AMRIT SADHANA, editor Osho Times International, explains the technique of the Osho Dynamic meditation
There were 400-plus people at the meditation event. The first ray of the morning sun saw them breathing, screaming, jumping, shouting their guts out in the huge oval shaped marble auditorium, and then they immersed themselves in pin drop silence. This was the Osho Dynamic Meditation I was facilitating in Mehsana, Gujarat. My eyes closed and for a moment I thought everybody had disappeared. I opened my eyes to a breathtaking view of four hundred people standing still like statues. After an hour of this vigorous exercise and meditation, people were moving out blissfully recharged. In that elevated state if someone asked them about depression, they would say, “Depression? what’s that?”
We often hear the word ‘depression’. Psychiatrists and researchers are trying to investigate depression. They are working hard on finding a solution to the epidemic wave of depression. According to the World Health Organisation — 350 million people worldwide suffer from depression. It is said to be a leading cause of disability. The new branch called Translational Psychiatry is trying to combine meditation and aerobic exercises to reduce depression and rumination while enhancing synchronised brain activity. They call it ‘mental and physical’ (MAP) training.
An article in the New York Times mentions that depression is characterised, in part, by an inability to stop dwelling on gloomy thoughts and unhappy memories from the past. Researchers suspect that this thinking pattern, known as rumination, may involve two areas of the brain in particular: the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that helps to control attention and focus, and the hippocampus, which is critical for learning and memory. Interestingly, meditation and exercise affect those same portions of the brain in varying ways.
Once someone asked Osho if dynamic meditation could cure depression. According to Osho, to be a sufferer of depression simply means he has repressed too much. Depression is nothing but repression. He has not been allowed to express. Dynamic meditation is expression. In expressing oneself, in ‘catharting’ all that has been repressed in one’s unconscious, one will be unburdened and will become sane and healthy. Everybody needs some way to vent anger, greed and jealousies. It is like sitting on a volcano where the volcano can erupt any moment. If catharsis is allowed — and that’s what dynamic meditation is all about — the volcano will disappear. You will become sane.
This meditation is a fast, intense and thorough way to break old, ingrained patterns in the body-mind that keep one imprisoned in the past, and to experience the freedom, the witnessing, silence and peace that are hidden behind these prison walls. The meditation is meant to be done in the early morning, when as Osho explains it, “the whole of nature becomes alive, the night has gone, the sun is coming up and everything becomes conscious and alert.”
Osho Dynamic meditation (TM) lasts one hour and has five stages. Keep your eyes closed throughout, using a blindfold if necessary.
- First Stage (10 minutes): Breathing chaotically through the nose, let breathing be intense, deep, fast, without rhythm and concentrating always on the exhalation. The body will take care of the inhalation. The breath should move deeply into the lungs. Do this as fast and as hard as you possibly can. Use your natural body movements to help you to build up your energy.
- Second Stage (10 minutes): EXPLODE! Let go of everything that needs to be thrown out. Follow your body. Give your body freedom to express whatever is there. Go totally mad. Scream, shout, cry, jump, kick, shake, dance, sing, laugh; throw yourself around. Hold nothing back; keep your whole body moving. A little acting often helps to get you started. Never allow your mind to interfere with what is happening. Consciously go mad.
- Third Stage (10 minutes): With arms raised high above your head, jump up and down shouting the mantra, “Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!” as deeply as possible. Give all you have; exhaust yourself completely.
- Fourth Stage (15 minutes): Stop! Freeze wherever you are, in whatever position you find yourself. Don’t arrange the body in any way.
- Fifth Stage (15 minutes): Celebrate! With music and dance express whatsoever is there. Carry your aliveness with you throughout the day.
The author is a management team member of Osho International Meditation Resort