| Jonas Mago | Absorbed into Connection: Inter-brain synchrony and the phenomenology of meditative absorption McGill University, Canada |
| Michał Weiss | From Center to Circle: Capoeira Angola as a Community-Driven, Relational Contemplative Practice – A Mixed-Methods Account University of Warsaw, Poland |
| Inès Leferme | The Living Experience of Breath-Hold Diving: A Cardio-phenomenological Approach University of Paris Nanterre & University of Lorraine, France |
| Nathan Fisher | Losing Yourself to Find Yourself? Development of a Pattern Self Interview Protocol for the Study of Advanced Meditative States and Traits in Abrahamic and Asian Traditions McGill University, Canada |
| Joana Vidal Santamaria & Antonia Zepeda | Inducing Selflessness Through Virtual Reality: Toward a Detailed Neurophenomenological Understanding of Experiential and Physiological Dynamics University of Valencia, Spain & Adolfo Ibáñez University, Chile |
| Óscar Soto Angona | Contemplative Listening to Nature-Based Soundscapes in Severe Mental Illness Fundació Privada per a la Recerca i la Docència Sant Joan de Déu (FSJD), Spain |
| Andreas Voldstad | Developing the Compassion for Nature Scale University of Oxford, UK |
| Eugénie Lanchou | Neurophenomenological and Electrophysiological Study of Nondual Meditation and its impact on the Self INSERM, France |
Jonas Mago – McGill University, Canada
“Absorbed into Connection: Inter-brain synchrony and the phenomenology of meditative absorption”
Collective contemplative practices, whether prayer, chanting, or shared meditation, are often described as creating a sense of connection, stability, and support (Fischer et al., 2014; Konvalinka et al., 2011; Wlodarczyk et al., 2020). Yet the interpersonal dynamics underlying these practices remain poorly understood. In our previous Varela Award project, we examined collective Christian prayer and found that dyads exhibited reliable increases in neural and physiological synchrony during prayer compared to a resting baseline. Importantly, the degree of synchrony covaried with participants’ subjective experience of absorption and openness to shared rhythms, suggesting that interpersonal alignment may play a meaningful role in shaping contemplative experience (Mago et al., in preparation).
A natural next question is whether comparable interpersonal dynamics arise during meditation. While prayer often involves expressive, vocal, and affectively charged forms of participation (Luhrmann, 2005; Luhrmann et al., 2010), many meditative practices are quiet and internally oriented. As a result, it remains an open question whether synchronous alignment of neural or physiological rhythms emerges during meditative absorption, and if it does, how such alignment relates to practitioners’ lived sense of depth, ease, and stability. The aim of the present study is to extend our previous findings into a meditative context by investigating interpersonal synchrony during dyadic meditation.
To do so, we build on our ongoing work with jhāna meditators, an advanced Theravāda tradition characterized by highly focused and reliably reproducible states of absorption (Brahinsky et al., 2024; Catherine, 2024; Mago et al., 2025). In a recent study with 10 experienced meditators, we observed that jhāna practice is accompanied by a distinct phenomenology of sensory fading, slower and more regular breathing patterns, and marked changes in neural dynamics, including increases in signal diversity and decreases in Lyapunov exponents, patterns consistent with a shift toward more stable yet flexible brain states (Mago et al., 2025). These findings clarify key features of individual absorption but leave open an important question: to what extent do relational or interpersonal processes also contribute to the emergence of these states.
Over the past four years, we have established a close collaboration with senior teacher Shaila Catherine, allowing us rare access to a cohort of highly experienced jhāna practitioners. Contingent on receiving funding, we have been invited to collect dyadic EEG hyperscanning and physiological data from 24 of her most experienced meditators during a 10-day residential jhāna retreat in October 2026. This retreat context provides a stable environment in which deep absorption is likely to emerge, while the dyadic format allows us to explore inter-brain and inter- body coupling in a manner directly comparable to our previous prayer study.
