Where the Spirit Meets the Bone: Embodied Religiospiritual Cognition from an Attachment Viewpoint

Abstract

In this conceptual paper, we suggest that attachment theory is a viable framework for understanding key aspects of embodied religious and spiritual cognition, as seen in religious and spiritual metaphors, rituals, anthropomorphisms, and more. We also discuss embodied cognition as part of mystical experiences and other altered states of consciousness that may occur both within and outside of religious contexts. Therefore, religiospiritual cognition is introduced as an alternative term to religious cognition. We review the basic tenets of attachment theory and conceptually link embodied religiospiritual cognition to attachment-related processes. Finally, we conclude with directions for future research on embodied religiospiritual cognition from an attachment viewpoint. The field of psychedelic science may be especially promising for examining links between attachment and embodied religiospiritual cognition.

We argue in this paper that people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in relation to God and other spiritual entities are anchored in their interpersonal experiences. The relational cognition that develops from those experiences presumably plays a key mediating role. With “relational cognition”, we denote humans’ proclivity to seek interpersonal targets and to also imbue non-interpersonal aspects of perceived reality (e.g., nature, unseen others) with qualities that facilitate a sense of being interpersonally related to them. Beyond being neuronally based cognitive–affective representations, however, relational cognition is truly embodied at heart. The infant’s emerging relational cognition is sculpted by concrete sensorimotor and physical stimulation associated with receiving care. From then on and throughout life, we keep searching—almost unceasingly—for relational partners or objects, and we do so even when none appears to be visibly or audibly present. The imaginative leaps through which we reach what we search for remain fundamentally embodied. We use our hands to pray, we are “touched” by God, and we feel spiritual yearning in our hearts.

Here, we discuss the role of embodied cognition in religion and spirituality and argue that attachment theory provides a useful framework from which we can understand and study embodied religious and spiritual cognition. First, we provide a brief description of embodied religious and spiritual cognition, address the shortcomings of the term, and propose embodied religiospiritual cognition as an alternative term. Then, we briefly review the foundational assumptions of attachment theory, with the main focus on normative (species-typical) aspects of attachment. In a third section, we conceptually link embodied religiospiritual cognition to attachment-related processes, drawing on theories and research that have established attachment theory as a framework for understanding the individual’s relationship to God and other spiritual entities. Fourth and finally, we conclude and provide directions for future research on religiospiritual cognition from an attachment viewpoint. We acknowledge that the embodied nature of many attachment-related, religious, and spiritual matters has been strongly implied ever since Kirkpatrick’s (e.g., Kirkpatrick 1994, 2005) pioneering articulations of the attachment–religion connection. Rather than making entirely novel claims in this paper, we review the pertinent literature, with explicit attention to the embodied nature of the matters at hand, in the hope that this review will be didactically and heuristically valuable.

1. Embodied Religiospiritual Cognition

The term embodied cognition suggests that human thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are not simply the result of abstract mental activity and information processing but that these also depend on the experiences of the body and its physical position in the environment (e.g., Shapiro 2007; Varela et al. 1991; Wilson 2002). This approach has yielded a research literature that emphasizes the grounding of human mental processes in the interaction between the body and the environment, communicated through sensorimotor experiences.

Correspondingly, the study of embodied religious cognition moves beyond the notion of the mind/brain as the locus of religion and also emphasizes the important role of the physical body in experiences related to religion. Soliman et al. (2015) have argued that religion is often, especially in the field of psychology, viewed as stemming from the mind. Thereby, the role of the physical body in the development of religiosity has been comparatively understudied and remains far from well understood. However, when considering how prevalent physical rituals, bodily positions, and anthropomorphic ideas are in various religious practices, it is difficult to presume that religion simply belongs to the mind or the neuro-cognitive domain of the human experience.

