Observing and releasing the binds of the conditioned mind through Yoga Therapy and Meditation. ´Give me child until age seven and I will show you the man´ – Ignatius of Loyola The whole point and purpose of the art and science of Yoga and Yoga Therapy is to help each individual experience for themselves their own limitless access bliss. The very foundation of experiencing bliss exists first and foremost in the voluntary acceptance and responsibility of personal freedom. Nonetheless, the acceptance and utilization of this freedom is often limited by our social-cultural conditioning. It is hypothesized that until age seven we act like sponges to the world around us. We soak up all the information coming in with little to no filter and store what is recorded into our subconscious and unconscious -a place beyond conscious thought and language. This early unfiltered processing of information enables the human child to learn and adapt quickly to their physical and social environment. It is through this social conditioning that a child learns the necessary, highly complicated and subtle social cues that enable it to become accepted within its tribe. Due to the fact that human beings, especially children, are physically quite fragile, learning how to become socially accepted and supported within ones own tribe is fundamental to survival. As illustrated by the quote above, this early childhood programming goes deep and greatly influences our adult life. Yoga Therapy and psychology recognize that most of the time we are not even aware that this childhood programming is running in the background influencing every decision we make and action we take. On the positive side, thanks to this unconscious programming we are able to connect with other human beings with lighting, intuitive speed as our interactions are not weighed down with the slow and cumbersome processes of conscious thought telling us how to move, change our tone of voice or maneuver between various social settings. All these cues happen automatically. However, these same unconscious cues that we use to ameliorate and ease our way through our daily interactions can be can be manipulated to subvert our sovereignty as human beings and cause great harm and destruction. Experiments into the human psyche: How free are we? The world of behavioral psychology has many interesting and disturbing experiments demonstrating just how easily our perceived freedom can be hijacked by the right unconscious cue such as – authority, peer pressure and self-image. These unconscious cues have great power because they tap into the childhood fear of survival and abandonment. The following experiments demonstrate how fear can override logical thought patterns and without conscious awareness, move an individual to perpetuate inhumane, cruel and objectively incorrect behaviors and decisions. The Authority Cue: The Milgram Experiments Shortly after the trials of War II criminal Adolph Eichmann had begun, Stanley Milgram designed an experiment to explore Eichmann´s defense that he was just following orders. Beyond the walls of Yale University, he had an actor don a white lab coat and pretend like he was running an experiment on learning. Various volunteers came in to participate in the experiment with the promise of $4.50 as compensation for just showing up. The man in the white lab coat told the volunteer participants that their task was to shock another participant on the other side of a wall whenever they answered a question incorrectly. Unbeknownst to the volunteer participant giving the shock, the participant receiving the shock was a confederate in the experiment (they knew the true purpose of the experiment, knew what answers to give and faked their reactions to the administered shocks).You can watch videos of the experiment here: As the volunteer participant administered shocks to the confederate for wrong answers, it seemed innocent enough until the the volts increased bit by bit from 15 volts to 375 volts and the confederate began screaming in pain and protesting and begging for the participant to stop. This would go on until the volunteer participant finished with a shock of 450 volts and was met with silence to his questions – an indication that they had shocked the confederate participant to the point of death. Results: All participants asked the authority figure (the man in the lab coat) if they could stop. There is evidence that many tried to defy the orders in various creative ways. However less than 40% actually stopped before the shocks became fatal and a meta-analysis of the same experiment carried out in the USA and other countries, showed that the majority of participants (61-66%) continued the shocks to fatality. In some experiments it was as high as 91%. The participants who refused to administer the final shocks did not insist that the experiment be terminated and only went to check on the health of the apparent victim after requesting permission to leave. The Peer Pressure Cue: Asch Conformity Experiments “That intelligent, well-meaning, young people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern.” – Solomon Asch The Asch conformity experiments or the Asch paradigm were a series of studies developed in the 1950s. It consisted of groups of eight male college students where all but one of the participants were actors (or confederates) in the experiment. The actors knew the true aim of the experiment, but were introduced to the subject as other participants. Each student viewed a card with a line on it, followed by another with three lines labeled A, B, and C. One of these lines was the same as that on the first card, and the other two lines were clearly longer or shorter. Each participant was then asked to say aloud which line matched the length of that on the first card. The group was seated such that the real participant always responded last. Subjects completed 18 trials. Results: In the control group, with no pressure to conform to confederate actors, the error rate on the critical stimuli was less than 1%. However, when placed within the group of confederates who gave the
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