Sensing the Darkness: Dark Therapy, Authority, and Spiritual Experience
A recently published qualitative study by Jana Nenadalová explores Dark therapy, an alternative spiritual practice combining prolonged sensory deprivation with guidance from an authority figure, to understand how religious and spiritual experiences are induced. Drawing on predictive processing theory, the research shows that complete darkness can trigger intense psychological and perceptual phenomena, especially when participants feel a sense of control and bring expectations or prior beliefs into the experience.