Before proceeding with examples of embodied religious cognition in relation to physical rituals, bodily positions, and anthropomorphic ideas, we provide a short note on how we understand the relationship between mind and body. When discussing these concepts in terms of the mind (psychological) versus the body (physiological), we by no means attempt to imply or promote Cartesian (or substance) dualism. Humans are, in our understanding, not dualistic creatures with one mind and one separate body, where one entity somehow influences the other. Instead, we approach this matter from a neutral monism point of view, meaning the fundamental nature of reality is neither mind nor matter, but neutral, yet with both mind and body manifestations. William James (1890) paved the way for this metaphysical stance, which has since been embraced in the much later development of embodied cognition theory. James argued that psychology should be understood as embedded in both the physical body and the environment the body is positioned in. It is naturally beyond the scope of this paper to attempt to solve the mind–body problem, but we wish to clarify that a basic assumption behind the arguments ahead is that human experience is holistic and complex, thus not reducible to either mind or body. In our understanding, bodily experiences are not simply the result of preceding emotional states, nor are emotional states merely the expression of bodily experiences. We discuss religious, spiritual, and attachment experiences simply under the assumption that they are holistic and that embodiment is integral to pertinent cognitive processes.

1.1. Metaphors

In religious practice, embodiment is often present as metaphors, used both to convey religiously important ideas and to further establish and consolidate these in memory (Barsalou et al. 2005). One example of embodied religious metaphors is purity (or cleanliness). The physical act of baptizing in holy water is an obvious sacramental expression of this purity metaphor, but it turns out these metaphors are also embedded cognitively. In fact, individuals who are tasked with simply re-imagining previously committed immoral acts are triggered to clean their hands physically (Zhong and Liljenquist 2006). This urge can be so strong that it occupies the executive control system of the brain to such an extent that those who are not allowed to wash their hands show impaired performance on cognitive tasks (Kalanthroff et al. 2017) until they receive permission to clean themselves and, thereby, release the pressure placed on the executive system. The link between moral purity and bodily purity does, in other words, not simply lie in the sacraments or formalized expressions of religion but is also rooted in physical experience and behavior. Other examples of embodied religious metaphors are religious pilgrimages, where the physically traveling body is both a representation of and a means for spiritual transition, and the still body in meditation is a metaphor for the stillness of the mind (Barsalou et al. 2005).

1.2. Anthropomorphism

Humans are inherently relationally (interpersonally) motivated, and we are particularly prone to inventing relational partners or objects in situations of marked need. One means by which the relational motivation of humans is satisfied is via our strong proclivity for anthropomorphism, that is, of attributing human characteristics to non-human entities (Epley et al. 2007). Thus, the relational partners sought by humans are assumed to have agency, intentions, and other human properties that jointly facilitate the formation of an embodied sense of being related to them. Indeed, humans appear to have an innate and universal tendency to anthropomorphize (Shaman et al. 2018), and religious figures are no exception.

Although most believers would argue that God is non-human, it seems difficult for the human mind to not, at least implicitly, interpret God’s mind as human-like (e.g., Heiphetz et al. 2016). This is especially evident in children. As a consequence, much of the cognitive science of religion has focused on the relationship between developing social cognition (or mentalization) and children’s anthropomorphic understanding of religious concepts. This focus has been driven by hypotheses about social cognition and agency-detection as core cognitive mechanisms underlying humans’ representations of supernatural agents (e.g., Barrett 2004; Bering 2006; Bloom 2007; Boyer 2001).

Though children may not necessarily come up with explicit religious terms, such as God, their reasoning will nonetheless often be teleological and filled with other features of anthropomorphic thinking. For example, supernatural beings tend to be viewed as persons but with some minimal counterintuitive properties (e.g., Boyer 2001). Researchers have shown that when children reach the age where they comprehend that people may have false beliefs, they do not attribute the same false beliefs to God (e.g., Barrett et al. 2001). However, whereas most adults tend to anthropomorphize fictional beings (e.g., zombies) much more than God, children at these young ages attribute as many human-like properties to God as they do to such fictional beings (e.g., Shtulman 2008). These findings illustrate the common observation that early childhood conceptions of God are markedly concrete. For another example, children are particularly likely to describe and draw God as a person (Heller 1986).

