Gurmat Therapy a Consciousness-Based to Health: A Groundbreaking Presentation at the 
On May 8, 2025, a transformative step was taken in repositioning Guru Nanak’s teachings at the heart of global conversations on health and human flourishing. At the prestigious 9th Dr. Jasbir Singh Saini Sikh Studies Conference, hosted by the University of California, Riverside, Gurmat Therapy was presented as a consciousness-based, psycho-spiritual health framework grounded in the ontological wisdom of Guru Nanak.
This milestone marks a significant shift: the emergence of Sikh philosophy not simply as a religious system, but as a robust, integrative paradigm for understanding health, coherence, and the evolving science of consciousness.
Panel #6 – Gurmat-as-Therapy in an Age of Psychic Debilitation
The panel titled “Gurmat-as-Therapy in an Age of Psychic Debilitation” was chaired by Dr. Amritjit Singh, Langston Hughes Professor Emeritus at Ohio University, known for his decades of work bridging literary and cultural theory with lived human experience.
Panelists included:
Dr. Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair (University of Michigan), whose groundbreaking scholarship has opened vital academic space at the intersection of Sikh philosophy, Gurmat psychology, consciousness studies, and contemporary science.
Davinder Singh Panesar (Founder of Gurmat Therapy), who introduced a structured, holistic health framework rooted in 25+ years of psycho-spiritual teaching and direct application.
Dr. Manpreet Kaur Singh (Professor of Psychiatry, UC Davis), who contributed valuable insight into the intersections between Guru Nanak’s teachings and modern neuroscience, particularly around emotional regulation, childhood mood disorders, and mind-body integration.
Manvinder Kaur Gill (Doctoral Researcher, University of Michigan), who offered a grounded anthropological lens on trauma, addiction, and identity in diasporic Punjabi communities.
Health, Consciousness, and the Wisdom of Guru Nanak
The panel provided a rare and timely opportunity to recognise the profound psycho-spiritual, psychological, and consciousness-based teachings of Guru Nanak, brought into dialogue with cutting-edge developments in neuroscience. Rather than limiting health to symptom reduction or clinical categories, the conversation revealed a much broader understanding—one that sees human suffering as rooted in inner fragmentation and the healing process as a return to coherence and alignment with one’s deeper nature.
Scientific perspectives enriched this dialogue:
Psychophysiology highlighted the interdependence of mental states and physical health
Neuroplasticity affirmed the capacity of the brain to be shaped by ethical awareness and meditative practices
Trauma research supported the need for integrative models that include emotional meaning, cultural context, and existential orientation
The result was a compelling recognition that Guru Nanak’s teachings are not static religious doctrines, but an evolving framework for personal, emotional, and transpersonal health.
Presentation Highlights: The Gurmat Therapy Health Framework
Davinder Singh Panesar presented Gurmat Therapy as a consciousness-centered model of health that integrates personal, emotional, transpersonal, and existential dimensions of human experience. The framework is now delivered through a 2.5-year MSc program and supported by a growing body of research and practitioner training.
To date, the program has produced over 25 master’s-level dissertations, providing evidence across three key domains:
- Psychological & Physiological Health
Identity transformation and its impact on mental and physical health
Psychophysiological coherence and stress adaptation
Deconstruction and reconstitution of the egoic self (haumai)
Healing of emotional trauma, relational conflict, and low self-worth
- Transpersonal Health
Case studies of spiritual emergence, spiritual emergencies, and altered states of consciousness
First-person narratives of extraordinary experiences, including intuitive insight, expanded perception, and post-traumatic growth
An emerging transpersonal spectrum, evidenced through the Gurmat Therapy framework, aligned with the teachings of Guru Nanak—toward self-realisation, self-recognition and expanded states of Being
- Consciousness Studies
Explorations of consciousness as the foundational reality of health and human experience
Investigations into self-inquiry, meditative states, and ego-transcendence
Theoretical and experiential data bridging Gurmat ontology with contemporary consciousness science
Incoherence and the Restoration of Alignment
A central thesis presented was that many forms of suffering—psychological, emotional, and existential—are rooted in incoherence: a disconnection between one’s conditioned self and their deeper truth. Healing, from this perspective, is the process of reintegrating Being, restoring coherence across the mind-body-consciousness continuum.
Health is not the management of dysfunction—it is the realisation of one’s deepest coherence.
Academic Recognition and Organisational Excellence
The success of this presentation owes much to the visionary academic leadership of Professor Pashaura Singh, Distinguished Professor and Dr. J.S. Saini Endowed Chair in Sikh and Punjabi Studies. His decades of scholarship—Life and Work of Guru Arjan (OUP, 2006), The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies (2014), A Dictionary of Sikh Studies (Oxford, 2019), and The Sikh World (2023)—have laid the groundwork for bringing Sikh wisdom into interdisciplinary dialogue with global challenges.
We extend special recognition to Professor Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair, whose pioneering work has opened the academic and intellectual space for engaging Sikh philosophy as a rigorous ontological framework—relevant not only to religion but to psychology, health, and consciousness studies. His leadership in this emerging field is redefining the very purpose of Sikh Studies in the 21st century.
Thanks also to Kanwarpreet Singh and the exceptional organising team, whose dedication ensured an event of scholarly excellence, hospitality, and depth.
A Conscious Turn in Sikh and Health Studies
This presentation marks the emergence of a new paradigm: one that bridges Gurmat teachings, subjective experience, and emerging scientific insights. It challenges fragmented models of health and invites a return to wholeness—a wholeness that is lived, integrated, and realised through alignment with one’s true nature.
Health is coherence. Healing is alignment.
Guru Nanak’s teachings offer a living, conscious path to both.
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