Alternative spirituality through a gendered lens : the case of the Hong Kong body-mind-spirit milieu

Abstract

The past three decades have witnessed the rise of New Age spirituality, widely known as Body-Mind-Spirit (身心靈) in Hong Kong. Negatively labelled as an evil cult and a nonsensical fraud, this individualised form of spiritual cultivation and personal transformation stemmed from the Euro-American New Age movement is attracting more and more urbanites in Hong Kong who are faced with different life crises, in particular the feeling of meaninglessness typical in late-modernity. Among them, over 80% are female. In more recent years, female-only/oriented Body-Mind-Spirit activities, such as women healing circles marketed to be sacred and safe spaces where women celebrate their “divine femininity” are springing up. These activities promise to offer female participants, who are clearly majority of the Body-Mind-Spirit milieu, self- authority and empowerment.

The current study is an ethnographic inquiry into the Hong Kong Body-Mind- Spirit milieu with a gendered lens. Through participant observation at 11 Body- Mind-Spirit activities of different themes and formats, and in-depth interviews with 22 Body-Mind-Spirit practitioners, teachers, event organisers and participants, I recount the emergence and development of the Cantonese- speaking Body-Mind-Spirit milieu in Hong Kong, and shed light on the workings and reworkings of gender in the field of alternative spirituality. I argue that the performance of gender always occurs simultaneously with the doing of spirituality, and the spiritualised notion of gender at the same time challenges and reinforces dominant gender ideologies in Hong Kong. Despite claiming to be women’s safe haven, female-only/oriented Body-Mind-Spirit activities reinforce masculine-feminine and reason-feeling dichotomies, and necessitate the inculcation of “feminine qualities” in everyone, especially women as they were “born with these qualities”. At times, these activities bundle women’s individualistic spiritual growth with their ability to better fulfil stereotypical gender roles, in particular wives, in a patriarchal order. While these activities do empower women on an individual level, they lack the power of breaking away from structural gender inequality as they privatise power and problems, and are commodities marketed according to mainstream cultural narratives. The gender gap of alternative spirituality is also to be understood by the gendering of the field. I argue that the gender gap can be explained by men’s conformity to masculine self-reliant and emotional-control norms, and the gendered nature of Body-Mind-Spirit activities due to their close association with traditionally female realms including healing, well-being and emotionality. Drawing on Bourdieu’s habitus which is class-based and gendered, and proposing the concept of spiritual habitus, this study furthers to explain why some men engage in alternative spirituality while the majority does not.