Sexualidade e espiritualidade femininas: um estudo com mulheres praticantes de Tai Chi Chuan

Abstract

This thesis discusses spirituality and sexuality, linking them to femininity, in a study of the familiarity of both phenomena by women practitioners of Tai Chi Chuan, also for investigating how they undergo and establish relationships between them. The study was grounded on the husserlian and merleaupontyan phenomenology and foucaultian approach. The methodology was inspired by phenomenology, allowing an exercise of understanding the convergences and divergences in the experiences of six Brazilian women and six British women practitioners of Tai Chi Chuan, whose semi-structured interviews were recorded and later transcribed. In the face of a comprehensive, contextualized and comparative perspective between the two groups, the results were systematized and analyzed according to the empirical-phenomenological method proposed by Amedeu Giorgi. It was possible to understand that the practices of the interviewees in Tai Chi Chuan are related to the search for meaning, as they attach a greater sense of integration to their existence after practicing it than previously reported. The body plays a key role in this integration. According to the merleaupontyan approach, it is a totality, a commonplace in which sexuality and spirituality express themselves. The modulating role of religiosity in the experience of sexuality was also verified. The empirical investigation allowed, therefore, one to investigate and understand how the interviewees meet the dimensions of sexuality and spirituality and establish relations between these two aspects of their psychic life in an in-depth way. Tai Chi Chuan has proved to be a practice capable of assisting the development of a harmonious and balanced coexistence between sexuality and spirituality.