"Acknowledging that consciousness cannot be reduced to brain activity is in fact the most important element and the single most decisive step towards a post-materialist science and its according methodology."

Biography

Professor Harald Walach is a researcher at the interface between medicine, psychology and consciousness studies. Currently he is affiliated as a professor with Poznan Medical University in Poznan, Poland, where he teaches mindfulness to the international medical students, and as a visiting professor with the Witten/Herdecke University’s psychology department in Germany, where he teaches philosophical foundations of psychology to psychology undergraduates. He is founding director of the Change Health Science Institute in Berlin.

Dr. Walach holds a double Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, and History and Theory of Science. He has authored more than 170 peer reviewed papers, 14 books and more than 100 book chapters. The citation database of John Ioannidis and colleagues (2019) ranks him at 31.716, placing him in the top 0.5% of 100,000 scientists.


by Harald Walach
Beyond a Materialist Worldview
The Scientific and Medical Network, 2019

After a career building a research group in complementary medicine at the University Hospital in Freiburg, Germany, he held a research professorship with the University of Northampton, UK from 2005-2009 where he directed the MSc Program of Transpersonal Psychology and Consciousness Studies. From 2010 until 2016 he was a professor with the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), where he headed a postgraduate Master program training doctors in complementary medicine and cultural sciences. Since then he has taken on a part-time associate professorship with Poznan University of Medical Sciences and a visting professorship with University Witten-Herdecke and is a freelance scientist and writer.

His research interest is in methodology and evaluation of complementary medicine, the impact of consciousness on health, and a scientific approach to consciousness and spirituality. He is editor of the Journal Complementary Medicine Research, associate editor of the Journal for Scientific Exploration and editor of the Springer book series Neuroscience, Consciousness, Spirituality. He has been active in researching homeopathy, spiritual healing and more recently mindfulness-based approaches to health. He published, together with his group, several influential meta-analyses and the widely used Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory, a questionnaire used to measure mindfulness.

Another more applied strand of his research comprised a lifestyle-based prevention program for dementia and related research. Currently he is working on the influence and impact of the materialist research paradigm we are all subject to. He has developed arguments and brought together data that question this dominant mode of thinking in his report for the Galileo Commission of the Scientific and Medical Network. This led him to thinking about expanded modes of scientific inquiry that incorporate contemplative practices. These are being worked out in more recent publications. This is connected to an integration of spirituality within the scientific remit, and so he is currently working on a book on “Spirituality and Psychotherapy”.

He has also become known for his expanded theoretical approach. Together with physicists he has worked out a generalized formalism of quantum theory that can be used to understand phenomena that are difficult to integrate within the current paradigm, because they comprise non-local phenomena, such as parapsychological phenomena, synchronicity or special healing techniques. This model has been taken up by others in various disciplines and has shown to be a fruitful approach.

By Harald Walach

Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality Cover

Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality

Edited by Harald Walach, Stefan Schmidt and Wayne B Jonas
Springer, 2011

Meditation – Neuroscientific Approaches and Philosophical Implications

Meditation – Neuroscientific Approaches and Philosophical Implications

Edited by Stefan Schmidt and Harald Walach
Springer, 2014

Secular Spirituality: The Next Step Towards Enlightenment

Secular Spirituality: The Next Step Towards Enlightenment

Edited by Harald Walach
Springer, 2015

Scientific Papers

Evidence for anomalistic correlations between human behavior and a random event generator: Result of an independent replication of a micro-PK experiment

Harald Walach, Majella Horan, Thilo Hinterberger and Walter von Lucadou
Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, August, 2019

Secular Spirituality – What it is, Why We Need it, How to Proceed

Secular Spirituality – What it is, Why We Need it, How to Proceed

Harald Walach
Journal for the Study of Spirituality, Volume 7, Number 1, 2017

Mental, Behavioural and Physiological Nonlocal Correlations within the Generalized Quantum Theory Framework: A Review

Mental, Behavioural and Physiological Nonlocal Correlations within the Generalized Quantum Theory Framework: A Review

Harald Walach, Patrizio Tressoldi and Luciano Pederzoli
SSRN Electronic Journal, January 2015

Mindfulness-based interventions in schools – a systematic review and meta-analysis

Mindfulness-based Interventions in Schools – A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Charlotte Zenner,Solveig Herrnleben-Kurzand and Harald Walach
Frontiers in Psychology, June, 2014

