Body Posture and the Religious Altered State of Consciousness

Abstract

During the experimental induction of changed states of consciousness in student volunteers, the physical changes and experiential reports were somewhat comparable to those observed also in religious ritual, especially in Pentecostal services. There were a number of inconsistencies, however. I hypothesized that these might have arisen due to neglecting posture as a component. Subsequently, I conducted five series of experiments using postures from religious rituals from the ethnographic literature, as well as some neutral postures as controls. With the ritual postures, there was a striking agreement between the ethnographic data and the self-reports of experimental subjects. The method seems suited for investigating the religious altered state of consciousness without recourse to religious dogma.