Posted Wednesday 30 March 2011
Interviews with snowboarders showed whereas some riders wanted to impress onlookers on the slopes, others enjoyed snowboarding moments where they focused completely on their riding and were almost unaware of everything else. "I was fascinated by this term," Reverend Elliot said. "My aim was not to define it but to see what it meant for riders and whether it was spiritual. My research showed riders found it sometimes all went silent and it was just them and the snow, even the sensation of constant turning disappeared. They found moments like these were spiritual and they were completely focused on their riding, as if the board was guiding itself and they were just a passenger."
Reverend Elliot completed his PhD by distance learning as an overseas research student after moving from Birmingham to Canada in 2005. His research was supervised by Kingston University's Dr Sylvia Collins-Mayo one of the United Kingdom's leading experts on religion and spirituality. Dr Collins-Mayo said the study showed how spirituality was increasingly used within a number of areas of social life extending well beyond its religious connotations. "Spirituality is now discussed in relation to education, health care, popular culture and sports among other areas," she said. "This research seeks to bring clarity to the term soul-riding by considering how spirituality is lived out and understood in the specific context of snowboarding. Neil's approach provides a useful framework for exploring spirituality in other spheres of social life too."
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