Parapsychological phenomena as examples of generalized nonlocal correlations – a theoretical framework

Parapsychological Phenomena as Examples of Generalized Nonlocal Correlations – A Theoretical Framework

Harald Walach, Walter von Lucadou and Hartmann Römer
Journal of Scientific Exploration, January, 2014

Meditation Based Therapies — A Systematic Review and Some Critical Observations

Meditation Based Therapies — A Systematic Review and Some Critical Observations

Lone Overby Fjorback and Harald Walach
Religions, Volume 3, Number 1, 2012

Exceptional Experiences and Spiritual Practice: A New Measurement Approach

Exceptional Experiences and Spiritual Practice: A New Measurement Approach

Niko Kohls and Harald Walach
Spirituality and Health International, Volume 7, 2006

Articles

Homeopathy and Epidemic Diseases

Dr Walach's Blog 03/24/2020

Homeopathy and Depression

Dr Walach's Blog 11/05/2020


Who's Who in Open Science

Julia Assante   near-death experience, archaeology, art history of the ancient near east Henry Bauer   electrochemistry, history, philosophy, sociology of science Mario Beauregard   neuroscience, neuropsychology, mystical experience, postmaterialist science Marc Bekoff   animal behavior, cognitive ethology, behavioral ecology, compassionate conservation Daryl Bem   psi, self-perception theory of attitude formation, social psychology, physics William Bengston   energy healing, sociology, research methods and statistics Dick Bierman   consciousness and quantum physics, artificial intelligence Stephen E. Braude   parapsychology, philosophical psychopathology James Carpenter   parapsychology, clinical psychology Deepak Chopra   consciousness, mind-body medicine, endocrinology Allan Leslie Combs   consciousness, neuropsychology, systems sciences Larry Dossey   internal medicine, Explore, Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine Brenda J Dunne   PEAR laboratory, consciousness, psychology Peter Fenwick   neuropsychiatry, near-death experience, consciousness Bruce Greyson   near-death experience, psychiatry, neurobehavioral science Stuart Hameroff   consciousness, microtubules, anesthesiology Robert Jahn   PEAR laboratory, physics, aerospace engineering Brian Josephson   Nobel Prize in physics, tunnelling effect in superconductivity Menas Kafatos   computational physics, astrophysics, consciousness Bernardo Kastrup   metaphysical idealism, reconfigurable computing, AI Stanley Krippner   consciousness, psychology, dream research Pim van Lommel   near-death experience, cardiology David Luke   altered states of consciousness, transpersonal psychology, parapsychology Lisa Miller   clinical psychology, mind-body medicine, spirituality in children Kathleen Noble   consciousness, clinical and counseling psychology, early university entrance Alexander Moreira-Almeida   spiritualily and health, mind-brain problem, mediums, psychiatry Elaine Morgan   the aquatic ape hypothesis, evolutionary anthropology Roger Nelson   Global Consciousness Project, experimental psychology, psychophysiology, Marilyn Monk   molecular biology, epigenetics, methylation of DNA, deprogramming Adrian Parker   the ganzfeld technique, psychical research, clinical psychology J Kim Penberthy   mindfulness, psychiatry, clinical psychology Gerald Pollack   the fourth phase of water, medical and biological engineering Diane Powell   consciousness, autistic savants, neuropsychiatry, clinical psychiatry Dean Radin   consciousness, psychology, physics, electrical engineering Beverly Rubik   biophysics, consciousness, spiritual healing, energy medicine Marilyn Schlitz   mind-body medicine, parapsychology Gary Schwartz   spirit detection, life after death, dream precognition, mediums Rupert Sheldrake   morphic resonance, telepathy, the sense of being stared at, biology Stephan A Schwartz   remote viewing in archaeology, nonlocal consciousness Rudolph Tanzi   Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's, genetics and aging, neurology Russell Targ   lasers, remote viewing, Stanford Research Institute Charles T Tart   transpersonal psychology, altered states of consciousness, dreaming, hypnosis Neil Theise   multi-organ adult stem cell plasticity, pathology, theoretical biology, complexity Jim Tucker   psychiatry, neurobehavioral science, children who remember previous lives Cassandra Vieten   IONS, mindfulness, addiction, mind-body medicine Harald Walach   consciousness, homeopathy, complementary medicine, clinical psychology Marjorie Woollacott   meditation, near-death experience, human physiology, neuroscience
email