Our primary objective is to assess whether inter-brain synchrony emerges during quiet meditation (mindfulness and jhāna meditation), and whether the degree of synchrony corresponds to practitioners’ subjective depth of absorption, sensory fading, and stability of concentration. Participants will meditate side-by-side in dyads while we record EEG from both individuals simultaneously. Following each meditation period, they will complete brief phenomenological questionnaires. This design allows us to test whether neural synchrony covaries with first-person reports of meditative depth and interpersonal synchrony. By extending our prior prayer findings to a meditative context, this project asks whether synchrony constitutes a more general interpersonal dimension of contemplative absorption across traditions. More broadly, it offers a modest but meaningful step toward understanding how social context shapes contemplative experience, integrating first-person experience with interpersonal and neurophysiological measures.
Michał Weiss – University of Warsaw, Poland
“From Center to Circle: Capoeira Angola as a Community-Driven, Relational Contemplative Practice – A Mixed-Methods Account”
Contemplative research has largely focused on solitary, meditation-based practices, emphasizing qualities such as equanimity, self-regulation, and compassion while overlooking Afro-diasporic traditions that cultivate agency, vigilance, and relational attunement through contested interaction. Capoeira Angola offers a strikingly underexplored case: a ritualized Afro-Brazilian practice in which players enact dynamic configurations of domination, resistance, and liberation within a musical, communal, and ethically framed setting. This project proposes that Capoeira Angola can be understood as a contemplative practice in which modes of agency are continuously shaped and transformed through embodied interaction, collective presence, and ancestral memory.
The overarching aim is to develop an empirical and phenomenological account of how agency is experienced, negotiated, and modulated in the jogo of Capoeira Angola. Specifically, the project will: (1) identify and richly describe phenomenological modes of agency—such as feeling dominated, resisting, or liberating oneself—using first- and second-person methods; (2) examine how these lived modes correspond to distinct movement dynamics, including spatial control, variability, and patterns of coupling and decoupling between players; and (3) investigate how variations in collective presence—from dyadic interaction without observers to a full singing roda with the Mestre—reshape both experience and interaction dynamics.
The study employs a mixed-methods, within-subjects design grounded in a phenomenological mixed-methods framework that treats first-, second-, and third-person data as mutually constraining. Fifteen to twenty experienced Capoeira Angola practitioners in Salvador, Bahia, will perform a set of structured conditions ranging from solo ginga (basic capoeira movement) to full roda (the singing circle where capoeira is played) play, with all sessions conducted in an authentic capoeira space under the ethical and ritual guidance of a senior Mestre. High frequency kinematic data will be collected using inertial measurement units alongside synchronized multi-camera video recordings, providing fine-grained measures of movement dynamics in real time. These recordings will anchor micro-phenomenological interviews and second-person elicitation, allowing participants to articulate subtle shifts in agency, attentional focus, and ethical sense-making as they re-encounter specific moments of the jogo (capoeira play). Phenomenological and dynamical analyses will be conducted in parallel to characterise how distinct experiential modes (domination, resistance, liberation) map onto patterns of coordination, disruption, and reorganization in embodied interaction.
This project addresses three key gaps: the marginalization of Afro-diasporic embodied practices within contemplative studies, the lack of empirical work on contested rather than harmonious forms of coordination, and the scarcity of kinematic and phenomenological research on Capoeira Angola. By integrating situated expertise from the Mestre with rigorous mixed methods, the project will show how collective presence, musical entrainment, and ethical leadership modulate both the feel and the form of contested agency. The findings will advance enactive and participatory accounts of agency by demonstrating how power, resistance, and liberation emerge as relational, dynamically organized phenomena, offering a new template for contemplative research that centers embodied, communal, and politically charged practices.