Though anthropomorphism wanes somewhat with cognitive maturation and education, it remains a cognitive proclivity even among adults, which is expressed in their representations of God. Despite describing God as immaterial and omnipresent, adults implicitly tend to attribute the spatial limitations of the human body to God (e.g., Barrett and Keil 1996; Soliman et al. 2015). Anthropomorphic reasoning has also been linked to moral judgments of anthropomorphized non-human entities, where higher levels of anthropomorphizing correlate with higher trust in the agent and its moral regard (Waytz et al. 2010).

1.3. Rituals

Religious and spiritual rites and rituals are often aimed at fostering a deepened sense of the sacred. Both private and collective embodied rituals are essential to religion (Van Cappellen et al. 2021), and the personal faith and embodied experiences acquired through these behaviors can be very impactful not only on a religious or spiritual level. In addition to the emotional, social, and spiritual experiences gained when attending religious worship services, the physical and sensory aspects of attendance may also promote positive health benefits (Idler et al. 2009). Most rituals carry embodied metaphoric meaning, but some are also inherently physical in nature. One example is fasting, the deliberate abstention from foods and/or liquids for a designated time period. Fasting is a widely known aspect of Islamic tradition and is also present in Christianity, Judaism, Taoism, and Hinduism. Another example of a physical (and metaphoric) religious ritual is tonsure, the act of head-shaving as a sign of religious devotion. Rituals involving tonsure are practiced in various religious affiliations, such as in some Catholic and Orthodox churches, as well as in Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism.

Another shared aspect of rituals across several religions is the human embodiment of God carried out by a group leader, for example, during baptism or worship services. Embodying a spiritual or religious presence can demonstrate relevant expertise in the group. When interviewed, many worship leaders from varying denominational backgrounds stress the importance of this type of embodiment during worship, both in their interactions with the congregation and in their personal relationship with God (Abernethy et al. 2015). This type of embodiment is also apparent in spiritually informed approaches to psychotherapy, specifically in group therapy settings, where one person often embodies spirituality for others. By becoming a spiritual presence, the person carrying out the spiritual embodiment can demonstrate expertise in the group setting and become a leader for the other members of the group (Abernethy et al. 2019).

Another illustration of embodiment experienced in conjunction with spiritual practices is the trance states utilized in shamanism, historically practiced in indigenous and tribal societies. In shamanism, the embodiment technique of controlled and voluntary trance, an altered state of consciousness, is a central feature aimed at fostering a spiritual soul journey (Peters 1989). Many shamanic rituals also involve the embodiment of both human and non-human entities, where a sense of direct communication between living humans and their ancestors is enabled. When ancestor spirits are invited into the shamanic landscape, a body metamorphosis is thought to be created where humans and “other-than-humans” are brought together (Qu 2021). Thereby, the physical and non-physical become highly interrelated (Fotiou et al. 2017). The trance state of consciousness acquired in shamanic rituals is often supported by persistent drumming and may be achieved with or without the use of psychedelic substances. When comparing brain activity in shamanic practitioners in trance states to individuals experiencing psychedelically induced altered states of consciousness, they express overlapping phenomenal traits (Huels et al. 2021). Some shamanic rituals also include the utilization of psychedelic substances, which, besides further promoting altered states of consciousness, can yield embodied cognitive experiences as well. These substances, referred to as medicinal plants, can also be considered spiritual or sacramental entities themselves, meaning that consuming them signifies identification with the spirit (Peters 1989). This is not entirely unlike the consumption of wine and wafer during Christian communion, which is understood as consuming the holy spirit or as a symbol or metaphor for accepting the holy spirit.

