"Osho's techniques are uncompromisingly radical, and they invite you to free
yourself from negative conditioning. The only commitment is to be open
and honest, to enjoy life, love oneself."
- Sunday Times

OSHO DYNAMIC MEDITATION- Music by Deuter

BENEFITS
The following technique is great for releasing pent-up emotions
and mental stress, including anger and frustration. It shatters any preconceptions you might have that meditation necessitates sitting in silence in the lotus posture. The expressive meditations start with the body and its physical activity.Movement allows for the cathartic release of tension from the body/mind and is a powerful way to transition into sitting or lying down in stillness and silence.

The Osho Dynamic is designed for those of us who enjoy a good physical workout. It is perfect for our hyped-up lives, having little to do with the stereotypical idea of bald-headed monks sitting for hours on cold stone floors contemplating holymatters. Its message is simple: release your mental, emotional, and physical stress so that you can become physically engaged with enjoying your life now. It is the most vigorous technique in this part of the book and is extremely powerful in cutting through any blocks in the body/mind, bringing you to your essential self. This technique was created by Osho. A special soundtrack, Osho Dynamic, was created for it and I particularly recommend this one because the drumming and music urge you on past the temptation to quit. If you can’t get hold of the CD, you can do just fine by setting a timer for the different stages. However, I do not recommend substituting any
other music.

The words dynamic and meditation used together present us with an interesting contradiction. Dynamic suggests tremendous effort, while meditation implies silence and no effort. Yet within this very contradiction lies the possibility of bringing ourselves
into balance.

This meditation has five stages. The first three—breathing, catharsis, and the Sufi mantra “Hoo!”—are designed to get us in touch with our vital energy source, our aliveness, our vibrancy. They allow for complete release and expression and should be
done with vigor, so that no energy is left static in you. The idea is to exhaust your outgoing energy.When the mind has no more energy for creating thoughts, dreams, and imaginings, when it is absolutely spent, you will find that you are in—deeply rooted within yourself, centered, at home. The fourth stage is silent witnessing. Coming on the heels of the first three stages, this silence is vital, alive, bubbling with life energy. It is a live silence that cannot be achieved by ordinary, rational effort. In the Zen tradition this is called effortless effort. The use of this contradictory term suggests that the process is dialectical, not linear. The energy of the earlier stages is not denied but absorbed, used. The fifth stage is celebration and dance.

This meditation is best done on an empty stomach and in the early morning. I recommend wearing a blindfold to help keep your eyes closed without effort. To free up the air passages I blow my nose before starting. You’ll need about sixty minutes.

STAGE ONE: BREATHING (TEN MINUTES)
If you have the CD, put it on and, standing with neck and shoulders relaxed, begin breathing rapidly through the nose, letting your breath be intense and chaotic. (If you don’t have the CD, I recommend that you do this without music.) Breathe as fast as you can while keeping the breaths deep—you should feel the breath deep in your lungs. Do this as totally as you possibly can. Keep your neck and shoulders relaxed.
Keep up this chaotic breathing. (Do not let it take on a rhythm, because then you might go on automatic pilot. Keeping it chaotic helps keep you in the present moment.) You can use your arms like a kind of bellows to help pumpmore energy through your chest and lungs, until you literally become the breathing. Once your energy is
moving, your bodywill begin tomove aswell. Let it happen.Use the movement to help you build up even more energy. Let your arms and body move naturally. This will help build the energy.Don’t let up, and don’t slow down, until the full ten minutes are up.

STAGE TWO: CATHARSIS (TEN MINUTES)
Let it all out. Just totally cut loose. Jump, laugh, scream, cry, shake, kick, punch, whatever your body feels like doing.Don’t hold back. Keep your whole body moving and the sounds coming. Don’t let your mind interfere; just stay in your body. Go mad.

