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Ok, so good morning. Everyone thanks so much for coming. Let me begin just as this customary with a

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acknowledgment of country.

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So on behalf of everyone gathered. I pay respect to the spirit of a country here in Nam, where we are meeting, I acknowledged the past and present Kulan nation, Warren Jerry, while Warung, as the sovereign people here the cultural knowledge holders who maintain and promote the aboriginal law, customs and custodianship

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responsibilities for country and the people that that country continues to sustain generation after generation into the future. For all of us

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I recognize the important contribution that first nations thinkers have made to sociology, including challenges to our dominant ways of thinking.

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and we all thank first nations delegates in the room today for their contributions to knowledge in in the discipline.

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So my name is Galen Watts, and I'm a co-chair of this session

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with Anna and Paul, so I want to thank my co-chairs.

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This was very much. I think they are kind of Brainchild.

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you know. I I think it's it's interesting that I I suspect that this is probably not a session that would have been put on, you know, maybe 20 years ago, for sure, maybe not even 10 years ago. So I think it's sort of a indication that this thing that we nebulously call spirituality is

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is in some ways gaining ground in the world. And so it's nice to see that sociologists, not just a few.

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a quixotic and a strange sociologist. But increasingly, the discipline as a whole is willing to grapple with this and think about it and take it seriously. So I'm grateful to be here, and I'm really excited to have the various papers that we've

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that we've got, and I think if not, everyone should be here in person. So that's yay.

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So let's get started because we do have actually quite a sort of tact. roster

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 But let me actually. So I have a couple of just logistical things, and one sort of shout out

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acknowledge the support and and and and and just kind of bring your attention to the spirituality and wellness research network the acronyms swell just based here in Australia, but is is kind of a global network. So for those who are in fact, interested and you know, didn't just accidentally come into the wrong room. please check out the the swell network. If you want to know more about that, if you want to get on the

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on the affiliation list, or maybe there's some kind of communication, let's serve. Please just approach Anna.

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either you know, during or at the end of the session.

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and I think we'll maybe try and post something at the end for for those who just want to be able to look it up online.

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So because we have 6 presenters, we thought it might make the most sense to try and do all of the presentations, and then leave time for questions at the end, just to make sure that everyone gets a chance to actually finish their presentation.

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I I'm gonna ask the presenters to try and stay within 15 min, so I will give you a sort of 1 min. Signal at the 14 min, mark, and then I will very awkwardly sort of walk up here at 15 min to give you the sense that you should you know, it'll be like my version of when the Oscar sort of turns on the

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the the music.

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 okay. So our first presenter we have here

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is Geraldine Mossier from the Yugos, and the Marlowe with her paper feels good or not. Good. No, she's changed it up to date. Innovative. Okay, I'll let her introduce it.

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Yeah, it works.

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Okay, there we are.

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 sorry. It sometimes works. And sometimes there we go.

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that one. Yeah.

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So to go one together. I just

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there we go. Yeah.

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So thank you. First, I want to thank the organizers of this session for inviting me to stand here. If you saw that the camera can get your my note. So I really don't know how to make.

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Oh.

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okay.

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she

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well, she might be on the camera. Then she might be on the screen unless she stands here.

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Okay, I'm going to talk left.

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Sorry about that. Okay, that's fine. Thank you.

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So yes, the title of my presentation is brand new spiritual healing and biomedical care as 2 separate worlds. Really.

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So

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yeah.

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doesn't work.

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So this presentation draws on a shared perception that spiritual healing practices are usually viewed as holistic approaches that conceive the human being as a whole, as opposed to conventional medicine, that supposedly has a more anatomical, or at least mechanical view of human beings.

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So the objective of this presentation is to discuss this dichotomy by looking at innovative practices that stem from conventional medicine and healing techniques that stem from the spiritual circles.

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I will do so on the basis of a documentary research as well as on ethnography data that I collected among spiritual coaches and their mind-body practices.

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There has been recent innovative development in conventional medicine that tended to rehabilitate a more global vision of the passion. For example, with the practice of narrative medicine that has been introduced by the physician Rita Shah in the States. But today I will focus on a trend that is, towards the humanisation of care in nothing, theory and education, a trend that has emerged in the Us. Over the past few decades

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as

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as an example to illustrate how caring has widespread in health care institutions. I have this example of the website of a hospital for children in Montreal that clearly states that it places the human being at the heart of the concerns of all staff working in the hospital. The website mentions they would tint their actions with worms, listening and understanding. See the person at the whole.

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In adapted environments that are conducive to well-being.

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This idea of humanization of care and conventional biomedicine has been developed by the teacher in nursing Gene Watson in the United States, and has been imported in Quebec by one of her students, who now teaches at the University of Montreal, basically carrying approach drows on the theories of health relationships as well on Kaluja's humanistic psychology. To describe half caring theory, Oriented Nursing Education.

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The camera is not getting okay.

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So I analyze the fourth edition of the Nursing Training Handbook used at the University of Montreal. So there are 2 chapters that are devoted to carrying theory. In the first chapter

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caring is defined as a human and relational way of caring for a person carrying aims at developing a human relationship between the nurse and the passion in order to protect tenants and preserve the human dignity of the person being cared for

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building. This caring relationship involves, taking into account the set of experiences, values, and cultural perspectives, otherwise, the beliefs that make of the person and therefore influence his or her perception of health, illness, and care. Caring is operated for various professional techniques, providing a confronted, compoding presence

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for eye, contact, body, language, a comforting voice, offering compassionate or protective touch of listening. These approaches are based on the all encompassing conception conception of the person qualified with the capital. P. The person which includes the individual, the family, and the community.

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In this medical clinic the humanization of care is opposed to the objectification of passions as well as to atomicist visions of the person which supposedly derive from technoscience and the bureaucratic nature of health care establishments.

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Caring theory has raised many critics for the non-scientific-based perspective of care and the non-naturalistic assumptions it relies on, as well as due to the idealistic and morally moralizing category of care. It involves the language of virtues, it draws on as well as the nurses emotional capacity. It requires

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also caring theory falls short of considering the political, social, and economic factors that shape care in biomedical context.

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So the specific approach of the passion that is developed in caring theory, that is, the patient as a person because of capital, P justifies the integration of spirituality in the therapeutic practice, particularly in palliative care. It also relies on the scientific literature that establishes positive correlations between spirituality and and health, and a positive way to cope with illness.

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The integration of spirituality, and through epic practice is also part of the positive perspective that recognizes the spiritual dimension of the person, in so far as it constitutes a protective or supportive factor in the care provided to the person.

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Spirituality is here defined as, and I quote the very essence of the person, an inner strength and a quest for meaning that enables to strengthen transcendent illness and suffering by sustaining a form of hope which are considered as a person's spiritual needs. That is the need to find meaning, to maintain hope, to define coherence, or to simple life.

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Some people's inability to integrate this spiritual dimension may be plunged into what is known as spiritual distress, which requires spiritual intervention to insert and spiritual needs. So here we see the influence of Maslow's Pyramid pyramid of needs.

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This pragmatic, utilitarian dimension of the concept of spirituality involves the sort of normalization of spirituality that is produced by the biomedical field itself. This utilitarian view is clearly distinct from the pastoral vision of spirituality which is marked by the question of transcendence.

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I would like to turn now to the second technique, another technique that is offered on the unformal world or market of mind body practices. This technique is core energetics. So what is core Energetics.

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The website of the Institute of Core Energetics in Montreal gives a very clear and comprehensive comprehensive description of core. I will not read all of it, but just that. It says that cor energetics is an evolutionary and creative process of transformation. Focused on opening the heart, body, and mind, it was developed as a way of facing life's daily challenges by increasing our capacity to love and feel.

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using values, body techniques and exercises, to circulate energy in the body as well as basic spiritual principles, such as presence and welcoming the present moment. The kinetic approach enables us to reconnect with inner experience and and rely with the best of ourselves. So this is the website.

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So actually.

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Cor, analytics is based on bio-energy that can be best described as a mind-body or mind-body energy approach that has been created in the Us. By Alexander Levin in 2,004, which, who was a student of Elim Haj, himself a student of Hood as such systems from the Freudian's psychoanalytic tradition, but has never been recognized or accepted in psychoanalytic circles.

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This approach focus on releasing psychological and physical tension, restoring clients, ability to feel an express that is their aliveness.

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In this scheme. The role of the group is central, in that it acts as a safe container where the members project onto each other, what they experience in their everyday social relationships. For example, if the presence of another participant triggers a feeling of sadness in me. I would express this feeling either verbally

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Or through physical action, such as hitting a pillow, and I put a little bit of the of the tools they use to to make energy move.

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So this type of expression is meant to release repressed emotions which allows your energy previously to to circulate freely and to lead the person to reach a sense of consciousness. The effect of this cactic experience is then integrated in the body with the help of the group that physically supports and comforts the person with warm hugs.

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Gerakos, who worked with love and to build bio-energy, bio-energy, added a spiritual dimension to bioenergy when he integrated spiritual teachings that Eva Caracas, his wife, received food channeling and which she collated in a book entitled

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the the the pathwork of cell transformation with things like the connection between ego and universal consciousness or unity and duality, but also love and sexuality.

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So I have deliberately chosen to present a technique used in conventional medicine sciences that integrate spirituality and the holistic dimension of the person on the one hand, and, on the other hand, an approach based on mind by the and energy that is offered on the informal well-being market. But that draws on psychoanalysis. On the on the other hand, in order to show the power ofity between these 2 fields that are usually differentiated.

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So, of course, sorry. That's, in fact, the commonalities, both approaches, have commonality. They both rely on the idea that humans being carried within them the resources for their own healing, a form of empowerment in terms of so person-centered therapy or responsibilities of one's own well-being.

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They both also in both approaches. We also see the paramount role of the practitioner either to build a caring relationship or to create and hold a safe space for the group.

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In both approaches there is significant entrance of psychology. But for chem theories it is a human humanist's humanist approach of psychology and for co-anadotics it is based on threat and the concept of repressed needs.

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This cultural psychology is part of a more general trend of what the so the sociologist veronic ad glass has called the psychologization of religion, and it is also a broader scope of the psychologization of everyday life. That is the tendency to make what takes place in the psychic sphere, both an essential dimension of what is experienced, experienced by individuals as well as an explicit object of preoccupation and attention.

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There are also differences between caring theories and kinetics, first caring theories draw on a holistic vision of the human being that integrates its physical, psychological, social, and spiritual dimensions into a whole that is more than than do some of this part.

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while co-inoderics see the human being as the site of bodily and emotional experiences that are integrated through energetic, energetic flows, to which another level of presence in the world that is called consciousness consciousness.

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These these differences are reflected in terminology when the notion of spirituality is used, and quite a centrally in healthcare settings as a heritage of the contribution of chapterancy in health care that we do not have in In Quebec and in Loga we do not have chaplain in any other versus in it is spirituality is little used in core energetics, where we rather talk about energy consciousness which ecosystem.