Inès Leferme – University of Paris Nanterre & University of Lorraine, France
“The Living Experience of Breath-Hold Diving: A Cardio-phenomenological Approach”
This project investigates the lived experience of static breath-hold (BH) diving (static apnea or freediving) by combining first-person micro-phenomenological interviews with physiological measurements of heart rate (HR) and oxygen saturation (SpO2). Breath-hold diving offers a unique natural model for studying limit-states of consciousness, where hypoxia, pressure, and sensory reduction generate altered temporality, heightened attention, and distinctive bodily sensations. Building on Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, the study situates these experiences within the embodied dynamics of perception and action, emphasizing the inseparability of body and consciousness. The research follows a 2 years protocol divided into four phases: 1) 50 micro-phenomenological interviews to map salient phenomena in static apnea, 2) synchronized experimental sessions with 15 participants to align experiential events with HR and SpO2 dynamics, 3) co-generative analysis to identify temporal correlations, recurrent patterns, and intersubjective structures and, 4) integration and “macro phenomenological” interpretation, comparing results with classical descriptions of the 1 Husserlian concept of limit-states (Limesfälle). This approach enables the construction of a cardio-phenomenological model, providing a comprehensive profile of the temporal unfolding of attention, bodily sensations, and affective states during BH diving. By linking first-person accounts with objective physiological markers in an ecological aquatic setting, the study advances methods for experiential research in extreme environments and contributes to
contemplative science by extending phenomenology into practices that actively engage consciousness at its limits. The findings are expected to inform future research on deep freediving, contemplative practices, and the dynamics of embodied cognition under limit conditions.
Nathan Fisher – McGill University, Canada
“Losing Yourself to Find Yourself? Development of a Pattern Self Interview Protocol for the Study of Advanced Meditative States and Traits in Abrahamic and Asian Traditions phenomenology”
There is currently a surge of scientific interest in the impact of meditation practice on the “self”, including new empirical studies, theoretical perspectives, and research programs on what has recently been called a “third wave of meditation science.” This wave is exploring “advanced meditation” and it has catalyzed spirited debates in multiple disciplines and recently, several research teams have begun piloting phenomenological approaches to studying pluralist conceptions of the self in meditation research. Several of these novel phenomenological approaches build on the “Pattern Theory of Self” and while there have been a handful of studies exploring phenomenological self-related process changes in contemporary meditation practitioners, to date there have not been any studies with contemporary practitioners that employ the PTS, nor any that focus specifically on advanced meditation in Asian or Abrahamic traditions. We believe such a study is an important next step in bringing empirical data to bear on many of these debates in a rigorous manner, but to do so, we will need more sophisticated qualitative methodologies that can capture the subtleties and complexities involved in the variety of contemplative self-related experiences.
Antonia Zepeda & Joana Vidal Santamaria – Adolfo Ibáñez University, Chile & University of Valencia, Spain
“Inducing Selflessness Through Virtual Reality: Toward a Detailed Neurophenomenological Understanding of Experiential and Physiological Dynamics”
Selflessness refers to states in which the ordinary sense of a bounded, enduring self is attenuated or dissolves. It has long been regarded in contemplative traditions as a means of reducing psychological suffering and enhancing connectedness. Contemporary research shows that experimentally induced selflessness can increase positive affect and foster prosocial orientations. However, scientific progress is constrained by two major challenges: reliably inducing selflessness in non-expert meditators and capturing its multidimensional, dynamic, and often ineffable experiential structure. This project addresses these limitations by employing a Virtual Reality (VR) selflessness induction within a neurophenomenological framework, aiming to elucidate this process in the general population.
We employed Ripple, a collective multi-user VR experience (four participants interacting in one shared virtual environment) inspired by Tonglen meditation and designed to evoke self dissolution and interpersonal connectedness through contemplative, embodied, and relational exercises. The study follows a mixed-method design combining micro-phenomenological interviews, time-windowed physiological recordings, and an innovative self-report measure.
One hundred adults will participate across two research centers (Spain and Chile). After baseline physiological recording, participants will engage in a VR session structured into seven temporally delimited contemplative moments. These moments scaffold data collection: cardiac, respiratory, and electrodermal activity are continuously recorded with precise time stamped segmentation. Immediately afterward, participants will complete a micro phenomenological interview focusing on the same seven moments, followed by the Meditation Pictographic Inventory (MPI), a non-verbal, state-level instrument.
