2026-04-13: The Contemplative Sciences Center (CSC) Sensemaking Symposium 2025: Report.
From October 9–11, 2025, the University of Virginia’s Contemplative Sciences Center (CSC), UVA brought together artists, scientists, scholars, and contemplatives from across the world for the Sensemaking Symposium, a two-and-a-half-day immersion into how humans perceive, interpret, and create meaning in an age defined by complexity.
Hosted in the newly opened Contemplative Commons, the event dissolved traditional boundaries, merging research with lived experience. Through sound installations, musical performances, guided contemplations, and cross-disciplinary conversations, participants entered a space where inquiry became sensory, where knowledge was not only discussed but embodied.
The symposium framed sensemaking as both an inner and collective act, linking neuroscience and mysticism, technology and ritual, sound and silence. Across four thematic sessions, Sensemaking, Hearing, Seeing, and Extrasensory, presenters invited the audience to explore the full range of human perception.
Michael R. Sheehy – Director of Research, Contemplative Sciences Center (UVA)
Dr. Michael R. Sheehy delivered the opening keynote, Contemplative Technologies of Human Sensemaking. As Director of Research at the CSC and Research Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Sheehy bridges lived contemplative traditions, especially Tibetan Buddhism, with modern scientific inquiry. His work spans lucid dreaming, Dzogchen meditation, cognitive illusion, and the cultural ecologies of contemplative practice.
Old Dominion University – Mindfulness and Data Class Participants
The Mindfulness and Data class at Old Dominion University examines how contemplative practices intersect with data-driven ways of understanding the world. Under the guidance of Dr. Nicole Willock, students learn to connect inner awareness with analytical thinking by exploring how attention, emotion, and perception shape the interpretation of information. The course blends reflection, discussion, and hands-on engagement with technologies such as physiological sensors, EEG devices, and digital tracking tools. Through this interdisciplinary approach, students gain insight into how mindfulness can enhance critical thinking, empathy, and more ethical, human-centered uses of data.
As part of their learning journey, students from the class attended the Contemplative Science and Art Conference, where they experienced firsthand how contemplative practice, cutting-edge technology, and creative expression come together. By interacting with tools such as heart-rate monitors, EEG headsets, eye-tracking systems, and immersive art installations, students were able to connect classroom concepts with real-world applications and deepen their understanding of how science can illuminate the inner dimensions of human experience.
Session I – Sensemaking
Opening the symposium, this session explored how human perception, art, and science coalesce into new modes of understanding. Led by eco-artist Wolfgang Buttress, philosopher Jelena Markovic, Buddhist studies scholar James Gentry, and techno-artist David Glowacki, the session wove ecological awareness, embodied knowledge, and the aesthetics of complexity.
Moderated by Devin Zuckerman, the conversation grounded the symposium’s theme: that sensemaking is both analytical and aesthetic, bridging data and devotion, science and spirituality.
Wolfgang Buttress – Eco-Artist, United Kingdom
Dr. Wolfgang Buttress brought an artistic and ecological dimension to Session I: Sensemaking, illuminating how sound, light, and structure can translate the intelligence of the natural world into human experience. A celebrated British sculptor and installation artist, Buttress is internationally known for creating large-scale, data-driven works that merge art, science, and environment. His most renowned installation, The Hive, originally commissioned for the UK Pavilion at Expo 2015 and now a permanent piece at Kew Gardens, uses live sensor data from a real beehive to generate light and sound, allowing viewers to feel the hum of a living colony.
His recent UVA installation, NINFEO, continued this exploration by immersing participants in a responsive landscape of light and resonance. Through collaborations with scientists, architects, and musicians, Buttress transforms empirical data into sensorial art, revealing the hidden rhythms of ecosystems and reminding audiences that perception itself is an act of ecological relationship. His work stands as a meditation on interconnection, an artistic invitation to listen to the world’s subtle frequencies and rediscover the harmony between human sensemaking and the planet’s living pulse.