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So beyond this slide their divergences. I hope my comparison has shown how the similarities between these 2 practices very much question. The relevance of constraining them in 2 highly compared to mentalized structures that is the conventional health care system on the one hand, and the unformal well-being market, on the other hand, with legal barriers between those 2 spheres and differentiated levels of social legitimacy. Thank you.

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Thank you very, very much, Jacqueline. So I would ask that for those who have questions. Please just write them down. Don't forget them.

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A chance at the end for everyone to ask ask questions, but we're just going to try and do the presentations now, to make sure everyone gets to

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gets through there. So our second presenter.

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the

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is.

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So we have a sort of a co-authored paper.

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Jessica target from the University of Melbourne, as well as Jonathan Davies, also from University of Melbourne, with Alex. Berger. Julieta, gallant and Nicholas Van Dam.

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we'll be giving a talk unusual experiences with secular and spiritual meditation. In the Us. Prevalence predictors, endorsement

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and valence perceptions.

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Do we have them? yes, fantastic.

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Only be here in Jonathan. Yes, great.

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Well, I actually was in the wrong room. So I didn't have time to be nervous. They were at about a fifteen-minute delay.

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No, okay.

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Next presentation touch screen.

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All right. That's me, Babel swell. Thank you very much for having me

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 So my name is Jonathan Davies. I'm a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Melbourne. Sorry to disappoint, but I'm not a sociologist. I'm a psychologist, but I'll try and talk as sociology as I can.

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this is some work that we did.

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trying to understand kind of the intersection between

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 experiences. People have unusual experiences. People have during as a result of meditation and kind of trying to understand that in the framework of of clinical experience and clinical safety, and also in terms of spiritual experience.

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So I'll talk a little bit about meditation-related adverse events in the context of of clinical practice. And why

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meditation kind of needs to be presented safely in when it's used clinically.

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but also there's a lot of variation in how that's defined and and understood, and then I'll kind of zoom out a little bit and talk a bit more about kind of meditation-related, unusual experiences, and how they might be used to understand the link between spiritual and secular

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before I run out of time, which I absolutely will. I would like to acknowledge just target who led this work. I won't acknowledge myself, because that'd be weird. Alex Berger and our leadership team. Juliette Galante, who was talking like earlier in the week, I believe, and also Nicholas Vandem.

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So meditation has been used for millennia in spiritual context, and it's been a pathway to personal growth and spiritual

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achievements and and well-being

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in about the last 30 years or so it's been increasingly used in secular and clinical kind of settings.

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and part of the appeal, I guess in the Western context, is that meditation is seen as being a a practice that is largely risk-free. So to sit down the cushion, there's very little harm that can be done. But of course, like all treatments when they're applied in a clinical setting they can lead to positive and negative out outcomes.

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So adverse events are when

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negative outcomes or negative things happen as a result of treatments.

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and they're the mainstay. They they're they're very commonly used in clinical settings and in clinical trials, and the ultimate aim is understanding. If you can understand adverse events, you can improve patient safety.

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So this is some work that was done by Miguel Farius and colleagues. This was a meta-analysis in of meditation trials that measured adverse events, and they found a rate between about 3% in general populations and 33% in clinical populations.

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Now, when you compare this to the rate of adverse events in clinical trials, more generally in clinical populations, they top out at about 20. So this kind of challenges the view that meditation might be a a risk-free practice.

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But of course these are single studies, and there hasn't been a lot of research effort. So there's been some researchers in the field that have been working towards

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understanding them at a more of a population level. Now, what sort of things are we talking about? We're talking about at the very severe end. Things like psychosis.

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I'm traumatically experiencing dissociation, Suicid Alley. But luckily the kind of garden variety, anxiety, depression, equipment of our normalities and stress are thankfully a lot more common.

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and in terms of adverse events that cause lasting harm. The most recent kind of population estimates are about 10 or 11% of people will have some sort of

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impairment as a result of an adverse event, for for some people that will last around a day or less, and some people at last a week, and sometimes even up to, or even beyond a month.

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these might seem like one is kind of beyond a month. It might not seem like a lot when you consider that in the Us. Around 30 million people meditate we're talking about, you know, upwards of kind of 290 to 300,000 people that might be having some very severe adverse events as a a lot of meditation so very, very important that we understand this and how it interfaces with spirituality as people move more towards this.

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so a lot of the work's been done by Jared Lindall and Willoughby, Britain. From Brown University

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they have kind of mapped out the varieties of contemplative experience. So they've spoken to a lot of meditators at a lot of different stages and started to understand some of the experiences that they commonly have and based on, that. They've found an an inventory of

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of experiences that are quite commonly found to be adverse. and they've created a scale a fairly short scale called the Meditation-related Adverse events scale.

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Now this has 2 parts. The first part there are 3 questions. The first is this point blank, saying, I personally have had challenging difficult or distressing experiences, as well as as a result of meditation.

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and then it follows up with talking about impairment. And then, you know, endorsement of whether people have had some of these these 10 experiences here. Now you'll note I'll bring your attention to the fact that some of these are quite generic. I felt anxious. That happens to a lot of people not just in meditation.

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So the the first definition that's kind of commonly used to understand adverse events is just someone endorsing question one. I've personally had a a challenging, difficult lot of stressing experience.

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And the second way of defining it is if someone has endorsed one or more of this list of 1010 common things.

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using different definitions, you can get vastly different estimates of prevalence. So definition, one can give you about 32

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at a population level and definition. So it can give you about 50%. We're kind of interested in understanding whether these are accurately estimating whether they're under or overestimating.

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But in any case, they're very common.

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So that is the clinical perspective. But when we kind of step back and think about the spiritual perspective.  you know, traditionally, Buddhists have had a very different if we're talking about kind of mindfulness or Buddhist practice.

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but have some had a very different kind of understanding of some of these things. They've talked about multi-valent phenomenon, electrical shifts that occur as a meditator progresses along the path. Some of these are good, some of these are bad.

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but if I was a meditator, and I came up to my teacher and said, Look, I'm having really severe anxiety. They might say good. You're making progress. That's great. Keep going.

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So the picture on the right is the stages of meditation. So basically, at the beginning, that's someone just getting on board. And then at the top, obviously up in the clouds writing an elephant.

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You're doing pretty well if you get up there and so down the bottom we have. Bob. Bob has just started meditating, and very quickly he realizes he's not having such a good time as he's his monkey and his elephant are running away. Trees are on fire.

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It it's a it's a bit average, really, isn't it? So let's say we gave him the adverse about scale. When he's there. He's surrounded by fire. He doesn't know what the hell's going on, he's probably going to say, look, it's not the best.

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But then, if we asked him when he's up here writing an elephant up in the clouds. What do you say it was worth it going through all that path down the bottom? I think you probably would.

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And there's been some work done by in

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looking at just this. So she's looked at the temporal relationship in meditation-related experiences, and she's found that people

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have, you know, that would endorse an adverse event if you asked them some months later, you know. Was it worth it? They say that? Yeah, look, it was really therapeutic. It was

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really horrible at the time, but it got me to a better place. So we still need to understand a lot of the the temporal understanding.

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are you keeping track of time? Because I'm I'm certainly

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yeah. If that goes.

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So, what this study that we were doing was was really trying to kind of unpack this. And the other problem with the field, of course, is while it's really important to understand adverse events.

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they're kind of considered at the very negative extreme. and a lot of the research, for for quite obvious reasons, has has focused on the very negative experiences, or the very positive or mystical experiences, and not really a lot's known what happens in between. And not only that there are a range of experiences, but

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2 people experience them differently, as some of them negative, are some of them positive. We just have no idea.

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So the study that we proposed was, we would take a list of common and some uncommon meditation-related experiences, and we would split them into 2 parts. So we would say.

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Have you had this experience. How intense was it? Did you not have it at all? Was it really strong, or somewhere in between?

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If someone said it was slight or above, we would say, Okay, they had that experience.

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Then we'd have a follow-up question saying, how was it? Was it neutral, negative or positive? And then we had a working definition that if they said it was extremely or modestly unpleasant, that would be an adverse event.

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So we did a really really big example of representative sample of Us. Meditators. So we had about a thousand people. They were all meditators. We tried to make it representative on meditation types in us in America. So mantra mindfulness and spiritual, that's super arbitrary categories. But this is from the best data that we have access to.

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and we also took a range of experience. So we took beginners, intermediate and expert meditators.

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We made a really really big collection of meditation-related experiences. So we we took all the measures that we could find from adverse events to mystical experiences, altered states of consciousness.

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all sorts of things. We put them in a big part. We tried to sort them into different categories, and we whittled them down to about 104 items.

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and so some of these. We we also split them, categorize them on those that had positive wording. So that we're kind of leading people to give up, you know that you would assume would be an overall, positive response, neutral and negative, and across a range of of domains.

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Then we asked the poor participants a hundred 4 questions.

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 based on their responses if they had the experience. Then we followed up and asked them how unpleasant, or pleasant, or unpleasant it was.

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and what we found was fairly similar. So for the first definition that we had. So the single item I have had An an adverse event. As part of my meditation we found in the blue there. So we found 34, so fairly similar to previous estimates. About 34% were having an adverse event.

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I'll talk about the impairment a little bit later on.

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By the second definition, we found a staggering 81% of people, if you use the second definition, would endorse an adverse event which is really really high, but also in our view, it's probably an overestimate.

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and then using the more nuanced kind of understanding the intensity as well as the violence of the experience. We found it was about 63%.

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So

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it's kind of the Goldilocks point between the very simple way of asking. And the more

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more like the the way with more assumptions.

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But very interestingly, when we looked at the intensity of some of these experiences by and large, so these are the the 10 questions that if you endorsed one or more of those 10 questions, you would be assumed to have a adverse event. Most most people were. We split some of them up as well, by the way, but I can talk about that later.

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By and large. Most people were kind of

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endorsing these as really slight experiences. They weren't strong experiences at all. Very, very small proportions of people were were saying. These are very strong, intense experiences. So the relationship between the intensity and the unpleasantness is something else. We we started to look at

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This was the subjective. How they rated the intensity. So of course, you know, they are negative experiences by and large. so some people found them extremely unpleasant, so probably the majority of people found them unpleasant to some degree, but then also quite a lot of people found them neutral, or or possibly even positive.

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So when you kind of 2 min. So when you zoom that up to 100, if you applied our third definition of being moderately or intensely unpleasant, we found that probably between 30 and 89% of people would not call them adverse events. So that's a really important finding. As we move forward and try and unpack all this

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I'm running out of time. So I'll go forward and talk about

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unusual experiences. So in terms of unusual meditation-related experiences.

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they're almost ubiquitous. So 99% of participants had them on average, people had 39 of the 104 experiences.

