This study explored senior Western Yoga teacher-trainers’ sense-making in the context of her or his Modern Yoga teacher-training programs. Through senior Western Yoga teacher-trainers’ sense-making of her or his interpretations and applications of non-Western Yoga philosophies and traditions, meaning-making was generated. Sense-making here denotes the participants’ understandings, while...
A growing number of theorists have looked to the enactivist approach in philosophy of mind or the affordance-based approach from ecological psychology to make sense of a wide variety of phenomena; some theorists believe that these theoretical accounts can offer rich insights about the nature of mental disorders, their etiology, and their characteristic symptoms. I argue that theorists who adopt...
Soma is a central yet enigmatic concept in Vedic literature, described as a plant or elixir associated with elevated states of consciousness such as refined perception, inner bliss, reduced fear, and a sense of unity, though its biological basis remains unresolved.In a modern reinterpretation, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi proposed that Soma need not be an external substance but may reflect an...
The study of consciousness has moved from the margins of philosophy to the center of theoretical physics. Yet, despite increasingly sophisticated mathematical and quantum models, ontological progress on the "Hard Problem" appears stalled. This paper does not claim to solve the Hard Problem, nor to establish a new metaphysics of mind. Instead, it advances a diagnostic framework showing that a...
This chapter introduces the philosophical rationale for investigating emotions in their dimensions of embodiment and existential vulnerability, drawing on phenomenology, psychopathology, and psychotherapy as complementary perspectives. Grounded in phenomenology and enactivism, it argues that emotions are essentially embodied, intersubjective phenomena through which we experience the world as...
In this chapter, the phenomenology of emotions in people with schizophrenia is explored. A nuanced understanding of the specific emotional challenges in schizophrenia, together with their transformative potential, can inform psychotherapeutic and rehabilitative approaches and help to uncover their healing dimensions. The first section of the chapter examines the emotional world of the person...
This study is grounded in the growing concern over the separation between artistic creativity and spiritual experience in contemporary scholarship. While imagination is often treated as a cognitive or aesthetic function, its deeper existential and transcendent dimensions remain underexplored. The objective of this research is to examine how artistic creation is shaped by imaginal experiences...
Description The Solitary Surfer is a philosophical essay that develops a phenomenological framework for understanding the relationship between first-person experience and relational existence. It begins from the observation that conscious experience is always encountered from a singular perspective, while the conditions that shape that experience arise through participation in a shared world....
This study proposes an operational estimate of the tangent space of states of consciousness based on the analysis of transitions between electroencephalographic (EEG) microstates. As a measurable parameter, we use connectivity — the average probability of microstate switching — which reflects the dynamical flexibility of the system. Using data from the open longitudinal Dortmund Vital Study...
Human NatureJuly 8, 2026J. Verbe, Raphael H. Gautier, Marianne Latinus et al.
The embodied self emerges from dynamic interactions between internal bodily signals and external sensory inputs, including those of social origin. Interoception (the perception and interpretation of internal bodily states) plays a central role in bodily self-consciousness and social cognition. Although socially salient contexts have been shown to modulate interoceptive accuracy (IAcc), the...