Further, in recent decades, shamanic practices have spread outside of indigenous and tribal societies. Certain aspects of these ancient practices have also been adopted in other types of spirituality, such as the New Age movement (Kemp 2019) and the growing field of psychedelically assisted therapy (Pollan 2019). This is true both in terms of the ingestion of specific psychedelic substances and in terms of the physical aspects of rituals such as music and drumming. Although it might not be acknowledged enough (Fotiou 2020), shamanism has played a crucial role in the development of psychedelic science. Similarly, other types of embodied religious and spiritual practices have transferred from old wisdom traditions into the modern Western world, such as meditation and yoga, practiced by many who would not consider themselves religious in any traditional sense.

1.4. Position of the Body

During religious and spiritual practices, the position of the body can be of great importance, and the body posture represents an embodiment of the religious or spiritual experience in two ways: it both creates and expresses (Van Cappellen et al. 2021). One example is kneeling as a sign of submission. The exact positions vary with religious affiliation. For example, expansive upward postures and high arousal is common during Baptist worship, whereas Catholic worship is more associated with constricted downward positions and low arousal (Van Cappellen et al. 2021). Another example is how mudrās, Buddhist hand gestures, are performed during rituals to express different aspects of personal devotion. In addition to the gesture of worship, the mudrās include gestures of fearlessness, appeasement, concentration, earth-touching, and more (Buswell 2004).

However, it is not only the specific gesture or movement of the body that can illustrate religious and spiritual embodied cognition. Motionlessness, or stillness, of the body is another example that can be of equal importance. For example, the physical stillness of meditation practice is metaphorically implying the stillness of the mind but also carries the ability to calm the mind. Similarly, it is sometimes not only the position of the body in relation to itself that matters during religious practice. For some, it is also the orientation of the body in relation to the world, for example, in Islamic prayer, where it is crucial that the praying body faces the sacred site of Kaaba in Mecca.

1.5. Embodied Religiospiritual Cognition

The previous sections allude to how the term embodied religious cognition is sometimes limited and misleading. We have discussed several examples of embodied spiritual experiences and rituals that cannot always be classified as religious but that nonetheless closely resemble those of embodied religious experiences and rituals. As concepts, religion and spirituality certainly have fuzzy boundaries, and their definitions are consequently somewhat arbitrary and contain great variety. In general, “religious” refers to collective aspects associated with formalized, institutionalized religion, whereas “spirituality” often connotes the individual and subjective experiences of meaning-making and connecting to the transcendent (Pargament et al. 2013). Although religious and New-Age-related activities and beliefs can be independent and should sometimes be studied separately (Granqvist et al. 2007), both are associated with personal embodied spiritual experiences. Thus, these can also occur outside the context of organized religion, for example, in the form of mystical experiences or other altered states of consciousness sensed to be somehow related to the transcendent, the numinous, or ultimate reality. To avoid getting stuck in semantic ambiguities, we use the term “religiospiritual” in reference to the religious and/or spiritual forms of embodied cognition that are discussed throughout this paper.

2. Attachment

Attachment theory, founded by John Bowlby and further extended by Mary Ainsworth and others, describes the innate motivation of humans and other mammals to form strong, selective emotional bonds (attachments) with their caregivers. This motivation is understood as grounded in evolutionary selection pressures, which yield a psychological mechanism that Bowlby calls the “attachment system”. During childhood, the attachment system serves very basic biological functions as it aids in maintaining the appropriate proximity and care necessary for a caregiver to protect the child from clues to danger, which can be any internal or external factor that jeopardizes the child’s chances of survival. Thus, human infants form attachments to their caregivers or attachment figures. These bonds are facilitated through the development of specific demeanors of the child, known as attachment behaviors, the set goal of which is to obtain proximity to their attachment figures. Examples of attachment behaviors are approaching, reaching, smiling, and vocalizing, as well as crying and screaming (Bowlby 1973). Attachment behaviors are particularly evident during distress, such as when the child experiences fear and wariness. In these situations, the child will turn to the attachment figure for the comfort needed to decrease the negative arousal (Marvin et al. 2016), a tendency described by Ainsworth (1967) as the caregiver acting as a safe haven for the child. Although proximity seeking is most prominent in situations of danger or uncertainty, attachments are also maintained in the absence of threat, when the attachment figure functions as a secure base for the child’s exploration of the world (Bowlby 1973). In other words, proximity to, or contact with, the caregiver does not only comfort the child by decreasing fear or wariness but also provides a stable foundation that allows the child to safely explore the world and socialize with others (Marvin et al. 2016).