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and most of these were predominantly positive. A lot of neutral ones and some negative ones.

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This I'll probably finish on because I'm running out of time. But basically

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the this is the intensity on the left-hand side. And that's the the the valence rating on the right-hand side.

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and these are the positive word in grain, the neutral

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in yellow, and the negative in red.

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So people were endorsing really strong experiences that were extremely positive.

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the negative ones, some of them were extremely some of them were more slight, but they were still extremely unpleasant.

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But there was a range in between, and of course it's going to take us a bit of time to understand what that all means. But basically, there's there's a lot of difference in how people write this. And we did look very quickly at before the talk at

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the relationship between spirituality versus secular practice, and we found that there were some very interesting differences in the way

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people frame these experiences, so some of them will have the same experience, but some will say it's positive, and some will say it's negative, depending on the context that they're in.

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So I'll leave it at that. But thank you very much for your attention.

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Okay, well, thank you so much, Jonathan. I really look forward to the yeah questions about that.

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So our our third presenter is going to be sumeda duta. Beyond the sacred, profane dichotomy, new religious movements, and their concept of wellness through spirituality in South Asia.

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A very good morning to a wonderful present over here. First of all, as has been the tradition, I would like to express my gratitude to Norm.

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The land of the ruin, Jerry! And of course I would like to extend my heartful gratitude to Australia for having been so kind to us, and my heartful gratitude to our C. 22. Because you've been so amazing. You've been so warm ever since we arrived. I'm from India. I'm an assistant professor in the department of Sociology, Central and University of Punjab, and I will take you on a journey of Not a new religious movement called the Art of living.

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So I thought of talking about many, but it's better to talk about one. So I would like to start. So. we all know about new religious movements. They incorporate a particular focus on cultural reform and millennial revolt.

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Sorry?

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Okay? they are known for the tendency to modify and recreate sacred text and rituals through infusing elements that give them more contemporary. Uranity!

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They are kind of a dialectic between continuity of traditions on the one hand and change on the other. And In India, if you talk about the new religious movements, they consider themselves more spiritual than religious, and it reflects in their non-dualous conceptions of God

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and in India and as elsewhere, there has been a rejection in the in in the last few decades of associational religion. The new spiritualities represent an Allakart range of commodified options for the individual religious consumer a noble and passes on personal autonomy has become the dominant force in villages, beliefs, and practices.

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Now, while religion is considered to be an organized system of beliefs and practices, the concept of spirituality is seen to be rather flexible and inclusive.

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more likely to be embraced by those who are uncomfortable about confining themselves within straight jacketed categories, especially if you talk about the urban middle class, so the urban middle class wouldn't want to be known as belonging to a particular watertight compartment, and they are more akin to they. They are more In attracted by these new religious movements.

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who give them a lot of space to be themselves and choose. The the kind of package which suits them. So most of the new religious movements in South Asia have embarked and focused more on the spiritual. Spiritual caution

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rather than on the religious one, and spiritual in this sense is seen as an equivalence of the secular. Now this is again We are going beyond the dichotomy, which again, Galen has introduced right at the beginning that we are talking about spirituality, and we are not talking about it. even a decade back. So It is something which is seen as equivalence of secular by these organizations on account of its openness and inclusivity.

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These enriches are prone to encouraging religious pluralism, and hence position themselves as champions of religious freedom.

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Now the Hindu derived new religious movements in South Asia, particularly in India, I'll be talking about one of them. So they trace their origins from Hinduism and are of Indian origin. They produce marketable salvation goods and develop an online presence.

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They have been increasingly emphasizing on stress, alleviation and wellness.

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They have very, very very precise brand-building strategies as well as commoditization. So they have brand ambassadors, they have packages. They are very, very market-oriented, and they question established norms on the one hand, while they also retain certain traditional elements.

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now the center of these Nrms in South Asia are these people who are called as Godmin or Avatar gurus? So yeah, avatar, as an avatar you must have seen that movie. So you pronounce it as avatar. So that's actually a Indian name or divine reincarnations at the center. They involve the belief that a significant element of the Guru's earthly mission

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is to set up institutional organizations. So it is kind of a mission that the Guru has been endowed with that they have to set up these organizations on earth. It involves the believe that a significant element of the Guru's earthly mission is to set up institutional organizations. So these are not just any organization they have the rigor of. If you just go through Max Weber's understanding of an organization, they have all those traits in them. They are highly bureaucratic.

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So Sva or sinless service plays an important role in this institutionalizing

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process. Now, I will be talking about the out of living foundation. I've done in-depth, you can say ethnographic study while I have been dealing with their attempts at detoxification and the addiction of the edicts in Punjab and the rest of India. I've also seen. I've also been a participant of the observer along with being a non-particip

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of various of their various programs, and who? Who? Who? Who constituted my sample. So they were the office bearers of the Aolf or the art of Living foundation, the lay members and volunteers and office staff, the beneficiaries of the various projects undertaken by Aolf in the public sphere. Specifically in the context of drug addiction and rehabilitation.

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And also I've interviewed several State officials who are associated with joint ventures of the State and the Aolf. So the State and the Aolf have been cooperating in several projects like the other. And nrns in India.

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so basically, when we look into the kind of data which has been generated as an outcome of my project. We see how spirituality is often seen, not as antithetical to, but as complementary to science in the pursuit of wellness and inclusivity in the modern world.

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Now, what is this, Aolf? It was founded by Suiswy ravishanker and Interestingly, Actually he had his first camp in Switzerland, and only thereafter he had a huge following in the United States of America, and thereafter the main center came up in Bangalore in India. So

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since its inception. It's sculpted the cooperation of the spiritual and the social, which has drawn a large number of followers within its fault. It harnesses the Hindu spiritual heritage modified by the Gordman. In order to soothe the temperaments of modernity, it strategically engages in sava or social service initiatives. This has enabled the movement to gain social legitimacy, build a base of loyal followers and ensure its continuity in the modern globalized century.

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he's supposed to have invented the the Sudan Korea, which is the base of the all of its programs, and it has some courses which is offered in 156 countries all over the world. Now. what is it based on? So Rabbi Shankar says, unless we have a stress, we mind a disease, free body and a violence free society, we cannot achieve world peace

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And he has also actually gone into the making of various associations for various other kinds of Sava as well, and the ultimate goal is transcendence. While providing an alternative to modern Western epistemology, one.

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Now the quest is to arrive at a balance between the material and spiritual, and the central premise is saddenam. The interior disposition of the performer, therefore, is more significant in the performance as compared to the inner transformation of the recipient.

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and Also there is a a huge amount of emphasis which is laid on the utter exaltation of Sri Lanka. That is the first in the Guru, and disseminating his spiritual message.

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And finally, these are actually like clubs. You know they are spiritual, but they are clubs. They have an inherent Pluginus in them, and therefore they They actually attract, as I said already, the urban middle class and the professionals who love to go there, and as me! And Ruffle were having a talk about, and I think even my! Previous speakers have talked about it that there's a lot of scarcity of love in this world. And this organization has been using

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various metaphors, and also this Korean symbol of love. They say that. you! You need love you! Come to me. Please forget all your addictions. I will give you a high which nothing else can give you. So you come to me. I'll give you love, and through their clubiness. They also make it quite interesting. So the Sudhan Korea is considered to be the panacea for all

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kinds of problems, and it is all in one solution to various kinds of issues, and the Guru is very witty, and he's very charismatic, and he does not sermonize. And the overall package. So these are some of the programs. So if you, if you've done it, or if you know about it, one is called happiness program. Second is Sah samadhi, which is about meditation which my previous speaker was talking about

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then. Yes, plus, and they are designed for students and young professionals in a language which is aminable to them. Housewives recovered addicts, and people who have benefited out of the courses play a major role and functional research wing. It's a like a laboratory. You know, they have a laboratory where they are continuously developing new techniques, and they are continuously, and they are very secretive about it. They do not give away what they do there, and

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what are exactly the techniques that they use for the addiction and other things. And then there are weekly follow ups and meet ups which provide opportunity to sustain those networks over time. Now this is what they say. Like we were talking about science and spirituality, so they have hired. Again we were talking. I was talking with Rafael, and he asked, What about science? So this this organisation has had the best scientists from all Indian Institute of Medical Sciences, Nim, Hans.

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and others, which are the best institutes of medical sciences in India to talk about the impact that seduction Korea has on individuals. So they have been publishing a lot of pamphlets. And this is from one of them, and also from the website. And then this is one of the This is a former addict, and he was high on cocaine, and he said that there are 2 types of detoxifications, one of the body and other of the

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mine. The Aolf particularly helps in attainment of the latter, and seeks to prevent relapse. My life at the

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come to a complete standstill on account of addiction. However, thanks to Guru Dave, I have got a new life, full of respect, honour, and good health. There were times when I would only be humiliated on account of my addiction. But now my work is bringing me a kolate, so he is a very, very popular and very active teacher of the art of living, and it holds several camps which is called wellness program for substance users.

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They go to jails, they go to various villages. They go to various rehab centers, and they have a huge following all over India and across 156 countries. And they've also been doing a lot of work in Latin America, and they do it as Sewa and the teachers are not really paid, they are only paid to enough to you know, cater to their needs.

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Then, finally, towards some conclusions, it is actually a private organization, mostly running on donations and income from the sale of products, scores, fee, etc. But they have good relations with the State. They invite State leaders in various programs and collaborate collaborate with law enforcing agencies. They maintain a spiritual tank, and they take a lot of offense. So if you say that so you are a religious organization. No, no.

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no, no, we are not religious, we are not religious, we are secular, we are secular. So then, I'm like, Are you actually secular? You have a god, man, we are spiritual, but we are not religious, we are not religious, they take offence, then spirituality, according to the organisation, need not be connected to any one particular religion. It is universal, and therefore embraces everyone within its bold, as the name suggests, that is, art of living, it attempts to promote a way of living that is held

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and stress free rather than promote and spread religious presets. The symbolisms involved are also quite modern and secular rather than traditional and religious. It is much more liberal than its approach than traditional religious organisations. No one is turned away on the basis of religion, or even gender caste class ethnicity, for that matter.

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mit Ctl. And and, as I already said, spiritual is seen as secular by the insiders, and hence the impasses on the secular, along with an apparent anxiety of being labeled as a religious organization, a labeling which they fight shy off. So finally, 150

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mit. Ctl. And are we actually very comfortable with the dichotomy which forms, you know, the binaries of the modern constitution. If we take into account Bruno Latour's work, have we have never been modern. So if we we actually keep thinking in terms of the binaries so like sacred and profane, we'll never be able to figure out what these organizations are all about, because I think the art of living is spiritual, sacred, and secular at the same time 250,

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but they emphasise on spirituality, and they are going by his definition. That is the Durkheim's definition. The concept of spirituality is likely to be interpreted as something which is encompassed within the notion of the sacred, but a deeper engagement with the notion of spirituality, calls for a rethinking of the sacred as an umbrella category that seemingly includes everything which is not profane under its ambit.