Jelena Marković – Philosopher, Université Grenoble Alpes, France
Philosopher Dr. Jelena Marković offered a deeply introspective counterpoint to the artistic and scientific discussions, inviting participants to reflect on how thought itself becomes embodied. A scholar whose work bridges philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and affective experience, Marković explores how attention, emotion, and grief transform the self and shape our perception of the world.
Currently a post-doctoral fellow at Université Grenoble Alpes and a member of the Centre for Philosophy of Memory, she examines transformative experiences, moments such as loss or wonder that reorganize our sense of being, and how affect biases attention and meaning-making. Her research also extends into performance and art-based philosophy, using creative forms to investigate cognition and embodiment. At the symposium, her contribution grounded the dialogue in phenomenology and emotional depth, revealing that sensemaking is not only a cognitive act but a lived process through which feeling, memory, and awareness co-construct reality.
James D. Gentry – Buddhist Studies Scholar, Stanford University
Dr. James D. Gentry offered a historical and contemplative lens on how meaning emerges through embodied ritual and sensory practice. An Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University and a leading scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, Gentry studies the material, ritual, and visual cultures that shape Buddhist experience. His acclaimed book, Power Objects in Tibetan Buddhism: The Life, Writings, and Legacy of Sokdokpa Lodrö Gyeltsen, explores how objects such as relics, amulets, and ritual implements become vehicles of perception and transformation.
His broader research investigates how sound, sight, and touch function as technologies of enlightenment within Himalayan traditions, and how these sensory frameworks can dialogue with contemporary understandings of consciousness and materiality. At the symposium, Gentry’s reflections bridged ancient contemplative knowledge and modern philosophical inquiry, reminding the audience that sensemaking, whether through ritual or research, is always an embodied and relational act of seeing, hearing, and touching the sacred in everyday life.
David Glowacki – Techno-Artist & Scientist, Intangible Realities Laboratory (Spain)
Dr. David Glowacki expanded the boundaries of perception by merging physics, philosophy, and mystical imagination. Founder of the Intangible Realities Laboratory (IRL), Glowacki is a scientist-artist whose work transforms data into immersive, contemplative experience. With a Ph.D. in molecular physics and a background spanning chemistry, literature, and philosophy, he creates multi-sensory VR installations that invite audiences to feel energy, form, and consciousness as living presences.
At the symposium, Glowacki spoke about his ongoing exploration of Tara, the Buddhist embodiment of compassion and luminous awareness, and how archetypes reveal the human capacity to perceive interconnection beyond the material. Through projects like Isness, which allows participants to merge as glowing fields of light in shared VR space, Glowacki bridges scientific and contemplative traditions, where atoms and awareness coexist in the same luminous field.
Session II – Hearing: Sound & Silence
Sound became the medium through which participants listened to the world anew. JoVia Armstrong drew on her expertise as a percussionist to show how rhythm and reverb shape emotion and meaning. Patrick Finan, a clinical psychologist, described how sonic vibration and music therapy alleviate pain and restore balance to the nervous system. Kythe Heller blended poetry, performance, and theology, while Adam Lobel invited stillness as the acoustic of awareness.
Moderated by sound artist Matthew Burtner, the panel revealed that hearing, whether through silence or resonance, is both a physical and contemplative act, tuning the self to the wider harmonics of life.
JoVia Armstrong – Percussionist, Composer & Assistant Professor of Music, University of Virginia
Dr. JoVia Armstrong transformed the symposium space into a living instrument, reminding us that sound is not merely heard, it is felt. A percussionist, composer, and sound artist from Detroit, Armstrong blends Afro-diasporic rhythmic traditions with modern electronic experimentation to explore the emotional and spatial dimensions of listening.
At the symposium, she spoke about the importance of reverb in musical composition, not just as an acoustic effect but as a metaphor for resonance, echo, and memory. In her words, reverb gives sound a body; it situates the listener within space and time, allowing emotion to linger like breath in a room.
Currently an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Virginia, Armstrong holds a Ph.D. in Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology from UC Irvine. Her performance ensemble, Eunoia Society, experiments with drones, loops, and multichannel environments to create immersive sonic meditations.
Through her work, she bridges rhythm and reflection, tradition and technology, inviting audiences to experience sound as a contemplative process of becoming aware of one’s own presence in the auditory world.