Analytically, the project will proceed in three stages. First, phenomenological data will be examined using micro-phenomenological methods to identify recurrent synchronic and diachronic features across the seven moments and to reconstruct experiential structures of VR-induced selflessness. This analysis will follow systematic procedures, including trained interviewers, qualitative analysis supported by a CAQDAS-R workflow, independent coding, triangulation meetings, high inter-rater agreement (Kappa > 0.90), and automated consensus scripts. In parallel, physiological signals (HRV, respiratory cycle, and phasic electrodermal activity) will be analyzed using established signal-processing toolkits. For each modality, time-resolved features will be extracted and averaged across the seven temporally defined phases of the VR protocol, while pictographic scales will be analyzed descriptively and through histograms to characterize experiential dimensions. Finally, phenomenological findings will guide the neurophenomenological integration, structuring the data according to the identified experiential patterns, evaluating temporal differences via two-way repeated-measures ANOVA (experiential structure × temporal window), and conducting inferential analyses of pictographic scores, complemented by high-resolution visualizations that illustrate the distinctive configurations of experiential patterns associated with each structure. We hypothesize two distinct experiential structures will emerge, characterized by both temporal and synchronic dimensions. Integrating physiological measures over time with pictographic data according to these experiential structures is expected to reduce inter individual variability and generate a holistic understanding of the VR-induced selflessness construct. By combining VR-based induction with rigorous first, second and third-person methods, this project offers a novel methodological platform for investigating selflessness in non-expert populations. The integration of experiential, physiological, temporal, and pictographic data provides a coordinated, multidimensional account of how selflessness arises, unfolds, and becomes embodied, laying conceptual and methodological groundwork for applications in mental health, contemplative training, and prosocial development.
Óscar Soto Angona – Fundació Privada per a la Recerca i la Docència Sant Joan de Déu (FSJD), Spain
“Contemplative Listening to Nature-Based Soundscapes in Severe Mental Illness”
This project will investigate Contemplative Listening to nature-based soundscapes as a simple, low-burden contemplative intervention for individuals with severe mental illness, including bipolar and schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Conducted in clinical psychiatric settings, the study will examine whether brief daily exposure to natural sounds, such as water and birdsong, combined with minimal contemplative guidance, can improve emotional regulation, attentional functioning, and subjective well-being. Using a longitudinal within-subject design, participants will be assessed across multiple timepoints, allowing each individual to serve as their own reference and capturing dynamic changes over time. A key feature of the project is its co-creation with patients and clinicians, ensuring that the intervention is closely aligned with participants’ needs, preferences, and clinical realities. This participatory approach will help optimize feasibility and acceptability, while minimizing potential burden, distress, or overstimulation in a population characterized by heightened vulnerability to environmental and cognitive demands.
The central hypothesis is that exposure to carefully designed natural soundscapes, when combined with simple attentional guidance, may facilitate experiential states akin to those achieved through light meditation (such as embodied calm, attentional stability, and a sense of environmental connectedness) which are often difficult to access for individuals with severe mental disorders through conventional contemplative practices.
The project will integrate psychophysiological measures, including heart rate variability and EEG markers of relaxed attention, alongside cognitive tasks assessing inhibitory control and sustained attention, and in-depth micro-phenomenological interviews to explore first-person experience. This multimodal approach will enable a comprehensive understanding of how auditory environments and contemplative attention interact across biological, cognitive, and experiential levels.
By bridging contemplative science, psychiatry, and ecological psychology, this project will aim to establish the feasibility, safety, and preliminary effectiveness of contemplative listening as an accessible, non-pharmacological intervention. It will generate novel insights into how sensory environments can support mental health in vulnerable populations, while laying the methodological and conceptual groundwork for future large-scale studies.