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These are some of the glimpses from the P. I have plenty of photographs, but I just brought some to show you. Now, who are these people? The the person with bared and the the person wearing white? He is Ravi Shunger, and on his right and left are very, very popular. Bollywood and the Bollywood actors, and somebody. The the Governor was also here. The chief minister was also here, and this is the biggest

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campaign for a drug-free India. And I'll show you. And also there are some musicians, rappers, and they are famous all over the world. And this person the the right. The person on the right is Ravi Shalker, on the left is Sanjay, that now, Sanjay, that is the biggest. yeah, I'm just finishing. He's the biggest addict he was, you know, known as the biggest addict. He was almost

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gone. He was almost dead because of his addictions. He is a Bollywood superstar. However, now he is with this person. He is being used as a brand ambassador to

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tell the youth that listen because of my addiction. My life was ruined, and you all please come to Guru, Dave, and he will give you a high, so he says, find your own high, which is healthy, high, and I'll give you that high come to me. So This is actually from the happiness program which I attended. It is a community sharing of meal, and there was singing and dancing apart from a lot of Sudhan, Korea and Pran, Am. And Yoga.

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and finally, this is me and a friend. We were campaigning drugs, Nakarungi, Naka, Nedungi. That means neither would I do drugs, nor would I allow others to do drugs. Thank you so much.

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Thank you so much, Sumida. All right. So we are now on to our fourth presenter and paper. Vivian Jerend from Deakin University will present understanding processes of radicalization within wellness communities in an age and polarization.

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Thank you.

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Thank you for the opportunity to present today

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and the encouragement of my colleague Anna for joining this session, which has really been very stimulating so far, and I look forward to the discussion.

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I'd like to acknowledge that we are on warranty unseeded land, and pay my respects to elders, past, present, and emerging.

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While significant research has been undertaken into religiously inspired or attributed radicalization to violent extremism. Relatively little attention has been paid to the ways in which spirituality

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a term that's been used to describe the intersection of conspiracy, theories, and contemporary forms of spirituality. I also feature in trajectories of violent radicalization.

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This paper draws on a forthcoming chapter that explores how conspiracy thinking has been mobilised by alternative or new religious movement influences during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly

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in some cases to the detriment of democracy and public health strategies.

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mapping radicalization, trajectories towards conspiracy between spirituality and some forms of militancy of a minority identify the ways in which the conducive environment of COVID-19 heightened vulnerabilities has intersected with unique selling points, and the appeal of conspiracies, spiritual and wellness, groups.

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often with an agenda that leverages existing, individualized spiritual beliefs, pandemic related anxieties, traumatic legacies loss of trust in institutions and hesitancy surrounding vaccines.

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So my talk first wants to focus on reclaiming the complexity of radicalisation, so emphasizing the intersectional nature of people's different radicalisation trajectories of wanting to avoid in any way making an assumption that that all the trajectories are the same. Applying a sort of formula to this experience.

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it's very much a study that seeks to draw out some of the nuances of these experiences, to avoid, also potentially adding fuel to the fire, as can happen when we make generalized assumptions about radicalization.

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So there has been some really important work done on online algorithmic radicalization. And that is critical work to understanding some of the dimensions of the online phenomenon surrounding this.

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But we also need to remember the underlying grievances that have drawn people into that space, and that continue to enable them to mobilize.

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If we don't address those underlying grievances, then we're missing a huge part of the puzzle that can enable us to address this phenomenon with sensitivity without adding to the problem.

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I'll then talk about the particular nature of the low trust environment and the way that certain kinds of influences online have enabled or got grained traction through this environment and continue to do so.

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And I'll also talk about some of the experiences of people locally based on some in-depth interviews that I'm currently undertaking with people in Allied and alternative health communities to understand better what we can learn. These, these are not people who would identify in any way. They're just necessarily as conspiracy theorists or spiritualists. But they're certainly people that have a lot of insight into this community because they are adjacent to it.

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Adherence to conspiracy and extreme wellness. Movements are readily dismissed as unstable. yet the motivations driving their trajectories of radicalisation are both highly complex and context-dependent.

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requiring detailed and critically empathetic analysis of the narratives, networks, and nuances that inform their pathways into radicalization.

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My understanding of these trajectories is informed by my long-term investment in alternative health approaches and connection to wellness communities over a 20 year period as a Yoga practitioner.

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as a researcher of radicalization, who is also to an extent an insider. Within such communities friendships with allied health workers and people who have turned to, and spirituality in the pandemic have granted me informal access to the nuances of religiously guarded attachment to bodily autonomy, magical thinking, intuition, and sovereignty

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throughout the pandemic. I've maintained close relationships with friends who are on the vaccine hesitant spectrum.

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In addition, over a seven-month period from September 2021 until March 2022, I regularly monitored the telegram accounts of local and global, anti-lock-down, anti-vaccine mandate groups whose adherence concerns overlap, but are not necessarily the same as those of influences in the cons spiritualist domain.

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My analysis is informed by the activities of these groups that generated hundreds of new notifications during Melbourne's third long lockdown, which lasted from August until October 2021,

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to enhance understanding of how spiritually inspired or attributed forms of radicalisation to conspiracy thinking have increased their reach and influence. During the pandemic, I draw on qualitative digital ethnographic case, studies of radicalisation to in spiritual thinking, as observed through the social media and encrypted messaging applications of popular trusted alternative health and wellness influences. In this case, today, I'm focusing on Dr. Chris John Northrop

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and on recent interviews with, as I said, alternative health and wellness practitioners.

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spiritual and wellness communities, long-time components of complementary and alternative healing practices, as we know, were not immune to conspiracy. Thinking well before the arrival of COVID-19,

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the introduction of a range of conspiracies, including that of Q. Anon, through prominent lifestyle influences, did lead some to radicalize along, and spiritual trajectories in some cases of militancy.

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including recruitment into harmful extremism.

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COVID-19. Intensified engagement with this movement, which has attracted new adherence, as many scholars have pointed out

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through the idea that the pandemic was an opportunity for awakening planetary ascension and transformation in pointed contrast to government, public health and biomedical strategies adopted to address the crisis or represented as a threat to freedom, mental and physical well-being

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messaging within, and spiritual networks encouraged, as has been pointed out by scholars here today.

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encouraged alternative health and spiritual practices, intuition magic and bodily autonomy as a mode of resistance to public health measures such as mask, wearing lockdowns and vaccines which have been viewed as instruments of deep State control and surveillance, together with 5G technologies.

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This messaging, intersected in some places with the accelerationist narratives of far right political actors.

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which also promoted the anti-vaccine sentiment through the notion, for example, that the COVID-19 vaccine rollout was part of a plot to sterilize white populations.

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public health measures critical to stopping the global spread of COVID-19 led to job loss, uncertainty, trauma, and, as we know, increased time spent online in many countries.

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In addition to ushering in an era of expanded Internet dominance. The impacts of the pandemic in Australia, the United States, Canada, Europe, and elsewhere have deepened existing socioeconomic atomization and inequalities, and with them vulnerabilities to novel kinds of social influence, in an environment of heightened sense of grievance and fear.

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and, above all, loss of trust

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perceptions that public health measures are authoritarian, have been accompanied by a parallel growth in these ideologies which have infiltrated and connected unexpected demographics, including stay at home mothers, indigenous communities, extreme right. Actors and Yoga practitioners

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uniting them was a search for an alternative explanation that might help make sense of what was happening, especially in situations of lockdown for those who were effectively housebound because of mobility and travel restrictions and unable to undertake their normal activities.

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This became a particularly acute in countries like Australia, for example.

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when public health measures shut down, Allied health responses to the pandemic.

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leaving patients desperate and practitioners forced to go underground to treat them. recent interviews undertaken with Allied health practitioners in Victoria illustrate this dynamic. So this is

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as an as an Allied health practitioner. There seemed to be no recognition of our role.

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We were living in fear of huge fines, because I'd already told us that we would cop on $100,000 fine if we opened up clinics

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in Allied health. Who's an emergency patient? You couldn't say I want to see my acupuncturist or my chiropractor for my mental health issue. You had to make up an excuse like a migraine.

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that most of our businesses were completely destroyed because our patients were afraid

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it became a mental health crisis by the second or third lockdowns. People were struggling, and the isolation had gotten to people so badly that a lot of clinics were telling their patients. Just say, your back's really sore, and you've got a migraine and come in for a mental health issue.

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My therapists were told they can't work at all. So they spent 2 years with no work, and I know people that are severely depressed. From that.

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You can't do my therapy online. I lost money because I lost rental from them. So in the end my business didn't grow for a good 2 or 3 years

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because of the pandemic, but I also lost clients because I couldn't work.

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One thing that I thought about the Victorian Government's health approach is that they don't respect Allied health.

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It just felt like they didn't understand the benefit of Allied health. And you look at how many people go to Allied health practitioners. It's something like 80 or 90%.

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Most people I know have seen a chiropractor at some point, or they've had a massage, or they've used something in our health. It's just incredible that we weren't part of the health response

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that these health services were deemed non-essential, while other orthodox Western health practitioners, touted in the media as heroes, were able to continue working alienated sections of the spiritual and complementary and alternative health community, who were deeply invested in managing COVID-19 on their own terms, many still wanting to respect guidelines.

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This further amplified distrust in and resentment toward biomedical institutions, such as big pharmaceutical companies and governments.

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It prompted an elevation within these communities of conspiracy, thinking about the pandemic.

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as we know particularly the Q. And a phenomenon, but that is not the only one

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these dynamics also foster. To increase crossover between some far right and radical action orientation that we can see that's infiltrated. These communities in some quarters

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a minority of influences has adopted also a form of militancy. Militancy here refers to posture and action orientation, while specific influences that I have considered have not undertaken over violent action consistent with those of terrorists. They have adopted militant stances that draw on a repertoire of extremist bonding icons

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explicitly linked to violence or the threat of violent action, such as guns. In the case of Dr. Chris John Northrop.

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He talks about

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thinking in terms of vaccine mandates. If anyone comes near one of my children I will have no problem putting a bullet in their head Mega caps and the Nazi symbols. In the case of Chef Pete Evans, an Australian influencer, who was de-platformed at the end of 2020, after he posted a neo-nazi symbol on his social media accounts. In a cartoon.

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In contemporary usage, the term radicalisation tends to a federal process whereby individuals come to view violence as a legitimate method of solving social and political conflicts, without a particular set of enabling cultural, socioeconomic, historical, and political conditions, however, extreme ideologies in themselves are unlikely to lead people towards violent action. So the perception of grievance is pretty cool.

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as in other democracies, that impose vaccine mandates. demonstrations in Australia

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included. Anti-democratic extremists seeking to capitalize on pandemic, induced grievances to what, like the ones I've just been mentioning, including credible threats against government and public health officials lives.