Notably, the process of developing and maintaining an attachment bond is highly dependent on bodily (sensory and physical) experiences. In most mammals, reciprocal, bond-forming behaviors between infant and caregiver are initiated immediately after labor. Such behaviors include eye-gazing, vocalizations, positive affective expressions, and touch. In humans, as in many other species, physical touch is of great importance for the facilitation and maintenance of emotional bonds (Feldman 2012). For the infant, the essential means of close communication with the attachment figure is through physical touch, which makes tactile sensory experiences crucial for the development of attachment. The tactile behaviors of the caregiver have been demonstrated to influence the infant’s attachment and socioemotional development also in the long term, and such behaviors support the development and maintenance of the caregiver’s affectional tie to the child (bonding) as well (Norholt 2020).

Oxytocin, often referred to as the “love hormone”, is highly relevant in human social affiliation and seems to play a key role in the connection between physical touch and attachment and bonding as it increases significantly during close contact between infants and their caregivers. Thus, skin-to-skin contact is correlated with oxytocin and also with cortisol levels in mothers, fathers, and preterm newborns (Vittner et al. 2019). In addition, the role of oxytocin in attachment bonding is not limited to infancy but has been shown to support the formation of pair and filial affectional bonds throughout life (Feldman 2012).

Attachment experiences of the young child are important not only for the immediate survival context but also for the child’s long-term socioemotional development. Bowlby (1973) proposed that one’s experiences with attachment figures become internalized into so-called internal working models (IWMs), or mental representations of self and others. Although malleable by later relational (interpersonal) experiences, these IWMs serve as filters, guiding expectations, interpretations, and behavioral inclinations in all close interpersonal relationships. This constitutes a lifespan facet of attachment theory, providing an explanation for why early attachment-related experiences may affect later interpersonal experiences, long after infancy and childhood.

Although IWMs have usually been conceptualized in mind/brain terms as cognitive–affective representations or nodes in an attachment-related neural network (e.g., Mikulincer and Shaver 2016), IWMs are undoubtedly also embodied at heart. They develop from sensorimotor experiences of being physically cared for in the first place and, from then on, filter information about what it means and how it feels to be dependent upon and in physical contact with others in interpersonal relationships. For example, close physical contact can be sensed as calming and comforting or as unsettling and frightening, depending in part on the history of one’s attachment-related experiences with caregivers and others.

In adulthood, one’s long-term romantic partner generally functions as the principal attachment figure (e.g., Fraley and Shaver 2000; Hazan and Shaver 1987; Trinke and Bartholomew 1997). The attachment bond in adult romantic relationships is also greatly facilitated through tactile and sensory experiences between lovers, with some examples being similar to those seen in child–parent bonds, such as prolonged eye contact, hugging, and hand-holding. However, nowhere is the embodied nature of relational experiences between lovers more readily seen than in sexual intercourse, when the boundaries between two bodies temporarily dissolve—one body enters the other, the bodies unite as one, with intense mutual pleasure and relational “glue” as a potential consequence. Naturally, the intimate exchanges between partners do not only serve the function of reproduction but also facilitate the formation of an attachment bond between the lovers (Zeifman and Hazan 2016).