Patrick H. Finan – Clinical Pain Psychologist & Professor of Anesthesiology, University of Virginia
Dr. Patrick Finan invited listeners to consider sound as medicine, a bridge between psychology, physiology, and the inner landscape of pain. A clinical pain psychologist and Harold Carron Professor of Anesthesiology at the University of Virginia, Finan’s work explores how sleep, emotion, and reward systems shape the experience of chronic pain.
At the symposium, he discussed the healing potential of sound and music, describing how rhythm and resonance can modulate emotional states and neural activity, providing moments of relief and restoration.
Drawing from research in his lab, including fMRI, sensory testing, and ecological momentary assessment, Finan explained that music’s ability to soothe pain is grounded in psychophysiological synchronization: the body literally entrains to patterns of calm.
His talk framed listening as an act of empathy and self-regulation, suggesting that the future of pain management may rely not only on medication but on cultivating deep, attentive sonic relationships with one’s own body.
Kythe Heller – Interdisciplinary Artist, Poet & Scholar, Harvard University
Dr. Kythe Heller wove poetry, philosophy, and performance into a meditation on the spiritual and sensory dimensions of listening. An interdisciplinary artist and Doctor of Theology from Harvard University, Heller’s work bridges creative practice and contemplative inquiry, exploring how sound, silence, and language become conduits for transformation.
At the symposium, she reflected on the voice as a vehicle of revelation, tracing how resonance and vibration carry meaning beyond words, invoking both the mystical and the material. As founder and director of Vision Lab at Harvard Divinity School, Heller convenes artists, scientists, and contemplatives to explore imagination as a force that reshapes consciousness.
Her poetry collection Firebird and multimedia performances investigate illumination, grief, and transfiguration. Through her presence, Heller invited participants to experience silence not as emptiness but as a vibrant medium, a threshold where self and world meet in shared reverberation.
Adam Lobel – Contemplative Teacher, Ecophilosopher & Founder of 4F Regeneration
Dr. Adam Lobel invited participants to listen beyond the human, to tune into the soundscape of the Earth itself. A contemplative teacher, ecophilosopher, and founder of 4F Regeneration, Lobel works at the intersection of Buddhist practice, ecological awareness, and collective transformation.
He spoke about sound as a bridge between consciousness and the living world, encouraging listeners to recognize hearing as both an ethical and ecological act. Drawing on his background in Buddhist philosophy and decades of contemplative teaching, Lobel suggested that awareness practices can heal the rift between human perception and planetary systems.
His teachings blend meditation, ritual, and ecological activism, creating spaces for embodied reflection. In Charlottesville, his words rang like a dharma bell, reminding participants that every sound, from wind to breath to silence itself, is a pulse in the shared heartbeat of life.
Kelsey Johnson – Astronomer & Professor of Astronomy, University of Virginia
Dr. Kelsey Johnson guided participants to look outward, and inward, through the lens of the night sky. A renowned astronomer at the University of Virginia and founder of Dark Skies, Bright Kids!, she studies the birth of galaxies and the formation of stars hidden within cosmic dust.
Johnson spoke about the loss of the natural night sky due to light pollution, reminding the audience that the glow of cities is dimming humanity’s oldest connection to the cosmos. For millennia, humans oriented their stories, rhythms, and sense of humility by the stars.
She argued that regaining dark skies is both an ecological and contemplative act, an invitation to rediscover our place in the vastness of space. When we lose the stars, she reflected, we risk losing sight of our own smallness and wonder. Her talk blended scientific insight with existential reverence, making the night sky a mirror for meaning and fragility.
Andrew Holecek – Contemplative Teacher, Author & Scholar of Dream Yoga
Dr. Andrew Holecek invited participants to journey beyond ordinary perception, to explore the “luminous darkness” of the mind itself. A renowned teacher of Tibetan Buddhist meditation and lucid dreaming, Holecek has spent decades studying how awareness continues through waking, dreaming, and dying.
He spoke about the transformative power of darkness, drawing on Tibetan dark retreat practices where total darkness reveals the inner light of consciousness. He described how the night, both literal and psychological, can become a field for insight rather than fear, showing that seeing is not only optical but spiritual.