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while the majority of of demonstrators were peacefully demonstrating

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a range of countries, also saw health health workers, vaccination centers, and ordinary citizens complying with public health orders become targets of hate.

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That the activists themselves claim to be dissenting in the defence of their freedoms is critical within the Australian context, in which emergency measures were used to pursue a covid 0 strategy for much of 2020 and 2021. This conducive environment, a grievance is arguably peaked during Melbourne's sixth lockdown. So here I've only got 3 represented. These are just the long ones. We had 6 all together.

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Unlike the rest of Australia, Melbourne had a uniquely long lockdown in 2,020 that lasted from July until October of that year.

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plus this lockdown, proved damaging to mental health and livelihoods, and in some cases breached human rights. When towers were locked down and citizens were not given warning that they wouldn't be able to leave their homes

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by the end of that lockdown we had actually

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become free of covid cases and enabling the city to reopen. So there was a sort of a sense of achievement as well as trauma after that particular lockdown. But during the 2021 lockdown by contrast, many in the community were already at breaking point, both financially and psychologically, without the economic support experienced for closed businesses throughout the through the Australian Federal Government's job seeker and jobkeeper schemes that had protected people from poverty in 2,020,

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when vaccine mandates were introduced in the middle of this third long lockdown, the conducive environment of grievance is arguably peaked.

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The absence of supports and increased strain on the community, increased vulnerability of some to the influence of alternative explanations and conspiracies, and also far right influences, who saw this as an opportunity for recruitment.

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Thanks.

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I'll move quickly to the case study. So this is this is so. During the pandemic demonstrations in Melbourne's third long lockdown.

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Many people brought clothing to the steps of Parliament, mobilising language around, appropriating language from the Civil rights movement, talking about segregation, reclaiming the line, etc.

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Sorry to get.

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So, as we can see also online, the kinds of influences that I've been studying, such as Chris John Northrop

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have been using health as a galvanizing

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views have drawn on holistic health.

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There are holistic health practitioners and have felt an incredible I've been sorry

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the militant defence of holistic health that we can witness in influences like Christian Northrop. He was a qualified physician in obstetrics and gynaecology, known for her best-selling books, such as Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom and the wisdom of menopause.

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and then her alignment with ideology that some have dubbed past or Q and on.

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has had a massive influence over her followers. Northrop's publications have drawn on a blend of individualized and hybrid-scientific and scientific spiritual beliefs that are rooted in a cult, pagan and energy-based medicine privileging emotion and intuition.

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welfare up views, healing is a highly personal and individual process. Women's bodies draws on complementary and alternative holistic medical practices that promote a shift from external control to self-care, culminating in a twelve-step women's wisdom program for flourishing and healing.

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the final step of which is to actively pursue pleasure and purpose.

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The fact that I'll but I'll come to the conclusion. The fact that popular health and spiritual influence in Northrop pursued conspiracy based messaging strategies that led to a loss of mainstream credibility and lucrative commercial commercial publishing contracts indicates the extent to which she was acting with conviction.

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cultivating the trust of her followers in holistic health

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and spiritual promotion of dietary advice over decades, Northrop lost status with the broader community in her conspiracy, radicalisation, the shift from celebrity to de platform conspiracies transmogrified this once famous figure, reducing her reach and influence within mainstream cultures where she detracted large followings.

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In the case of Northrop, spirituality is in but individualised, and health and wealth are considered personal concerns rather than rather than attributes, the particular cultures, histories, and structures and systems of which we're a part.

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Genuine concerns, however, underlie many of these mobilizations. Instead of dismissing them. The conspiracy milli. As engagement with these concerns, highlights, the nature of the perceived threat being experienced, it also presents compelling evidence for the need to listen to the anxieties and respond pro socially to multi-systemic grievances in order to restore trust in governments and institutions. If we if we are to avert the proliferation of cons spiritual radicalisation? Thank you.

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Ok, thank you very, very much, Vivian. So we now have our fifth paper and presenter. So we will listen to Karina Bilala with co-authors. Maria Jose

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Aim Bareeda, Doris, Civalos, Sambrano, and Gilbert Ramirez giving a paper connection with God in times of the pandemic association between mental health, substance, abuse, and spirituality among young adults in Peru and Ecuador.

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That's a bad pinky sitter. Who's the guy?

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Okay.

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this.

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What on this?

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The all that? Yep.

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And I'm going to go around.

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Okay. okay.

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can you hear me?

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Okay.

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I won't move.

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 we got it

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all right. We're set. Good morning, everyone. My name is Karina Viaalva. I am from University of Central Florida.

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in Florida, United States. Before we start. I'd like to acknowledge my collaborators. I'd like to acknowledge my collaborators at Pablo-jo Lee Valley.

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I'm a Bajrela Para. She is from Univari-dad national Descent Augustine de Rikipa and Doris Valjo Sabrano, who is from? She is from the university at Laika Eloi Al-faro de Marimb.

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So I'm going to briefly start with an introduction. Then I'm going to talk about? What are the objectives of the study that we did, that we did the methods, results, conclusion and future directions.

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so our study was based. Looking at the general term of religion and spirituality which has been used interchangeable, especially among the younger generations.

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Here I'm given a very brief definition of what religion is, which is an institutionalized system of religious attitudes, believes and practices social interactions, that service and worship God or the supernatural. So this is in reality religion is is an institution, whereas spirituality revers more to the experience of connecting yourself with the higher

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being or the higher power, or God. So it's more of an individualistic point of view.

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is also based on how they experience their connection with God at the moment, how they connected with themselves and others.

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and

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in Latin America, where the research was based, the majority of the population is identified as Christians. The majority of them are Catholic, however, for this study we did not ask whether they were Catholic Protestants or other, but we can assume that many of the students that answered this the survey were from Catholic backgrounds.

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religion can have a favorable impact on individuals at different levels, health, mental health, stress behavioral attitudes. And so that's something that we wanted to assess. faith is broadly understood as being closer or connected to God. It's a force that helps to overcome stressful situations.

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physical or mental crisis and can facilitate behavioral change. So the idea was to see in this, when we did this survey, how faith really facilitated all these different

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issues that were related to COVID-19 religious believers who have lost their connection with God may act maybe at an increased risk for physical and mental health. So that was our kind of research question, whether religious believers, that because of

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or due to the pandemic, they kind of lost their connection with God, so does that affect their mental health and substance use.

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So the first objective was compared. The characteristics, you know, demographic characteristics as well as Mental health, Substance, use and COVID-19 related issues among religious and non-religious university student students in Peru and Ecuador, and our second objective was to evaluate these associations by gender

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between connection to guard mental health, loanless family unity and substance use among these students in Peru and Ecuador.

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So we recruited these students using an online survey, following qualtrics.

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from and Quito Ecuador between 2,021 and 2,022 The inclusion criteria was very simple. the person needed to be 8 university students, so they needed to be a student at a university and older than 18 years old.

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We use several measures. I will go more in depth about the measure that we use for spirituality. But to measure alcohol use we use the audit score. Now all these measures. They're not diagnostic tools, so they

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they inform us of. They may or may not have an issue. But they're not really diagnostic tools. they. We use the Ucla loneliness scale to measure loneliness, the Dsmv scale to measure mental health, meaning, depression, anxiety and anger. we use the modified, perceived stress scale to measure stress in the context of COVID-19

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the household environmental scale environment scale which measure family cohesion and family conflict in the COVID-19 context.

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 the daily spiritual experience scale was the one that we used to measure spirituality

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and religion. so this is an 18. So 18 questions. And they're divided by. So by by 2 sections, the first section asks about religion, the other one asks more about spirituality. So it's like looking at their beliefs. And the concept is obviously

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as a spiritual higher being. How close, for example, one of the questions there was is, how

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connected or how close do you feel that you are with God?

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for example.

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the way that we analyze the data after we collected it, this is was an online collection. As I said before, we had analytic plan that we use. First we described the study. So we did the descriptive statistics analysis. Then we do? Did the group comparison. So we compare, we compare

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so countries first. So we compared. Peru versus Ecuador we compared by gender. We compare male versus females. And and under this overall comparison, which was believers versus non-believers.

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we also did a multiple linear regression model, using the backward eliminations method that was run to predict. So our predictors, like I said before, was substance use, or mental health. So here we wanted to predict alcohol, use depression and society.

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Among their religious university students.

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And these are the results. So if we, looking at the beliefs by sex and country, we can see in the

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tables depicted that the non-religious, the the ones in blue, were non-religious or spiritual, whereas in orange were the spiritual believers as well as the once in red were the religious believers, and if we were looked we were to see it both more than 75% of them were. So we're talking about that and I out of.

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for out of 600, a close to 600 students that we enter, we. We conducted the survey 125 out of those felt that they were believers. So they had either faith in God or they were spiritual believers.

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And that's what we're depicting here, and we're comparing in men versus women. So you can see that women were higher believers than men in general. If you look at the green bars.

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Then we looked at the religious beliefs. By sex and country, and we can see again that in red the religious believers

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were mostly women, and it was more. The beliefs were higher among Peruvian women.

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Here we looked at the demographic characteristics. The majority of the students were 25 years old, religious and non-religious. The male and females were equally the same. the mental. If, when we look at the mental health, we can see that

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there was a significant differences between religious and non-religious individuals

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with religious individuals having less loneliness.

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less anxiety. You can see that in in red The p-values were less angry about the no less depression. I'm sorry.

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also they. One of the questions that we had about alcohol use was, since the pandemic started. How often did you consume alcohol? And we can see again that the religious or the spiritual believers we're consuming less alcohol than the non-religious or consumer or

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believers.

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And this was across the board looking, comparing Peru and Ecuador again, Peru compared to Ecuador. anxiety and depression was less among the non-religious, whereas there was no significance in Ecuador, while everything else was the same. When we had a question about

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using marijuana or cannabis use there was a difference. The non-religious Students in Ecuador was significant, meaning that they

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use more than the students in improve. Now I do want to say that, for example, if you look at marijuana use, there are very few people that actually did use marijuana, so we cannot make huge comparisons, nor we can say that this is something that we can generalize to the, to the rest of the students, because the numbers were not large.

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When we looked at the characteristics. about COVID-19 we can. And again we compare the 2 countries, Peru and Ecuador. We can see that in Ecuador there was a significant difference with vaccination as a collect. Alas! A collective action to prevent COVID-19 that was significantly different for

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the for the believers and vaccines protecting my family again. It was significant for the non-believers, meaning that they felt that The vaccines were helping their families and were helping themselves

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Their income also decreased, and they had serious financial problems. There was a significant differences in Ecuador. Comparing the non-believers and the believers, the non, the believers had significantly income decrease and or serious financial problems compared to the other group.

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And then, when we looked at the correlation analysis, we can see what I just mentioned earlier that there was this significant relationship with stress

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and alcohol use.

