This course will present the cutting edge research on the interface between belief and healing and how the mind, body and spirit are inseparable from a person's cultural history. Drawing from research in psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) and medical anthropology, Mario Martinez will argue that cultural and spiritual beliefs are more than cognitions. Beliefs are biosymbolic constructs that affect the immune, endocrine and nervous systems. Although PNI research has elegantly demonstrated how thoughts and emotion affect biological regulation, it assumes these processes take place in a cultural vacuum. Conversely, medical anthropology, with recent exceptions, has studied how cultures conceptualize health and illness, without considering the biology of cultural beliefs. In this course participants will learn how Biocognition brings PNI, medical anthropology, Western contemplative psychology, and Tibetan Buddhist psychology together as a unified theory and practice of mind, body, spirit and historical culture.