From Cults In Our Midst, by Dr. Margaret Singer,
among persuasion techniques used by cults are:
HYPERVENTILATION
Continuous overbreathing causes a drop in the carbon dioxide level in the bloodstream, producing respiratory alkalosis. In its milder stages it produces dizziness or light-headedness. More prolonged overbreathing can cause panic, muscle cramps, and convulsions. Cults often have people do continuous loud shouting, chanting or singing to produce this state, which they reframe as having a spiritual experience
Continuous overbreathing causes a drop in the carbon dioxide level in the bloodstream, producing respiratory alkalosis. In its milder stages it produces dizziness or light-headedness. More prolonged overbreathing can cause panic, muscle cramps, and convulsions. Cults often have people do continuous loud shouting, chanting or singing to produce this state, which they reframe as having a spiritual experience
REPETITIVE MOTION
Constant swaying motions,
clapping or almost any repeated motion helps to alter a person's general state
of awareness. Dizziess can be produced by simple spinning or spin dancing,
prolonged swaying and dancing. Group leaders relabel the effects of these
motions as ecstasy or new levels of awareness.
As a teenager I would often get dizzy during Shacharis. And the
shukeling in some shuls, to borrow an image from Mark Twain, could power a city
if only someone would find a way to attach the bobbing upper bodies to a
generator.
The above techniques are not used in the frum world for
blatant manipulation in the way they’re used by cults, but it seems likely
these behaviors – prolonged chanting causing changed breathing patterns and repetitive
motion – evolved and became a standard part of davening for the same reasons
that cults urge them on their members. They are physiological means to produce real
experiences which can then be pointed to as experiential proof of the validity
of davening in particular and Judaism in general.