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when we look finally at the outcome, like I mentioned before, mental health and substance use among the students in Peru and Bolivia. In Ecuador we can see that alcohol, especially if we were, was significant. Among people that were believers, because They were drinking less alcohol compared to the ones that were non-believers.

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same thing with stress and anger. Their level of stress was lower, and their anger and anger was less compared to the non-believers, and depression was similar. The depression was less among the believe among the non-believers compared to the believers.

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So in this, this was in Peru, the and Ecuador

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it was a little different. The only difference in Ecuador was that a family conflict was a risk factor for

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substance use or mental health issues.

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And when we compare men and women, we we. So we saw also that being connected with God was important among men and women to decrease their alcohol use

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with a significant difference in depression

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and anxiety levels where both were similar in the sense that they also not believers, were less anxious and less the press than the non-believers, whether they were males or females.

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In conclusion, these results consistently show that being connected to God is a protective factor for drinking less alcohol. It also shows that being connected to God and family cohesion or togetherness are protective factors for depression among men and women, and we can imply that being connected to God may be a moderating variable for alcohol use, which can lead to lower depressive symptoms

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in the future. This study may pave the way for developing or adapting interventions with a focus on religion or spirituality as a strategy for alcohol, harm reduction, and to prevent depression. It would also be interesting to measure the moderating role of being connected to God for alcohol use and depression. Thank you.

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Okay, so we have our.

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it senses your.

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It would be funny if it was so horrible. So we have our last presenter. Last, but not least, of course.

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Margaretera from the University tat autonoma. The Barcelona is going to be giving her talk healthy lifestyles, healing and holistic spirituality in contemporary times, and let me just note. It would be actually great if as soon as she's as Mar is done, maybe the presenters could come up and take a seat just because we won't have that much time, and might be easier if the presenters just immediately jump up here. So Levy. Great thanks.

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Thank you very much.

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Thank you very much I will appreciate if Galen lets me know when it's 5 min

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away. So thank you very much. Everyone for being here. Thank you also to Paul to Galen and Joanna for organizing this panel. It has been a pleasure to listen all to you, because I think that we have many work and reflections in common.

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What I'm going to do today today, I'm going to give you a very broad explanation of the research project that we are working. Now, this is a collective research project on spirituality, religion and health.

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And then I'm going to go to through 2 cases. One is the role of anti- vaccines. movement of the the role of the spirituality and antibiotics and movement, and the second one is on the role of spirituality. In hesitant oppositions towards chemotherapy in cancer treatments.

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So just to give you a very broad understanding what we are looking for. This is a four-year research project that we are developing in a Spain that has the main aim of to look. What's the role of religion and a spirituality in explaining religion or hesitation to our biomedical technologies. So with role do religion and a spirituality play in explaining why individuals in a way have

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positions of hesitancy or rejection to our biomedical technologies, we take 2 very different cases. On the one hand, we analyse far right and religious conservative groups that promote these courses against biomedical technologies. We have been doing some work there, for instance, analysing groups against Elsanazi laws, but also and against

412
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a genetic treatment at Rafael here could say a little bit more about it.

413
01:26:21.950 --> 01:26:35.559
But also we are looking at holistic spirituality. So our idea was to try to understand to what extent holistic spirituality can be a factor shaping individual and collective attitudes to our biomedical technologies.

414
01:26:35.890 --> 01:26:36.950
All right.

415
01:26:36.990 --> 01:26:55.070
starting an anchor or motivation was really an empirical one. So we we really win a growing role of both religion and a spirituality in mobilizing these courses in the public sphere against biomedical technologies. And we wanted to

416
01:26:55.070 --> 01:27:18.470
understand to what extent they have an impact. For instance, you can see this is the most kind of interesting picture that we took during the pandemic. This is a manifestation I don't know, if you might understand in English. But it's the link between meditation and demonstration. So this idea of generating health

417
01:27:18.470 --> 01:27:41.419
and and what this project brings about the. The. The novelty of the project, in a way is that it brings together the collective dimension and the individual dimension, and tries to bridge the gap between the research perspectives that's been working in this area does a lot of research about the collective dimension of these courses of moral entrepreneurs

418
01:27:41.420 --> 01:28:03.870
of ideas that are out there in the public fear about on religion and spirituality and biomedical technologies. But also there is some research on an individual perspective. For instance, there is all the survey research that analyse how individuals take a position towards biomedical technologies depending on their religious belief. And so

419
01:28:03.870 --> 01:28:13.260
and what we wanted to do with this project is to bring together these 2 perspectives. So to understand better, to what extent?

420
01:28:13.260 --> 01:28:36.500
Why do certain medical technologies become an issue for a specific religious group or spiritual groups, but also how they mobilise these discourse in the Babricosphere, what kind of political, religious alliance they develop in this field, but also how individuals negotiate, confront, and accept these narratives? In their own life. And how is this related? With lifestyle, choices, and

421
01:28:36.700 --> 01:28:53.890
and footc? We have taken a develop a mixed methods approach and we have checked how this is is is being developed in the in the public sphere through but big, big big data analysis, but also interviews and and relational ethnography.

422
01:28:54.650 --> 01:29:03.720
We have done some publications, and it is involved in a process of work on science, religion, and health, and see if you are interesting, then I can give you some more information.

423
01:29:03.800 --> 01:29:25.779
So going to the cases, and I'm going to be very fast, because Just the case of of of what role for holistic spirituality in shaping attitudes and practices towards biomedical technologies. Here what we wanted to ask is, does a spirituality has exploratory power. So it's a spirituality and more specifically, holistic spirituality.

424
01:29:26.180 --> 01:29:55.890
a factor that can help to explain attitudes. And we, we we departed from 2 big research survey research, the one from Dimaggio and colleagues where they analyze big survey on religion and science and the Us. And they say, Okay, if we want to understand how individuals position themselves about biomedical technologies, about science of Aids. We really need to take a street-walled into come because religious and secular.

425
01:29:55.950 --> 01:30:18.249
they have different views, and the spirituality emerge as a category that has an explanatory power, but also the work of Regent roles, but also Kosarkova, who are explicitly saying that the spirituality has become an exploratory factor for vaccine hesitancy. And it's interesting here that they talk about iteration uses skepticism. That means

426
01:30:18.250 --> 01:30:44.390
The people that, as is hesitant towards vaccines is not the same people as they hesitant towards climate change. So when we think about hesitancy, and we think about mistrust towards biomedical technologies. We really need to take into account that this mistrust or this distrust is not exactly the same in all cases, and a spirituality is explaining some type of this stress.

427
01:30:44.390 --> 01:31:13.270
but also the existing links between spirituality and the questioning of certain treatments have been already shown in some other context, for instance, in Argentina, by Gabriela Rosabel, and finally, this growth of the wellness industry, that fostering lifestyles that lead to a state of holistic health. And according to the global Wellness Institute report, this has increasingly grown during the pandemics and is taking a new.

428
01:31:13.270 --> 01:31:35.530
The methodological approach in this case is that we look at public discourses through Twitter Instagram analysis, but also interviews to chimoral entrepreneurs. We look at the medical field by doing interviews to biomedical, analystic doctors and an actors and 2 individual cancer related patients and vaccine hesitant in the world.

429
01:31:35.530 --> 01:31:59.439
We we have developed quite a lot. The the first 2 approaches the last one, the individuals we are still there. So this is a work in progress. I hope to give you more in the future. So what's about spirituality and vaccine? Hesitant as this is already published, and many of you already know I'm going to be so fast

430
01:31:59.490 --> 01:32:28.889
when we look at the Twitter conversation we realize that spirituality is not a factor of playing a role day. So antibiotics, movements. being really active in in in Twitter don't use a spreadsheet worldwide. Don't use spiritual arguments. We did this analysis, and we published together with Raphael, who is here, but also Jardine Morales, and on a cloud, and we clearly saw that most of the wars that appear in the Spanish Tweet, a sphere

431
01:32:28.890 --> 01:32:38.679
when we analyze antibiotics scores, it's God, and very far right-related wars.

432
01:32:38.680 --> 01:33:03.680
So we were a bit frustrated. And we said, Okay, maybe there's no antibiotics. spiritual discourse in the public of fear. We also analyze the main. Entrepreneurs of this discourse in Twitter, and clearly they were not spiritual, so our hypothesis was failed, or failing then, so what we we we also check the classical spiritual actors in the Twitter, and we realized that they were even more active

433
01:33:03.680 --> 01:33:06.390
before the pandemic. Then after the pandemic.

434
01:33:07.240 --> 01:33:22.010
But when we did the the qualitative field work and G difference. And Rafael was also very important. We realized that these actors are playing a role there, and when we went to the Madifa stations in the Plaza Cataluna, in the La Rambles, in Barcelona.

435
01:33:22.070 --> 01:33:49.629
Many of them were belonging to this 1 million, so we could clearly see that these segmented audiences in a way, or they they they express in different way. They use different mobilization, collective repertoires when it come to express the anti-vaccine role. Not so in this case spirituality was, was was having a place with some actors playing a role. But there's different

436
01:33:50.020 --> 01:34:13.350
walls. Not this far right and alternative spirituality, this spirituality and this classical conspiracy theories. They come together. Well, they say, sometimes I could. They come together, but they are not a scramble so they do not. they! They have different moral entrepreneurs, different millions, but also different aesthetics, which is very important for them. What I'm going to say now.

437
01:34:13.900 --> 01:34:22.089
So I guess that I have 3, 4 min going to the spirituality hesitancy towards cancer. 3 minus. And this was the most.

438
01:34:22.120 --> 01:34:26.829
a little bit more difficult case to take or to analyze.

439
01:34:27.060 --> 01:34:45.990
 because we wanted, we, we got some evidence that the spirituality and meditation and integrative medicines have a role or is seen as a factor that might generate rejections and hesitancy towards chemotherapy.

440
01:34:45.990 --> 01:35:13.180
And We were said this by some doctors, and we wanted to really know what was going on again we went on, twitter Quita. No, no, not traces of this debate, so there's no debate there. We went on Instagram, and we are there now with Charlie Morales, not the the sociologist that that really guy against like algorithms in big data and in in Instagram, we, we we are starting to see a little more of this, but we still analyzing.

441
01:35:13.200 --> 01:35:38.059
But we also went to the biomedical field. And we we did together. And this is with Rosa and Martinez Cuadras. We we it 25 interviews to health care, providers, patients, associations, oncology, units, and biomedical professional associations, in order to understand to what extent they perceive spirituality as being a factor shaping attitudes towards by chemotherapy.

442
01:35:38.480 --> 01:35:55.940
What we found out also this was very interesting as a sociologist of spirituality in order to understand to what extent there is an out-group definition of a spirituality so beyond sociologists of religions that we know what we talk about when we talk about the spirituality. Do they know it?

