ABSTRACT
Our narrative as authors begins with a location of ourselves in relationship to one another. The first author, Sharon, is a PhD graduate who was delighted to happen upon Organic Inquiry. This little-known qualitative methodology is a deeply connected, transformative and liberating qualitative methodology that can provoke researchers to attune to others’ lived experiences through their common humanity and their own narrative. Sharon was surprised how beautifully Organic Inquiry fitted with her PhD research topic on the ‘Spirituality of menstruation and birth’. The above quote from an interview transcript captures a moment in one participant’s unfolding story of witnessing the spirituality of birth. The second author, Susan, the primary PhD supervisor, is a committed qualitative researcher who held some scepticism about this little-known methodology. Both authors grew to appreciate the intense, embodied, transformative capacity of Organic Inquiry and the key role of empathic relationships in the rigour and transformative potential of this methodology. Equally, the research participants reported on its powerful transformative qualities. Organic Inquiry is not known widely, and therefore some historical context is needed. With its roots in women’s spirituality, feminist research and transpersonal psychology, Organic Inquiry is especially suited to topics with a psycho-spiritual orientation. Its four developers – Jennifer Clements, Dianne Jenett, Lisa Shields and Dorothy Ettling – were all faculty members or students at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, in the mid-1990s. They described searching for, not finding, and consequently developing, a research approach that centred on spirituality and relationships (Clements, Ettling, Jenett & Shields, 1999).
