A 21-day breath meditation intervention improved emotional well-being in 112 adults. Participants were divided into four groups practicing different combinations of breath meditation, body scanning, and positive reflection exercises. Emotional well-being was measured before and after the intervention using the SUPIN scale, a Polish adaptation of the PANAS. Results indicate significant increases in positive affect and reductions in negative affect for groups practicing breath meditation, especially when combined with a positive reflection exercise called "Three Good Things." The group combining breath meditation with this exercise showed the largest improvements. The authors suggest breath meditation is a brief, non-invasive intervention for emotional well-being and stress regulation, with potential applications in mental health, education, and workplaces.
The article synthesizes the global process of pentecostalization and analyzes selected religious abuses occurring in Christian communities rooted in emotional and syncretic Pentecostal religiosity. Over the past two decades, interest in psychomanipulation and religious abuses has grown significantly across denominations. Religious abuse, also called spiritual abuse or violence, involves psychomanipulation, power, and control through religion. The risk is especially high in contemporary syncretic Neo-Pentecostal contexts, which feature practices like speaking in tongues, miracles, exorcisms, deliverance prayers, healings, and inducing altered states of consciousness. The article argues that the principle of informed consent, used in medical practice, should be an ethical norm to protect against such abuse and regulate leader-community relationships.
Conscious artificial intelligence cannot be recognized, explained, or characterized through experimental or engineering methods alone. Three core problems remain unsolved: how to detect consciousness in AI, how conscious AI could arise, and what properties it might possess. Solving these requires grounding in prior philosophical and theoretical work.