443
01:35:55.940 --> 01:36:20.120
The main findings were that there's a shared perception of an increase in the number of persons that are hesitant regarding the use of chemo, that there's usually no direct reception but negotiation. So the recreation is very low, but and that they are mostly woman and highly educated, and there's not a lack of information, but different reading of information. Sometimes they are even

444
01:36:20.120 --> 01:36:25.440
of a confidence in their own capacity to make judgment in regards of health.

445
01:36:25.460 --> 01:36:48.499
but when we analyze, doctors approach, they are not described as a spiritual. In our interviews, they said, these are the ones that are obsessed by health healthy food and issues. They involve a lot of ecological staff, they are followers of some well as influences. They are the ones that meditate and are into fasting. But we really realize that what we

446
01:36:48.600 --> 01:37:15.619
call spiritualistic spirituality in in, in sociology, when we go to doctors, they don't have this category, and they don't perceive them as being a spiritual. And when we directly ask them, are they a spirituality? spirituals, they said, I don't think this has anything to do with religion, or you mean like meditating. And so there was some of them that were able to capture the idea of a spirituality behind.

447
01:37:15.620 --> 01:37:27.589
And were 2 main approaches really related to what Geraldine has already said. The first one were the doctos that said, Okay, you need to certificate to work on

448
01:37:27.690 --> 01:37:51.079
this kind of Spiritual psychology! Or this idea that if you work emotionally in your stealth, and you are able to to to heal yourselves. Not so. but it was really and the and the second one. It was the idea of toxicity of that these people were seeing this. But yeah, finish. my conclusion, so.

449
01:37:51.080 --> 01:38:02.609
It is a spirituality. So we can say that. Can we say that the spirituality has an explanatory power in explaining hesitation and rejection towards

450
01:38:02.700 --> 01:38:10.430
chemo in the States that we are now. And this is a working progress. So we're still analyzing and generating data.

451
01:38:11.350 --> 01:38:36.350
We see that it's a Ninta Tweet intertwinning between the wellness, industry, the holistic villa and the cultural, the culture of health and Healthism. I can pronounce this work, but we cannot say that spirituality, the one making the difference. So it is an intertwing. It is a generation of an alliance between this world. But also we clearly see that the wellness culture is a

452
01:38:36.350 --> 01:38:41.940
regulated the space. And I'm sorry because I forgot to put bacon here. She's the one saying this.

453
01:38:41.940 --> 01:39:06.930
that in this quotation that she says that the wellness, culture relies heavily on personal testimonials andegal evidence, intuition and positive thinking. In this it is easy that personal truth get elevated our expert opinion. So in a way, this generates a scenario where it is easy that this spirituality plays a role in generating mistress, but also because the

454
01:39:06.930 --> 01:39:10.010
is a very unregulated space.

455
01:39:10.270 --> 01:39:29.109
What we identify is not spirituality, but what I would say, an atmosphere of a spirituality, a sensory regime generated by particular smells, colors, and words, and maybe food, landscapes, and music. And when when we ask to do what they identify, they use this kind of sensory regime in order to explain us

456
01:39:29.110 --> 01:39:52.570
who they perceive that these people are, but they never use the word spirituality. But there is a sensory regime in a way, and the last common who are them. And here this is really a work in, I think that we need to be really careful when we try to identify. Who are these people? Because we go from planetary health defenders that have very political discourses

457
01:39:52.590 --> 01:40:12.209
to conspiracy, act as classical conspiracy to Nu call to counter-cultural movements, or even just some freak people in a way, so as are describe it from outside. And and and I think that we need to really nuance our approach to spirituality, and the mic is, say, me finish. So thank you very much.

458
01:40:15.050 --> 01:40:17.150
thank you very much.

459
01:40:20.270 --> 01:40:21.360
This it

460
01:40:23.120 --> 01:40:32.349
can. We have the presenters come up because we don't have that much time, and we do want to get some time for questions. But just before we we

461
01:40:33.990 --> 01:40:35.650
just before we take question.

462
01:40:36.730 --> 01:40:38.549
they're walking on the

463
01:40:39.630 --> 01:40:41.560
yeah, the stage of death.

464
01:40:42.000 --> 01:41:11.560
 we actually have some distributed papers. And so one of the co-organizer Anna, who who wrote a tribute of paper, is going to just say a couple of things about it before we take questions. Just very, very briefly, I technically have a distributed paper in this session. So what I've done done. The timing's been good. I've just uploaded. It's an open access paper, so I can share it broadly. It's a paper we've just published in social compass myself, Andrew Singleton and Ruth Fitzpatrick

465
01:41:11.560 --> 01:41:34.910
on Spirituality Well-being and risks in Australia, so that explains the research we've done in this space so far. And the things that have made us create this spirituality and wellness research network. And it's also informing our current arc funded studies. So if you have any more questions, please come to me and please read the paper and you can circulate it because it is open access

466
01:41:40.390 --> 01:41:43.360
of the right.

467
01:41:49.950 --> 01:41:53.840
Okay, hang on a second. So the people on Zoom can hear you.

468
01:41:56.010 --> 01:42:08.120
Thank you. Thank you very much for the papers. Very interesting, and I think it's a question for all presenters. What is from your research output? What you found is the relationship between

469
01:42:08.140 --> 01:42:17.080
vaccine as it is, or she was mentioned in with chemotherapy at right and

470
01:42:17.150 --> 01:42:18.330
motherhood.

471
01:42:18.910 --> 01:42:29.870
So the gender factor was discussed by the third

472
01:42:30.570 --> 01:42:32.500
relationship between

473
01:42:32.580 --> 01:42:34.210
mother motherhood.

474
01:42:34.410 --> 01:42:35.110
I know

475
01:42:36.390 --> 01:42:37.170
that is.

476
01:42:41.430 --> 01:42:42.629
it's whiskey to.

477
01:42:48.850 --> 01:42:55.269
It's super risky to dog here. It's the wiring in the floor. I think

478
01:42:55.490 --> 01:43:19.699
so. I have no idea direct Iv. About it. What I know is that, for instance, in this spiritual movements, motherhood and a new approach to motherhood has a really clear role. For instance, one of the pictures I put a woman there. That's one of the main spiritual actors against vaccines in a she's a midwife.

479
01:43:20.060 --> 01:43:48.469
so I might be an agotic and maybe not have a a component. But I I think that there's something there. For instance, I recommend that Anna Fidel has an article about motherhood and holistic spirituality. And I think that it would say more in the case of chemo is breast cancer. So there's a lot of issues going on about gender feminity conceptions of the self, but it's too risky to say more, because I don't know but I would look.

480
01:43:48.470 --> 01:43:50.670
It's a

481
01:43:55.130 --> 01:44:11.070
I haven't personally done a study on this subject, but I am aware of other studies that have been done looking particularly at mothers and vaccine hesitancy. There are some conversation articles that came out, I think, last year in this space, and I'll have to look them up. But I'm happy to to share those with you once I find them.

482
01:44:12.990 --> 01:44:13.850
Thank you.

483
01:44:14.230 --> 01:44:15.930
Other questions.

484
01:44:20.470 --> 01:44:22.529
I feel like you have a question. Yeah.

485
01:44:22.860 --> 01:44:26.880
I can. I can feel it in your face when you went up to it. I was even raised here.

486
01:44:29.250 --> 01:44:32.130
and well, very interesting and

487
01:44:32.440 --> 01:44:37.990
presentations, and I have a question for Mar. Well, where you were presenting I was thinking about.

488
01:44:38.080 --> 01:44:42.920
and this intertwined, that you were talking about different aspects.

489
01:44:43.120 --> 01:44:46.760
about the hesitancy that not directly

490
01:44:46.840 --> 01:44:52.350
it is addressing and a spiritual issue, but hesitancy and mistrust in biomedicine.

491
01:44:52.570 --> 01:44:58.659
and how these other approaches to address health issues could also be challenging.

492
01:44:58.910 --> 01:45:06.170
not probably, in all the cases moving these biomedical interventions to a spiritual interventions, but

493
01:45:06.219 --> 01:45:10.810
shaping biomedicine in another way as well, like less harm.

494
01:45:10.860 --> 01:45:17.319
And I know that in other contexts, for example, the mistrust in vaccines were related on

495
01:45:17.379 --> 01:45:23.169
not thinking on spiritual options rather than biomedical, like a vaccine.

496
01:45:23.260 --> 01:45:30.009
but more towards questioning the aggressive, how everything can be

497
01:45:30.420 --> 01:45:38.160
for the body, and how they could be like working on a vaccine that is less harmful in the long term.

498
01:45:38.170 --> 01:45:49.630
So how these these intertwined that you are saying like with ecological aspects, and and thinking about welding from other perspectives, or thinking towards

499
01:45:49.990 --> 01:45:56.309
ways of intervening the body, but in a more helpful and healthy way.

500
01:45:56.450 --> 01:46:10.689
I don't know if that's something that you also find there that the spirituality can explain some of those different perspectives over these kind of treatments. But also it's taking us

501
01:46:10.740 --> 01:46:14.340
to other layers of explaining it. How to

502
01:46:14.780 --> 01:46:24.790
change and challenge the way biomedicine has been producing even pharmaceuticals. But scenes in some other products as well. I don't know if you have a comment regarding that.

503
01:46:26.250 --> 01:46:34.850
Thank you. It's difficult to to answer quickly. So I would say that you are right, so that there's

504
01:46:35.180 --> 01:47:02.069
here. There's many things going on for the one. And you have work on this and different types of of medicine, and also in different country cases, because, for instance, while in a Spain there is a hike division between biomedical approaches and complementary alternative integrative medicine in many other countries that they go together. And and what's interesting in our case. To analyze is how

505
01:47:02.070 --> 01:47:16.169
The idea of scientific evidence is question all the time, and it would never be justify in terms of spirituality. There's a philosophical behind. But the use of certain techniques and practices.

506
01:47:16.170 --> 01:47:33.729
It's it's it's built up on the idea of a scientific evidence. But how this scientific evidence is considered where the boundary is being placed. For instance, if it amopathy is in or is out, if a coupon tour is in us out, this is a kind of a very.

507
01:47:35.190 --> 01:47:39.810
a very nuanced thing, happening differently in different kind of context.

508
01:47:39.910 --> 01:47:55.590
But yeah, I don't know if I answered your question. And can I answer? I can I ask a question? If there is no one? I was going to help answer that question, but then you can ask a question

509
01:47:55.810 --> 01:48:06.160
just very briefly. I'm involved in another really amazing project that I'm not leading. It's being led by Hannah Gold from a University of Melbourne on Buddhism and death care.

510
01:48:06.190 --> 01:48:29.280
And I think the Death Care movement is a really interesting case. Study in terms of the kind of question that you are asking, because the natural death, care, movement, and the feminist death, care, movement are really reimagining death care. And then that's having a massive influence now on the broader death, care industry. So yeah, I think it goes 2 ways sometimes. And, Geraldine.

