Plunging in the deep of consciousness at the European Neurophenomenology, Contemplative, and Embodied Cognition Network meeting

Last week I attended the European Neurophenomenology, Contemplative, and Embodied Cognition Network meeting at Schloss Buchenau in Germany. This year we explored similarities and differences between the practices of meditation, hypnosis, trance and psychedelics. I must confess that up to that point I had always been quite skeptical of hypnosis, trance and psychedelics, feeling that they are kind of "out there" and I did not quite want to touch them. At the meeting, we got to explore some of these methods (trance and hypnosis) ourselves, and my ideas changed quite a bit. In fact these methods are not as strange as they sometimes appear, and certain forms of meditation also share some features with these other practices. And importantly, they can really benefit people!

Picture by Ute Brandes. Some of the results of the trance

In general, in many forms of meditation you bring your attention to an object of interest, and you monitor metacognitively where your attention goes, and whether it is still on the object. In some forms of meditation, you drop the object, and instead just monitor with kind attention where your awareness is. In some other forms of meditation, the object is more dynamic, for example it is a thread of philosophical thinking. In yet other forms of meditation, you visualize an entire environment and you incorporate all sensory impressions in this visualisation. For example, you may visualize a buddha, and then whatever sounds you are hearing may be reinterpreted as a mantra. This kind of practice actually shares quite some similarities with hypnosis in which you also construct a different narrative about the environment, and reinterpret thoughts and sense stimuli in this sense. Quite a powerful example of this was a video by Marie-Elisabeth Faymonville who showed how suggestion was used to alleviate pain during an operation. A patient who received large blows on their nose as part of nose surgery was led to interpret this as the shocks involved in skiing a mountain. And amazingly, this allowed them to undergo the operation with only local aneasthetics and substantial comfort.

Picture by Ute Brandes. Me giving my presentation

Similarly, in some practices of meditation you just allow your mind to accept whatever thoughts and emotions occur. When the faculty of monitoring disappears completely, and you just pursue whatever thoughts and emotions arise, then this becomes similar to the trance state (at least in my experience). During the meeting we were led into a trance state by listening to some very powerful deep drum sounds interspersed with animal sounds and more. We were encouraged to simply follow our impulses and to drop our cognitive control. To facilitate the latter and go with the flow, we were encouraged to make whatever sounds arose in our minds. In the beginning I think all of us felt a bit timid, but as we led go more, we entered this pure flow of experience. I myself felt quite compelled to move, and while I normally am a ballet dancer, now for the first time floorwork movements just manifested from my body automatically. To ensure people weren't harming themselves or others, an experienced team was watching over the trance and guided people gently as needed. After the end of one trance state, we were also invited to turn our experience into a painting. It was quite amazing to see what pieces of art came out! I wonder what the connections are between this state of effortless awareness where monitoring is almost completely abandoned and states of meditation practices that involve a nondual flow of awareness as well.

The meeting ended with trying to formulate a vision for a joint paper outlining some of these similarities and differences between the practices we discussed and experienced. While the communities of scientists studying these practices has traditionally been quite separated, I think it could really benefit from cross-talk to learn from each other's methods, roadblocks and more. For example, meditation research has a strong tradition of using pain to study the effects of the practice, but this has not been much considered in psychedelics. Hypnosis has a strong tradition of examining how people's suggestibility affects the results, and this could potentially be informative in studies of meditation as well. I could also imagine that comparative studies between the practices could be very helpful, because they engage, as I sketched above, to some extent similar mechanisms, but to some extent also different ones.

Picture by Steven Laureys. Group picture.

Picture by Ute Brandes. One of the many discussions.

Real German houses!