Phenotypical resemblances between parental and romantic attachments are not limited to behaviors such as eye-gazing, touch, affective expressions, vocalization, and so on but extend to shared oxytocin-based mechanisms (Schneiderman et al. 2012) as well as the activation of similar brain regions (Acevedo et al. 2012). Just like during interactive behaviors in infant–caregiver bonding, oxytocin release is also associated with bonding and sexual behaviors in romantic relationships (e.g., climaxes with orgasm; Feldman et al. 2007; Schneiderman et al. 2012; Zeifman and Hazan 2016).

It should be apparent that the species-typical development of attachment and caregiving bonds subsumes several evolutionary mechanisms, and such bonds should be evolutionarily adaptive in at least two ways: they aid in protecting a child from natural dangers and increase the child’s functioning in the world by contributing to important knowledge about the child’s local world (e.g., via social learning; Granqvist 2021). In other words, attachments increase the chances of both survival and reproduction (Marvin et al. 2016). Pair-bond attachments in adulthood can also be considered evolutionarily beneficial in that they serve as an emotional glue that binds adult partners together and promote mutual investment in potential offspring, thus further contributing to gene survival and reproduction (Zeifman and Hazan 2016).

The attachment framework founded by Bowlby and discussed thus far mainly delineates species-typical processes of attachment, understood as a species-wide phenomenon. However, individual differences in attachment also occur, as described by Ainsworth et al. (1978). Individual differences in attachment patterns are believed to be caused largely by variations in experiences with attachment figures (Ainsworth et al. 1978). Children often develop secure attachment patterns when they have received sensitive care, including protection and comfort, from their attachment figures. Secure attachment is manifested in positive working models of the self as worthy of care and of others as reliable providers of care. Children who receive insensitive care may instead adapt to the context of negative attachment experiences (e.g., rejection) by developing insecure attachment, seen in negative working models of the self as unworthy of care and/or of others as unreliable, aberrant, or even frightening (Bowlby 1973).

Ainsworth (1985) and Bowlby (1969) both briefly mentioned the possibility of surrogate attachment objects for individuals who do not receive or have not received sufficiently sensitive caregiving from their attachment figures. This can explain, in part, why some children find their primary source of comfort in, and consequently create rigid bonds to, concrete objects such as blankets or pacifiers or even—via cognitive maturation—to abstract objects such as imaginary friends (Taylor 2001). This compensation strategy, where children with unsatisfied attachment systems direct their unmet needs to something other than their principal caregivers, is also noticeable in how some insecurely attached children rely more heavily on their peers and other adults outside their immediate family (e.g., Booth et al. 1998; Elicker et al. 1992). Importantly, one should not assume that the use of attachment surrogates halts when childhood ends. Although few adults use blankets and pacifiers as surrogate attachment objects, they may find other objects to regulate separation- or rejection-related threats or to find security, such as addictive substances, pets, or even smartphones (e.g., Keefer et al. 2014). Although not only insecurely attached individuals engage in these behaviors, the objects can be considered attachment surrogates when they are the preferred targets used to regulate distress, chosen over and above contact with a regular, human attachment figure in the individual’s life (Granqvist 2020).

A noteworthy case of attachment surrogacy that serves potentially reparative functions is psychotherapy. Indeed, insecure internal working models have the potential to be modified through relational experiences with a psychotherapist (Levy et al. 2018). Attachment has long been recognized as influencing therapeutic outcomes, and gains in attachment security during psychotherapy predict beneficial therapy outcomes. Additionally, Levy et al. (2018) presented meta-analytic findings indicating that individuals who experience low attachment security have better outcomes with therapy modalities that focus on close relationships and interpersonal interactions.