Author of works including Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep, Holecek emphasized that cultivating awareness in darkness dissolves boundaries between seer and seen. His reflections reminded the audience that light and darkness are partners in perception, and that embracing the unseen helps us see more clearly within.
Jesse Fleming – Media Artist & Assistant Professor of Emerging Media Arts, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
Dr. Jesse Fleming explored how technology, light, and presence shape perception. A filmmaker, media artist, and Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts, his work bridges consciousness studies, design, and immersive art.
Fleming spoke about how mediated seeing can become a contemplative practice, reflecting on how screens, reflections, and moving images influence attention and empathy. Drawing on projects such as The Shared Individual and Nuclei, he demonstrated how immersive environments can expand awareness rather than fragment it. His research asks what happens when the media stops entertaining and starts awakening, when pixels, photons, and human perception synchronize to reveal the subtle boundary between observer and observed. Fleming reframed “seeing” as participation in a living network of light, bodies, and consciousness.
Session IV – Extrasensory
The final session expanded perception beyond the five senses, merging science, spirituality, and technology. Mikey Siegel introduced bio-sensor experiences that transform heartbeats and breath into shared light and sound fields. Eve Ekman illuminated the emotional body as a sensory organ guiding compassion and resilience. Michael Lifshitz traced the neuroscience of hypnosis, meditation, and psychedelics to show how consciousness continually remakes reality. Oludamini Ogunnaike offered a luminous account of Sufi and Islamic practices in West Africa, where chant, rhythm, and beauty serve as portals to divine knowledge. Moderated by Casey Forgues, the discussion synthesized art, science, and spirituality into one realization: sensemaking begins where the measurable meets the mystical.
Mikey Siegel – Technologist & “Consciousness Hacker”, Stanford University
Dr. Mikey Siegel brought frontier-thinking to the table, showing how technology and collective physiology become tools of sense-making. A former robotics engineer (MIT Media Lab) now based at Stanford University and working with his initiative BioFluent Technologies, Siegel designs immersive systems (such as his renowned platform GroupFlow) that measure participants’ heart-rate and breath and convert these into shared audio-visual experiences.
At the symposium he spoke about how sense-making isn’t just a solo act of cognition, but a field phenomenon, a resonant space where bodies, devices, sounds and attention interweave. He urged us to ask not only what our technologies do, but who they enable us to become.
Eve Ekman – Contemplative Social Scientist & Emotion Researcher, University of California, Berkeley
Dr. Eve Ekman turned attention inward, guiding participants to consider emotion itself as a sensory organ, a compass for meaning and human connection. A contemplative social scientist and Senior Fellow at the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, Ekman’s research explores emotional awareness, empathy, and resilience.
She spoke about how emotions shape perception, emphasizing that sensemaking is not limited to intellect or sensation but is deeply informed by the body’s internal signals. Drawing from her work on the Atlas of Emotions with the Dalai Lama and her Cultivating Emotional Balance program, she illustrated how mindfulness and compassion training help individuals transform reactivity into clarity.
Her reflections revealed that emotional literacy is a contemplative technology, one that allows people to feel more deeply, connect more authentically, and perceive the subtle vibrations of the human heart. Ekman reminded participants that the future of awareness depends not only on sharper tools of observation but on gentler capacities for feeling.
Michael Lifshitz – Neuroscientist & Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, McGill University
Dr. Michael Lifshitz bridged neuroscience, anthropology, and contemplative practice to examine how the human mind constructs , and transcends , ordinary perception. An Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University and Director of the Psychedelics and Contemplation Lab, Lifshitz investigates how meditation, hypnosis, and psychedelics alter consciousness and the sense of self.
At the symposium, he spoke about how non-ordinary states of awareness reshape the boundaries of the senses, describing them as experiments in human possibility. Drawing from neuroimaging and ethnographic research, he explored how spiritual and contemplative experiences can transform the brain’s perception of agency and embodiment.
