Zone *

Josh Brahinsky is a researcher at UC Berkeley in Psychology in the Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory, and a Teaching Faculty at UC Santa Cruz. His work links anthropological and neuroscientific methods to explore the ways contemplation invites and shapes sensory capacity and experience. He studies a variety of contemplative practices, including varieties of prayer and meditation, focused especially on the worship practices of charismatic evangelicals. He did his PhD in the History of Consciousness at UCSC and then a postdoctoral fellowship in Anthropology at Stanford University.