3. Embodied Religiospiritual Cognition and Attachment

Religion and spirituality provide additional potential targets that can be used as attachment surrogates, such as God or other spiritual entities (Granqvist and Kirkpatrick 2016). In support of this notion, sudden religious conversions are significantly related to experienced parental insensitivity during childhood (Granqvist and Kirkpatrick 2004). This relation has not only been seen with respect to institutionalized religion but also in the context of New Age spirituality. For example, estimates of parental rejection and role reversal have been found to correlate with higher scores on a New Age spirituality measure (Granqvist et al. 2007).

Embodied qualities of religiospiritual experiences and expressions share phenotypical properties with attachment relationships (Granqvist 2020; Kirkpatrick 2005). One example is how infants raise their arms to be picked up and attain closeness to their attachment figures, just as religious believers may do when they seek closeness to or communication with God. As noted, insecure attachments can create a demand for surrogate attachment objects, and religions can clearly provide a supply that meets this demand. For example, among adults who were not raised in religious homes, this has been seen in higher reports of religious beliefs amongst individuals with insecure attachment experiences (Granqvist 1998). In addition, insecure internal working models have the potential to be modified not just through psychotherapy but also through religiospiritual experiences (Granqvist 2020).

The religion-as-attachment model illustrates how the believer’s relationship with the divine can function psychologically as an attachment relationship, which, in turn, is connected to many aspects of religious beliefs, behaviors, and experiences (Granqvist 2020; Kirkpatrick 2005). Thus, God can become a source of comfort, representing both the secure base and safe haven aspects of an attachment figure. This is noticeable in both doctrinal religions (Paloutzian and Park 2013) and other types of religious and spiritual practices (Sahdra and Shaver 2013). Beyond this, attachment theory may provide a useful framework specifically to understand embodied religiospiritual cognition.

Indeed, religiospiritual experiences are usually relational (cf. interpersonal) and social. Sandage and Shults (2007) even argue that spirituality should be understood as inherently relational, and we concur that this is often the case. This is because social interactions are integral to spirituality, but also because spirituality itself denotes self-transcendence and a sense of connection—with the transcendent and others, and sometimes with nature or deeper layers of the self (e.g., Piedmont 1999). One example is how the relationships formed with spiritual mentors can have considerable effects on both the shaping of spirituality and psychosocial development. Beyond the very obvious embodied action of prayer (e.g., the folding of hands), ceremonies comprising collective sensorimotor activities are also common, such as group prayer, singing, kneeling, and dancing. Joint action and mimicry, or rather specifically the perceived level of achieved interpersonal synchrony, have been shown to positively correlate with feelings of interpersonal affiliation (Hove and Risen 2009) and can predict individual ratings of interactions as well as outcomes of future activities performed together (Marsh et al. 2009).

3.1. Mystical Experiences and Psychedelics

Mystical experiences are usually marked by self-dissolution and a profound sense of unity—with God, nature, or whatever is perceived as transcendent. Such inherently spiritual experiences are highly embodied, and there is mounting evidence for their therapeutic utility. For example, mystical experiences have been found to mediate, at least partially, the therapeutic effects of psychedelic therapy (Johnson et al. 2019). Mystical experiences are also quite common during the dosing sessions (e.g., ca 70% of participants in the Johns Hopkins studies reported mystical experiences; ibid.). Although debated, some even argue that the therapeutic utility of psychedelics is triggered specifically by mystical experiences rather than the substance itself (e.g., Yaden and Griffiths 2020). Whatever the case may be, the growing body of psychedelic science has concluded that psychedelically induced mystical experiences, perhaps in combination with spiritual practices, promote psychological functioning, including enduring prosocial attitudes and behaviors (Griffiths et al. 2018).

In addition, neural plasticity has been linked to the therapeutic effects of psychedelics (Aleksandrova and Phillips 2021) and has been proposed to also potentially support the revision of insecure working models of attachment (Cherniak et al. 2022). Psychedelically induced mystical experiences may thereby act as corrective attachment-related experiences. Interestingly, an overlap between psychedelic and meditative experiences has been observed in neural processes. More specifically, they both produce similar activity and connectivity processes of the default mode network that could explain the altered sense of time and space that the two practices share (Barrett and Griffiths 2018).