Andreas Voldstad – University of Oxford, UK
“Developing the Compassion for Nature Scale”
Compassion refers to a sensitivity to suffering and the motivation to act to relieve suffering. In
various contemplative traditions, compassion is boundless and extended to all living beings. However, current scales are limited to human recipients of compassion, and a recently developed compassion for animals scale. We are aware of no validated measure of compassion for nature. Studies investigating compassion for nature tend to use nature empathy and closeness scales, which measure fundamentally different constructs from compassion. Compassion involves feeling for the suffering entity, but not feeling the same as them, and, unlike empathy, is specific to suffering. It involves a specific sense of communality, but is distinct from closeness or belonging. These qualities distinguish compassion from related constructs such as empathy or connectedness. The lack of a valid and reliable scale places a severe limitation on our ability to test hypotheses about compassion for the natural world, and the impact of contemplative practices targeting wider circles of compassion. Compassion includes sources of resilience such as recognising the universality of suffering, and the capacity to tolerate uncomfortable feelings when attending to suffering. In dealing with human-made ecological crises, compassion as a way of relating might therefore link inner and outer transformation towards sustainability. However, the prerequisite tool for investigating this hypothesis has not yet been developed. We therefore propose the development and psychometric evaluation of the Compassion for Nature Scale. The results of this project will provide the necessary tool for investigating an aspect of human-nature relationships that is so far underexplored in research.
Eugénie Lanchou – INSERM, France
“Neurophenomenological and Electrophysiological Study of Nondual Meditation and its impact on the Self”
Meditation practices are classified into attention-based, constructive, and deconstructive types. Attention-based practices enhance sustained attention and metacognitive awareness, while constructive practices foster positive emotions. Deconstructive practices, such as non-dual mindfulness in Dzogchen and Mahamudra traditions, challenge habitual thought patterns and aim to realize ‘pure’ consciousness, where the distinction between subject and object is dissolved.
Non-dual mindfulness aims for awareness beyond dualistic experience, often called ‘pure consciousness.’ Unlike other practices, it recognizes awareness as non-conceptual and undivided. This deconstructs the sense of self by challenging the subject-object dichotomy, crucial in Buddhist traditions. Previous studies by Dr Lutz’s group have shown that experienced meditators practising non-dual mindfulness exhibit altered brain activity, such as frontal EEG gamma oscillatory activity and changes in the insula during pain processing. EEG studies reveal beta and gamma oscillation changes during non-dual awareness. However, a more refined neurophenomenological approach incorporating first-person data is needed to understand non-dual consciousness’s impact on the sense of self.
Bodily Self and the Minimal Self in Cognitive Science: The ‘minimal self’ is the basic sense of self grounded in bodily sensations and actions. Prof. Blanke’s group has extensively studied this through paradigms like the full-body illusion (FBI) and peripersonal space (PPS), showing how sensory and motor inputs shape self-perception. Meditation practices like non-dual mindfulness may significantly alter these bodily self-representations. For instance, advanced meditators exhibit different responses in the rubber hand illusion, indicating altered body ownership. Research suggests non-dual mindfulness could impact the minimal self and agency, yet systematic studies using complex paradigms like FBI or PPS are scarce.
Hypotheses: The hypothesis posits that non-dual consciousness states will downregulate self related behavioural markers while upregulating EEG markers of non-dual consciousness. Experienced meditators are expected to show reduced behavioural effects of the FBI and PPS paradigms during non-dual meditation and altered EEG markers of non-dual consciousness. Exploratory multivariate EEG methods will be used to decode brain activity and identify potential new markers of non-dual consciousness. Participants and Experimental Design: This study will involve 20 experienced meditators and 20 matched controls. Controls will follow same instructions expected to induce a dualistic mindfulness form. Phenomenological scales will categorize consciousness into dualistic and non-dualistic states, with EEG measures collected during meditative states across self-related paradigms (PPS and FBI). Implementation and Research Team: The project will be conducted at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center. Dr. Lutz and Prof. Dr. Blanke, experienced researchers in meditation and bodily self-processes, will supervise the study. Experienced meditators familiar with non-dual meditation in Tibetan Buddhist traditions will be recruited from the Tergar meditation community with Dr. Cortland Dahl’s help.
Impact: This project combines cognitive neuroscience paradigms with non-dual mindfulness meditation’s unique phenomenology to explore self-deconstruction and cultivate non-dual awareness. The findings will enhance understanding of the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying ‘pure’ consciousness and its impact on the bodily self, bridging scientific and contemplative traditions.