ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at all the branches of our dynamic interdisciplinary model of ritual, to highlight its main points and review its most important elements. From the biological branch we have it that imagery, drumming, dancing, chanting, fasting, sleep deprivation, and ritual ordeals can reduce pain, improve autonomic nervous system balance, improve immune activity, and all tend to increase right-brain holistic, associative, and participatory processing. Rituals are generally constrained by universal cognitive processes such as intuitive physics, folk biology, concepts of mentality, essentialism, an equation of origins with essence, image schemata, force dynamics, force equal to effort equivalencies, origin equal essence equivalencies, conceptual blending, and use iconic and indexical symbolism over purely semantic symbolism. Ritual contributes to and reflects the cultural states. Finally, all the cultural data we have reviewed point to a strong participatory mode of thought in ritual by connecting participants with not only other aspects of themselves but with other participants in a culture.