3.2. Interconnectedness

When discussing cleanliness and hand washing in a previous section, we noted that religiospiritual beliefs and practices can affect our executive functioning. Another example of this has been observed in terms of visual attention. Compared to atheists, Buddhists have been found to have a bias toward global aspects rather than local features of visual stimuli (Colzato et al. 2010), a phenomenon hypothesized to be the result of the importance of compassion to and mindful presence in the physical and social world within Buddhism. Religiospiritual practices may thus affect one’s perceived level of interconnectedness with the world at a very tangible, visual level. Interconnectedness, sometimes also referred to as holism, denotes the idea of an interrelation between all parts of a whole. The interdependence of humanity has been described as the glue that binds human societies together (Turner 1969) and the reason why humans care about each other, which is similar to the basic assumptions of attachment theory, that is, we possess evolved behavioral systems not just for seeking (the attachment system) but also for providing (the caregiving system) care when it is needed.

Finally, we note there is an interconnectedness among all the main concepts reviewed in this paper. Cognition, religiospiritual experiences, and attachment are all embodied and relational (cf. interpersonal). Attachment is initially attained and maintained through bodily experiences and can be sought in religiospiritual experiences and expressions, often via embodied relational cognition. However, embodied religiospiritual cognition should not be understood as belonging to or stemming from “the physical” as opposed to “the mental” or vice versa. That would be naively dualistic. Embodied cognition should instead be considered one example, with attachment another, of the blurred borders holding the physiological, psychological, and religiospiritual elements together.

4. Conclusions and Future Research Directions

Religiospiritual experiences are indeed embodied and relational. It is the glue of interconnectedness that binds these concepts, as well as us humans, together. In this paper, we have not only demonstrated examples of mind–body interconnectedness but have also addressed the crucial nature of this interconnectedness existing and acting in the social, relational worlds of attachment, religion, and spirituality. One could even argue that it is because we move and act in the external world and have to seek survival and reproduction that cognitive functions have developed in the first place (Marsh et al. 2009). Just like our attachments are embedded in and between our bodies, so are religious and spiritual experiences; this is where the spirit meets the bone.

The aim of this paper has not been to provide an exhaustive investigation of all potential aspects and levels of connection between embodied religiospiritual cognition and attachment but rather to sketch a framework for viewing and investigating these concepts that can be heuristically valuable for future research. Because many shared aspects between the concepts discussed in this paper are present in mystical experiences, psychedelic research may, in particular, be a promising area for further exploration of them. Intriguing topics for future studies include investigating the presence of and meanings attributed to embodied religiospiritual metaphors, rituals, and sensations among people undergoing psychedelic therapy. Such studies could provide new insights into the experiential components and meaning-making processes that are triggered by psychedelic therapy and be predictive of its clinical utility.

We have argued that attachment theory is a fitting conceptual framework for addressing embodied religiospiritual cognition, and others have similarly emphasized the heuristic potential of attachment theory for psychedelic science (Cherniak et al. 2022). Thus, attachment theory and measures could be used to predict and understand religiospiritual cognition among participants undergoing psychedelic therapy. Attachment security could be a useful concept to include in such studies, both as a predictor of variations in embodied religiospiritual cognition and as an outcome in its own right. A bold hypothesis to test is whether particular forms of religiospiritual cognition, as triggered by psychedelics, facilitate “earned security”—that is, increases in attachment security—following psychedelic therapy.

Religious meaning-making is one of the topics of this special issue that we—for the sake of narrative coherence—have largely set aside. Therefore, in closing, we also emphasize the characteristically embodied nature of religious meaning-making. Much of our central argumentation in this paper can easily be recast and explored as the production of religious meanings through embodied practices and attachment-related experiences (for a review of attachment and meaning-making, see Dewitte et al. 2019).