STAGE THREE: HOO! (TEN MINUTES)
With shoulders and neck relaxed, raise both arms as high as you can without locking your elbows.With raised arms, jump up and down shouting the mantra “Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!” as deeply as possible, from the depths of your belly. Each time you land on the flats of your feet (making sure your heels touch the ground), let the sound hammer deep into your center. Give it all you’ve got. Exhaust yourself completely.

STAGE FOUR: SILENT WITNESSING (FIFTEEN MINUTES)
Freeze! Stop wherever you are and in whatever position you find yourself.Don’t arrange the body in anyway.A cough, a movement, anything, dissipates the energy flow, and the effort is lost. Be a witness to everything that is happening to you.

STAGE FIVE: DANCE (FIFTEEN MINUTES)
Spend fifteen minutes celebrating your aliveness. Dance, expressing whatever is there. Bring this energy with you into your day. With this technique, you want to open yourself as widely as possible for the breath of life; take in as much of it as you can. Stop philosophizing, stop dreaming of the day when you’ll really start living. Do it now! Live!

Whenever I do the Osho Dynamic, I am filled with exhilaration. The deep, fast breathing dissolves the cemented patterns in my psyche, making everything move and tingle, and charges my body with oxygen and life energy. Ah, yes—this is great! If I become halfhearted about it, I shift to a higher gear.Within minutes I have reached a speed that leaves my thoughts panting behind. That is one of the purposes of the exercise: the mind is blown away. But fear not, it will come back! All I hear now is a staccato of massive out-breaths. I realize that even more is possible (more is always possible), and I breathe more deeply yet. I am thinking nothing, there is only breathing— deeper, faster, madder. It’s totally far-out. I am simply in it, and it
is fun to really go for it.

When the catharsis stage starts, what a relief it is to express all my pent-up emotions, unburden my mind, and allow my body to release all its tension. Urging myself on, I discover deeply buried layers of myself, opened up by the first stage, that need expression. Long-forgotten anger, hurts, and disappointments can surface and be thrown out. All kinds of old emotional baggage can be released from my body/mind. By the third stage, I feel cleaned out and ready to fully shout the mantra “Hoo!,” the sound arising loud and strong from deep withinmy belly. As the sound resonates
through my whole body, I feel it continuing the work of the first two stages, shedding even more layers of tension.My body/mind starts to feel like hollow bamboo, preparing through this exercise to receive the silence of the fourth stage.

Suddenly I hear a voice shout “stop” (if you don’t have the CD, set a timer to ring to start the fourth stage). I freeze and listen to the silence. This is the fourth stage. I sink into a profound depth of stillness. After all the noise and effort I stand stock-still, just
breathing, being, enjoying, witnessing. This is it—the moment I have been waiting for. It is such a joy to discover this vibrant silence pervading my body and simply to watch.
For the dance of the fifth stage, I have plenty to celebrate. For one thing, one more Osho Dynamic is accomplished. I celebrate myself, that I have been willing to put such effort into my journey of self-discovery, releasing my tension and getting in touch with
my creativity and enjoyment of life. I feel full of infinite possibilities, like an open sky.

The Osho Dynamic is a good method for anyone who feels stressed-out, neurotic, confused. It is an inner and outer workout that hews a new path through the jungle of our overly speedy minds.Many people like learning how to teach it, introducing it as
an early-morning class at their local gym or at their place of work. As you well know, the more effort you put into something, the greater the payoff is. If you do this technique for at least twentyone days in a row, you will be richly rewarded.

Excerpted from Laughter, Tears, Silence: Expressive Meditations to Calm Your Mind and Open Your Heart. Copyright ©Pragito Dove, 2010. Reprint with Byline below.

Byline:
Pragito Dove is author of Laughter, Tears, Silence: Expressive Meditations to Calm Your Mind and Open Your Heart (2010) and a meditation master, keynote speaker, and trainer. Visit Pragito's website at www.pragito.com, email her at info@pragito.com or call 415.925.9533 for more information on books,cds, trainings, and workshops and to book her services.