Relative to the extensive neuroscientific work on seated meditation practices, far less studies have investigated the neural mechanisms underlying movement-based contemplative practices such as yoga or tai chi. Movement-based practices have, however, been found to be effective for relieving the symptoms of several clinical conditions, and to elicit measurable changes in physiological, neural, and behavioral parameters in healthy individuals. An important challenge for neuroscience is therefore to advance our understanding of the neurophysiological and neurocognitive mechanisms underlying these observed effects, and this Research Topic aims to make a contribution in this regard. It showcases the current state of the art of investigations on movement-based practices including yoga, tai chi, the Feldenkrais Method, as well as dance. Featured contributions include empirical research, proposals of theoretical frameworks, as well as novel perspectives on a variety of issues relevant to the field. This Research Topic is the first of its kind to specifically attempt a neurophysiological and neurocognitive characterization that spans multiple mindful movement approaches, and we trust it will be of interest to basic scientists, clinical researchers, and contemplative practitioners alike.

This volume is the first English language presentation of the innovative approaches developed in the aesthetics of religion. The chapters present diverse material and detailed analysis on descriptive, methodological and theoretical concepts that together explore the potential of an aesthetic approach for investigating religion as a sensory and mediated practice. In dialogue with, yet different from, other major movements in the field (material culture, anthropology of the senses, for instance), it is the specific intent of this approach to create a framework for understanding the interplay between sensory, cognitive and socio-cultural aspects of world-construction. The volume demonstrates that aesthetics, as a theory of sensory knowledge, offers an elaborate repertoire of concepts that can help to understand religious traditions. These approaches take into account contemporary developments in scientific theories of perception, neuro-aesthetics and cultural studies, highlighting the socio-cultural and political context informing how humans perceive themselves and the world around them. Developing since the 1990s, the aesthetic approach has responded to debates in the study of religion, in particular striving to overcome biased categories that confined religion either to texts and abstract beliefs, or to an indisputable sui generis mode of experience. This volume documents what has been achieved to date, its significance for the study of religion and for interdisciplinary scholarship.

Yoga, the Body, and Embodied Social Change is the first collection to gather together prominent scholars on yoga and the body. Using an intersectional lens, the essays examine yoga in the United States as a complex cultural phenomenon that reveals racial, economic, gendered, and sexual politics of the body. From discussions of the stereotypical yoga body to analyses of pivotal court cases, Yoga, the Body, and Embodied Social Change examines the sociopolitical tensions of contemporary yoga. Because so many yogic spaces reflect the oppressive nature of many other public spheres, the essays in this collection also examine what needs to change in order for yoga to truly live up to its liberatory potential, from the blogosphere around Black women’s health to the creation of queer and trans yoga classes to the healing potential of yoga for people living with chronic illness or trauma. While many of these conversations are emerging in the broader public sphere, few have made their way into academic scholarship. This book changes all that. The essays in this anthology interrogate yoga as it is portrayed in the media, yoga spaces, and yoga as it is integrated in education, the law, and concepts of health to examine who is included and who is excluded from yoga in the West. The result is a thoughtful analysis of the possibilities and the limitations of yoga for feminist social transformation.

There is an emergent movement of scientists and scholars working on somatic awareness, interoception and embodiment. This work cuts across studies of neurophysiology, somatic anthropology, contemplative practice, and mind-body medicine. Key questions include: How is body awareness cultivated? What role does interoception play for emotion and cognition in healthy adults and children as well as in different psychopathologies? What are the neurophysiological effects of this cultivation in practices such as Yoga, mindfulness meditation, Tai Chi and other embodied contemplative practices? What categories from other traditions might be useful as we explore embodiment? Does the cultivation of body awareness within contemplative practice offer a tool for coping with suffering from conditions, such as pain, addiction, and dysregulated emotion? This emergent field of research into somatic awareness and associated interoceptive processes, however, faces many obstacles. The principle obstacle lies in our 400-year Cartesian tradition that views sensory perception as epiphenomenal to cognition. The segregation of perception and cognition has enabled a broad program of cognitive science research, but may have also prevented researchers from developing paradigms for understanding how interoceptive awareness of sensations from inside the body influences cognition. The cognitive representation of interoceptive signals may play an active role in facilitating therapeutic transformation, e.g. by altering context in which cognitive appraisals of well-being occur. This topic has ramifications into disparate research fields: What is the role of interoceptive awareness in conscious presence? How do we distinguish between adaptive and maladaptive somatic awareness? How do we best measure somatic awareness? What are the consequences of dysregulated somatic/interoceptive awareness on cognition, emotion, and behavior? The complexity of these questions calls for the creative integration of perspectives and findings from related but often disparate research areas including clinical research, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, anthropology, religious/contemplative studies and philosophy.

