“I never tell people to begin with just sitting. With a mad dance, you begin to be aware of a silent point within you; with sitting silently, you begin to be aware of madness” – Osho.
The first time I tried Dynamic Meditation it was in Mysore, South India. There were about 20 of us. We were all students of B. Nagakumar (pictured below) who runs the Mumuksha Centre for Transformation in Mysore and was accepted into the order of Osho sannyasins. The meditation space was a traditionally constructed large mud hut (also pictured below). No words of ample meaning can describe the powerful experience.
Osho’s Dynamic Meditation is a physical, intense and effective way to balance your emotions and energies. Osho believed that cathartic methods were necessary as it is difficult for modern people to just close their eyes and sit and enter meditation.
There are videos on YouTube you can watch and/or CD’s you can purchase to take you through each of the five stages to this meditation. It can be done alone or in groups. If there are a group of you then you should close your eyes and be oblivious of the others (and keep a safe distance!) The meditation is best done in the early morning.
This meditation lasts one hour and has five stages. Each stage has a different music (except for the 4th stage where you simply observe the silence). The first stage consists of chaotic breathing for ten minutes. This is hard work. Especially if you breath correctly, i.e. with so much energy that the room shakes! In the second stage you vocalise your emotions and go completely insane for ten minutes. I wonder if by voluntarily losing your mind, it will prevent actual (involuntary) madness later on in life?
In the third stage you jump up and down for ten minutes whilst chanting “WHO!” – being careful to keep the legs straight when jumping. The resultant shock waves release energy festering in the hips and help balance emotions. Again this is hard work. Remember it’s a marathon not a sprint so don’t be over enthusiastic (ten minutes can feel like a long time!)
In the fourth stage you freeze where you are and observe the silence for fifteen minutes. After so much physical work it is easier to be a silent observer to your thoughts – to watch them slow down and hopefully catch a glimpse of blissful silence.
In the final stage you dance for fifteen minutes. It’s a welcome and necessary warm-down.
Meditation is the proven way for a person to transform their consciousness and take a truly spiritual path. Nothing else can take you from beyond the day to day thinking mind and into the realm of universal awareness.
In the words of Osho:
“No therapy can make anybody enlightened. The best any therapy can do is to remove the barriers to meditation, and then it is up to the grace of Existence to bring about the shift in consciousness called ‘enlightenment’. Most therapies know nothing of mediation or consciousness, they work primarily to restore wounded dysfunctional personalities. Most therapists are not meditators and they know nothing of the vast potential for human awakening.”
Damian Cadman-Jones is an authorised teacher of Prana Vashya Yoga™.
Tel: 0777-900-1896
Email: damiancadman-jones@gmail.com