An investigation into the phenomena and practices of spiritual ...

eflexivity is one with which I am familiar since as I have used it throughout myprofessional life. It seemed appropriate to build on a familiar methodology in the same waythat my personal, professional and academic skills have been developed throughout theprocess of producing this thesis.The following hypotheses guided the questions for the interviews:a) Spiritual healing may be perceived by church-attending actors in illness and healthbehaviour as a strong factor in the success of delivering healthb) People‟s compliance with formal and informal health programmes are closely related totheir belief systems.The discussion of themes elicited from the data is given in chapters 5-9 and the chaptersare summarized in the final chapter as a conclusion.1.3 A personal JourneyArriving at the present point in my professional life has been an interesting and labouredjourney. I was born of Jamaican parents in a small village district called Crawle River inClarendon, Jamaica. As a young child when I compared my family to some of my peers atschool, we were one of the less affluent families as we did not own a shop, a largeplantation or large plot of land. There were large plots of „family land‟ where we couldgraze the animals or use the produce, but as children we did not know who owned the land.I regard myself as privileged because I was identified as „bright‟ by my mother who sentme to private school when I was four years old. The law required children to attend stateschool when they were seven. My mother later informed me that she did not „ what to6