Blue Sky Body: Thresholds for Embodied Research is the follow-up to Ben Spatz's 2015 book What a Body Can Do, charting a course through more than twenty years of embodied, artistic, and scholarly research. Emerging from the confluence of theory and practice, this book combines full-length critical essays with a kaleidoscopic selection of fragments from journal entries, performance texts, and other unpublished materials to offer a series of entry points organized by seven keywords: city, song, movement, theater, sex, document, politics. Brimming with thoughtful and sometimes provocative takes on embodiment, technology, decoloniality, the university, and the politics of knowledge, the work shared here models the integration of artistic and embodied research with critical thought, opening new avenues for transformative action and experimentation. Invaluable to scholars and practitioners working through and beyond performance, Blue Sky Body is both an unconventional introduction to embodied research and a methodological intervention at the edges of contemporary theory.

Since the beginning of the 20th Century, phenomenology has developed a distinction between lived body (Leib) and physical body (Koerper), a distinction well known as body-subject vs. body-object (Hanna and Thompson 2007). The lived body is the body experienced from within - my own direct experience of my body lived in the first-person perspective, myself as a spatiotemporal embodied agent in the world. The physical body on the other hand, is the body thematically investigated from a third person perspective by natural sciences as anatomy and physiology. An active topic affecting the understanding of several psychopathological disorders is the relatively unknown dynamic existing between aspects related to the body-object (that comprises the neurobiological substrate of the disease) and the body-subject (the experiences reported by patients) (Nelson and Sass 2017). A clue testifying the need to better explore this dynamic in the psychopathological context is the marked gap that still exists between patients’ clinical reports (generally entailing disturbing experiences) and etiopathogenetic theories and therapeutic practices, that are mainly postulated at a bodily/brain level of description and analysis. The phenomenological exploration typically targets descriptions of persons’ lived experience. For instance, patients suffering from schizophrenia may describe their thoughts as alien (‘‘thoughts are intruding into my head’’) and the world surrounding them as fragmented (‘‘the world is a series of snapshots’’) (Stanghellini et al., 2015). The result is a rich and detailed collection of the patients’ qualitative self-descriptions (Stanghellini and Rossi, 2014), that reveal fundamental changes in the structure of experiencing and can be captured by using specific assessment tools (Parnas et al. 2005; Sass et al. 2017; Stanghellini et al., 2014). The practice of considering the objective and the subjective levels of analysis as separated in the research studies design has many unintended consequences. Primarily, it has the effect of limiting actionable neuroscientific progress within clinical practice. This holds true both in terms of availability of evidence-based treatments for the disorders, as well as for early diagnosis purposes. In response to this need, this collection of articles aims to promote an interdisciplinary endeavor to better connect the bodily, objective level of analysis with its experiential corollary. This is accomplished by focusing on the convergence between (neuro) physiological evidence and the phenomenological manifestations of anomalous bodily experiences present in different disorders.

Bridging the gap between cognition and culture, this handbook explores both social scientific and humanities approaches to understanding the physical processes of religious life, tradition, practice, and belief. It reflects the cultural turn within the study of religion and puts theory to the fore, moving beyond traditional theological, philosophical, and ethnographic understandings of the aesthetics of religion. Editors Anne Koch and Katharina Wilkens bring together research in cultural studies, cognitive studies, material religion, religion and the arts, and epistemology. Questions of identity, gender, ethnicity, and postcolonialism are discussed throughout. Key topics include materiality, embodiment, performance, popular/vernacular art and space to move beyond a sensory understanding of aesthetics. Emerging areas of research are covered, including secular aesthetics and the aesthetic of spirits. This is an important contribution to theory and method in the study of religion, and is grounded in research that has been taking place in Europe over the past 20 years. Case studies are drawn from around the world with contributions from scholars based in Europe, the USA, and Australia. The book is illustrated with over 40 color images and features a foreword from Birgit Meyer.