Joseph Meador, M.Th., M.Sc., Ph.D.
Joseph, is the founder of Anandamaya Yoga Meditation, and is the founding director of the Anandamaya Institute.
A minister and academic by education, ordination, and profession. Educated in the U.S. and in Israel, he served for 23 years as a professor of religion (teaching at schools in Indiana, Kentucky, Nevada and Texas). Author; text editor; served on the editorial staffs of various religious journals; listed in the 1993 edition of Who's Who in Religion (standard Marquis reference edition). Travelled widely as a guest lecturer (to 27 states and several foreign countries).
Joseph has been interested in meditation since the age of eleven (11) when he was introduced to the subject by his maternal uncle, an accomplished Hypnotist. Later that same year, he acquired his first deck of Tarot cards, (Ancien Tarot de Marseille), which he discovered in an old attic trunk, at the residence of his maternal great-aunt.
In the 1970's, while an undergraduate student at South Plains College, Joseph began studying Gestalt Therapy as developed by Fritz and Laura Perls, et.al., (eventually earning a Diploma in Gestalt Theory from the Gestalt Institute of New Orleans). In the late 1970's, he studied bio-feedback techniques and meditative states as an undergraduate student at the Center for Behavioral Sciences at The University of Texas (Odessa).
As a graduate student at The State University of New York, (SUNY-Albany), he continued his interest in contemplative studies and followed the academic and experiential research findings of: Robert Ornstein, Ph.D., Charles Tart, Ph.D., Jean Houston, Ph.D., Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., Ralph Metzner, Ph.D., and Georg Feuerstein, Ph.D..
In 1978 Joseph began practicing Kundalini Maha Yoga as a form of meditation. After studying Yoga meditation for a number of years, he received shaktipat from Yogi Amrit Desai. He also received training in the traditional form of Reiki, a Japanese form of Energy Work. He completed all three levels in his studies with a Fourth Generation Master Reiki Teacher.
In 1983 while completing his Master of Theology degree, Joseph became interested in the work of Carl Jung. Of special interest was the text of Jung's lectures on Kundalini Yoga. That began an ongoing interest and, he has since studied Jungian Thought at the Jung Society of Austin, and at the C. G. Jung Society of New Orleans.
His early interest in Hypnosis (and its relationship to meditation) continued and he received residential and clinical training at the Hypnosis Institute of Texas, The Atwood Institute, and the Hypnotherapy Training Institute in San Francisco (Corte Madera). He was personally instructed in the art and science of Hypnosis by Dr. Reg Sheldrick, Dr. Michael Stower, Randal Churchill, Marleen Mulder, Gil Boyne, and Ormond McGill.
While completing doctoral studies in the U.S., Joseph travelled to Israel where he studied Jewish Social History (Jewish History and Geography) at Jerusalem University College. While in Israel, he attended a series of lectures on The Dead Sea Scrolls at The Ecole Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem (The French School of Archaeology in Jerusalem), and, he attended a graduate seminar at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem with Dr. Anson Rainy on the Tel el-Amarna Tablets. He also attend a series of special-lectures on the ancient Nag Hammadi Scrolls (one of which was the primary source for the Gospel of Thomas). Of personal significance was his daily study of the Tanya, (a classic work on Jewish mysticism) at the Tzemach-Tzedek Shul in the Jewish Quarter of the 'Old City' .
