Do extreme religious rituals positively affect the wellbeing of ritual practitioners?

One of the possible explanations for the existence of extreme religious rituals is their positive effect on the wellbeing of the devotees participating in such rituals. Together with the team of our colleagues, we tried to find out whether this is indeed the case.

2 Sep 2019

In doing that, we have decided to focus on the Thaipusam Kavadi ritual held annually by the local Hindu community in Mauritius. In this ritual, the extremeness stems from the practice of devotees piercing their skin with various objects. Utilizing the longitudinal monitoring of various health-related indicators (both objective and subjective in nature), we were able to show that this ritual really has such a positive effect on the psychological well-being of devotees.

You can find the article here: https://bit.ly/2pCcWTk

13 Aug

Pain and suffering as part of religious life: The Mauritian Thaipusam kavadi

In a pop-science article published in Dingir, E. Kundtová Klocová discusses the various socio-cultural aspects of the Thaipusam Kavadi ritual as practiced in Mauritius.
2 Aug

Jana Nenadalová defended her dissertation thesis

Religious experiences can be found across many cultures in various forms. Nevertheless, we can trace their underlying and potentially universal factors. In her thesis, Jana asks whether these factors include sensory deprivation, social seclusion, and the influence of authority. She further explores how these factors manifest in the context of experience. Her research is based on the predictive processing theory, assuming that our bodies and minds constantly predict ongoing events and that under the influence of studied factors, these predictions – including those learned from religion – can dominate over sensory perceptions.
2 Aug

Emotional contagion in a collective ritual – a study by LEVYNA & colleagues

In a field-study conducted among Hindu-Mauritians published in the American Journal of Human Biology, D. Xygalatas, M. Lang, P. Maňo, J. Krátký and R. Fischer discovered that individuals dynamically attune their affective states to one another in a collective religious ritual, implying that they adjust their emotional states to align with the group.
25 Jun

Adverse effects of meditation – a new paper by LEVYNA & colleagues

In a single-group observational study published in the Journal of Religion and Health, S. Kotherová with J. Cigán and colleagues showed that one-fifth of their Samadhi meditation participants (first timers) got post-meditation nausea symptoms – this result indicates that meditation can cause adverse effects in some practitioners.

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Do extreme religious rituals positively affect the wellbeing of ritual practitioners?

More articles

Pain and suffering as part of religious life: The Mauritian Thaipusam kavadi

Jana Nenadalová defended her dissertation thesis

Emotional contagion in a collective ritual – a study by LEVYNA & colleagues

Adverse effects of meditation – a new paper by LEVYNA & colleagues