His talk emphasized that what we call “extrasensory” may not be supernatural at all, but an expanded form of sensemaking that includes the body, culture, and consciousness in continuous dialogue. Through this lens, Lifshitz offered a scientific and deeply human reminder: to understand the mind, we must study not just what it perceives, but how it learns to see itself.
Oludamini Ogunnaike – Associate Professor of African Religious Thought & Democracy, University of Virginia
Dr. Oludamini Ogunnaike explored how sensory experience and spiritual knowledge fuse in the Sufi and Islamic traditions of West Africa, inviting participants to listen for the hidden frequencies of sacred sound, poetry, and devotion. At the University of Virginia, he teaches African religious traditions, Islamic philosophy and art, and the intellectual history of Sufism and Ifá.
His research examines the aesthetic, philosophical, and sensory dimensions of West African Islamic and indigenous traditions, particularly how devotional recitations, mystical poetry, and ritual practices function as forms of sense-making. At the symposium he described how the chants of the Tijāniyya order, the rhythms of madīḥ poetry, and the oracular Ifá tradition reveal the senses as conduits of knowledge, not just passive receptors.
Through works such as Deep Knowledge (2020) and Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection (2020), he reframes sense-making as a poetic, embodied, and spiritual act, one in which the boundaries between listener, liturgy, and divine presence dissolve.
Conclusion – Integrating the Senses, Integrating the Self
The Contemplative Sciences Symposium revealed the power of interdisciplinary inquiry, where artists, scientists, philosophers, physicians, and contemplative practitioners came together to examine how humans perceive, interpret, and make meaning. Across sessions on hearing, seeing, extrasensory awareness, and the nature of sensemaking itself, the symposium showed that understanding the world requires more than intellect alone; it requires the full participation of the senses, the body, and the imagination. This gathering demonstrated how deeply interconnected the contemplative, scientific, and creative disciplines truly are, and how each contributes a vital perspective to the study of awareness and human experience.
A significant part of this success is also reflected in the structure and philosophy of Dr. Willock’s Mindfulness and Data course, which seamlessly integrates contemplative practice with physiological measurement, emotional awareness, and data-driven inquiry. In her classroom, students learn to read heart rate, breath, and affective signals not merely as metrics, but as reflections of lived, embodied processes. By guiding students to unite mindfulness with analytic rigor, Dr. Nicole creates a learning environment in which theory becomes experience and data becomes self-knowledge. Her approach shows that education can be contemplative, scientific, and personal all at once, inviting students to think critically, feel deeply, and cultivate attention as a tool for understanding.
The participation of her students in the Contemplative Sciences Symposium further exemplifies this integration. Engaging directly with leading scholars, artists, and contemplative researchers allowed them to witness interdisciplinary collaboration in action and to situate their own learning within a broader landscape of inquiry. Through both classroom practice and conference immersion, students experienced firsthand how mindfulness, physiology, art, culture, and neuroscience converge to expand human understanding. This synergy, between curriculum and community, between inner practice and academic exploration, highlights the transformative potential of contemplative education and the essential role it plays in shaping thoughtful, reflective, and compassionate learners.
Lawrence Supervisors’ Special Thanks:
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisors, Dr. Erika Frydenlund, Research Associate Professor at Old Dominion University and a member of the Storymodelers Lab; Dr. Krzysztof J. Rechowicz, Assistant Professor at Old Dominion University and a member of the Storymodelers Lab and the Virginia Digital Maritime Center (VDMC); and Dr. Sampath Jayarathna, Associate Professor at Old Dominion University and a member of the Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group and the NIRDSLab, for the continued opportunities they have afforded me to be part of impactful research and meaningful academic endeavors. Their guidance, support, and mentorship have been invaluable to my growth.
About the Author:
Lawrence Obiuwevwi is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science, a graduate research assistant with The Center for Secure and Intelligent Critical Systems (CSICS), and a proud student member The Web Science and Digital Libraries (WS-DL) Research Group, and NirdsLab at Old Dominion University.
Lawrence Obiuwevwi
Graduate Research Assistant
Virginia Modeling, Analysis, & Simulation Center
Department of Computer Science
Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529
Email: lobiu001@odu.edu
Web : lawobiu.com
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