511
01:48:29.280 --> 01:48:36.759
at the beginning of your presentation you were saying that, too, in terms of spiritual care and feminist ethics of care involved in helping

512
01:48:36.760 --> 01:48:45.529
a more sort of holistic caring model away from a kind of cold by a medical model, so that two-way flow, I think, is like, super interesting. Yeah.

513
01:48:46.660 --> 01:48:57.520
just to note for those of you who want to take off, you can. But I think we're going to just push it to 1,230, just so that we can get more questions, and if they don't kick us out. Well, then, we might as well just take advantage of it.

514
01:48:59.480 --> 01:49:20.860
I have a question for Sumena. Thank you very much. I would like to know to what extent, as a feeling of community, of the people belonging to the art of living. If there is a feeling of that, we are belong to something, and this feeling has a transnational dimension, or is only from India. So could you tell more and and a bit about gender how gender plays around?

515
01:49:20.980 --> 01:49:21.850
Thank you

516
01:49:23.620 --> 01:49:44.539
thank you so much, Mar, for your question. So this feeling of community is very much present in the art of living, and this is actually the people are united by their faith in the Guru. So everyone who believes in this Guru. The Godman, Ravi Shankar! All of them consider themselves as Each other's sisters and brothers

517
01:49:44.540 --> 01:50:08.390
and So they say that we have our fellow brethren in this country, and they have a very strong sense of affiliation, and that is actually exacerbated by the use of social media. So social media plays a very important role in uniting these people, and they have plenty of groups, and they make sure that you are a part of those groups, and they'll keep sending. You follow up messages.

518
01:50:08.390 --> 01:50:31.900
and they have these on every Wednesday and Thursday they have these follow up weekly meet-ups, and if if you miss one, they'll again. So they make sure that all of us are united like whosoever is in this family, out of living family. So the sense of community is very much there. And with regard to gender, it's a very valid question, because all the other Nrms. In India

519
01:50:31.900 --> 01:50:56.679
they were mostly masculine, you know. for instance, starting with the the Rama Krishna Mission, one of the first innocence in India which viva! Kananda had established. So that was based on masculinity. Be a man. But okay, there there were others as well which were not very much masculine, but the shift from masculine definition he happened with. Of course, Rama Krishna himself was

520
01:50:56.680 --> 01:51:21.429
pretty feminine in the Ramakrishna mission, but this fellow sriishi ravishanker if you study his persona, his character his, you know body language, and the way he talks, he is very feminine, a feminine Very feminine. He is very feminine in a in a way that he actually talks very softly, and that has become a model. So he he talks in a very.

521
01:51:21.520 --> 01:51:43.319
very feminine way, and his body language at everything. So There is a shift from masculine to to eminent, which is embodied by the Guru himself, and also by the various teachers, and secondly, the concept of gender comes in because Again, we were having a discussion outside. So these people They recruit the housewives.

522
01:51:43.320 --> 01:52:07.499
and the housewives are very happy with the art of living, because they say that we've we've been doing so much for our family, and we don't get any recognition but these 2 h every day I give it to myself so. Women have come up in a very major role in a very major way, as teachers as well as as participants in the various programs

523
01:52:07.500 --> 01:52:23.059
of the community. So I think there's a shift from masculinity to feminine in terms of Both the personality of the Guru and as well as in terms of the shift from male teachers to female teachers of the art of living. Thank you.

524
01:52:24.960 --> 01:52:34.249
Thank you. Thank you for the panelists for the great panel, and I think this is a very good introduction for my question, because I was precisely going to to ask about masculinity.

525
01:52:34.350 --> 01:52:54.199
And since we know that in this field we often focus on middle class women. all the women but we do know, and I've been talking a lot with and about it that there's this sort of like burgeoning movement of the man's fear, and how men are also engaged in the masculinity, in spirituality.

526
01:52:54.210 --> 01:53:00.970
So it's more for all of you, but also particularly for Vivian and Karina and and Geraldine also

527
01:53:01.070 --> 01:53:13.780
how this masculinity interpolates with their work what they found in relation to that, what's happening? Because, again, I mean, it's this over focus on

528
01:53:13.800 --> 01:53:30.279
on women and on the case of Mom, I'm also interested. Since we're talking about biomedical technologies because most scientific work on medicine and psychologists is based on research on men.

529
01:53:30.320 --> 01:53:43.160
And, on the other hand, men don't take care of their health. I'm also very interesting to know about the protection. I mean, I'm participating in the projects. But I don't know what content of those interviews

530
01:53:43.260 --> 01:53:50.900
the relationship of men in annual integration to spirituality and biomedical technologies. And thank you.

531
01:54:05.640 --> 01:54:11.050
I can try to answer, although I have not really focused my research on this issue.

532
01:54:11.170 --> 01:54:37.459
But I've been very struck to observe that in the Co. Energetics approach that I am doing field work with, there are a lot of men, much more men, much yeah, much more men than women, which is really surprising, considering the unusually Yoga and all these kind of approaches, I attract much more women, except for men who try to find women. But but

533
01:54:37.740 --> 01:54:46.000
you are an exception, but I have no well, I don't have any

534
01:54:46.650 --> 01:55:11.529
naturalistic or verifying assumptions, but I have the impression that in this safe space where they are invited to express their emotions well. They are very attracted by this idea of being open or welcome to express their emotions, and among the emotions that are welcome. In the in this space that I have described

535
01:55:11.530 --> 01:55:19.359
there is anger, there is sadness, and there is also this idea that you can express your vulnerability.

536
01:55:19.370 --> 01:55:48.469
And I have the impression. This is really attractive to men. They have a space where they can just show themselves as they are. So we are very far from the spiritualities where you have to discipline yourself. Focus on yourself your inner self. It's it's much more free, cathartic and and welcome, and have observed many, many men crying during those stations, and very openly, and and they take each other warming in hugs, and and so forth, and so on.

537
01:55:48.470 --> 01:56:11.790
I wouldn't say that spirituality is is a affair, but maybe maybe we have to to go a bit deeper, deeper, just to see what kind of practices techniques, vision of the body of the emotions are transmitted in in these approaches and and maybe

538
01:56:11.930 --> 01:56:14.500
in relationship to the person that they attract.

539
01:56:18.130 --> 01:56:28.480
So in my case, I looked at university students I presented among 2 countries, but we looked at close to 10 different countries, including Spain.

540
01:56:28.700 --> 01:56:38.350
And what we found was that and this was pretty interesting, because in my theory was that

541
01:56:38.540 --> 01:56:48.129
women would be more spiritual, and would probably, if they were spiritual. Then they would drink, for example, as alcohol.

542
01:56:48.220 --> 01:56:50.530
It was the other way around

543
01:56:50.560 --> 01:57:07.760
women. There was no real relationship between alcohol and faith. It was more among men and men that they had. They were believers, that they had faith, whether it's religion or spiritual

544
01:57:07.910 --> 01:57:22.300
a day. Their drinking was less than compared to men that were not believers, and I thought that was interesting because it debunk what I was thinking.

545
01:57:22.560 --> 01:57:29.869
as far as mental health, for example, stress, depression, anxiety.

546
01:57:30.320 --> 01:57:45.379
Depending on the country. What I presented here is that there was really no significant differences between men and women, but there they are. I did see it. Other differences, for example, in Spain, where

547
01:57:45.610 --> 01:57:47.120
believers.

548
01:57:47.250 --> 01:58:04.269
men, believers was no big deal, I mean, whether they were believers or not. Really there, there wasn't a relationship with depression or anxiety. But among women, if they had this faith, then their levels of mental health were lower.

549
01:58:04.680 --> 01:58:14.870
So that's also interesting. So I need to keep looking and kind of like, understand more what that relationship is. I knew

550
01:58:15.140 --> 01:58:21.279
that there probably will find significant differences among genders. Gender differences.

551
01:58:21.460 --> 01:58:38.319
so it. I know that in general, being a religious individual, helps or improves or prevents mental health or alcohol, use behaviors. Right?

552
01:58:38.390 --> 01:58:43.539
so that that it's known. But there is a lot less

553
01:58:43.610 --> 01:58:51.599
information or research really looking at gender differences and a lot less looking in South America.

554
01:58:54.590 --> 01:59:22.009
I wonder if the issue isn't really belief, or or their their faith status, or whatever. But but it is a kind of a pro social quality to having a religious conviction that generally will mean you go to a church or a mosque or temple, and that involvement with other people. So I wonder why the why the interest in your case on faith and belief, and so forth. These kind of inner states, rather than on thinking about the way those inner states are actually correlated to involvement with other people.

555
01:59:23.210 --> 01:59:24.570
Well.

556
01:59:24.850 --> 01:59:37.990
what I, the the skill that I use it would have been interesting to kind of compare the spirituality right? Because it's really your connection directly with God versus the institution, which is the religion.

557
01:59:38.600 --> 01:59:53.970
But I didn't have enough data to be able to do that type of analysis. I mean, there weren't that many that I can, that I'm able to, that I was able to determine those differences. But, like you were saying, I think that

558
01:59:54.520 --> 02:00:13.870
there in Mike I believe that there's a huge difference between being a religious person compared to being an individual person, because if you are a spiritual person, then your relationship with God is more individualistic. If your religion, then you do have to belong to an institution and follow what the institution is telling you.

559
02:00:14.280 --> 02:00:20.020
And so that is something that I would really like to look in the future. I wasn't able to do it here.

560
02:00:20.500 --> 02:00:30.070
Yeah, okay, I think we are pretty much out of time. Unfortunately. So there is one more question here, but perhaps you could ask it after, unless it's a really, really like Haiku-like question.

561
02:00:30.500 --> 02:00:49.389
Just Yeah, Karen, you use the term spiritual believer, which I thought is very so. What you've just been talking about. But that idea of spirituality being part of the private sphere, it's almost like it doesn't have any cultural influence. And I guess Durkheim's belief that liberty is a fruit of regulation, that religion. Actually.

562
02:00:49.450 --> 02:01:07.999
he's beneficial by regulating behavior, that the passions and things like that. But just so, I guess, like just the idea of. Did did you find that hard to quantify that idea of a spiritual believer thinking that they're almost free from any cultural or background influence because it comes from within

563
02:01:08.010 --> 02:01:27.869
the private sphere. Yeah, definitely. And I. And and you see the skill that I use. It was very specific. Right? It's 6 questions about religions. This question about a spirituality. What I would love to do is what the rest of my colleagues did, which is really doing a qualitative study like an interview. So then

564
02:01:27.870 --> 02:01:38.429
ask the questions, what does really spirituality means to you? So then, to be able to have a better definition of what we're looking at and what we're using.

565
02:01:39.210 --> 02:01:43.049
Thank you very much. Please join me in. Thank you. The panelists. Thank my friends.