Osho’s Dynamic Meditation: addressing Trauma?
(first published in Osho Viha)
Comment on Osho’s Dynamic Meditation:
The Processes in the Brain and the Benefits
by Anando Würzburger (aka “Hara-Anando”)
As a lover of Osho’s Dynamic Meditation, I was perplexed to hear that practicing it could be re-traumatizing.
Re-traumatizing is, simply speaking, the reactivation of connections of synapses in the brain that were once created during an overwhelming experience in the past. Whether that experience is successfully “digested” or a post-traumatic disorder is developed depends on how we are able to deal with the situation at the time and possibly complete the overwhelming event biologically within our nervous system and the brain. We were taught that failing to complete creates a problem in the nervous system as well as in the psyche.
So I asked myself: When we engage in Dynamic, especially in the second, the cathartic stage of the meditation, do we merely re-enact the emotions, scenes, sensations in the body – images and meanings that we had with an overwhelming situation in the past – or do we dissolve and complete something? By re-enacting we would simply strengthen the old connections in the brain and thus strengthen the neurological circuits, e.g. the feeling of helplessness, frustration, anger, or pain, as being part of our psyche.
The answer, in my opinion, lies in how we “do” the meditation technique. Dynamic is, as Osho puts it, a cathartic meditation. And here can be the first misunderstanding, which could lead to an unhelpful way of performing the meditation. When we hear of catharsis we think of emotional expression as we know it from bioenergetic therapy or other therapies working with emotional expression. This already creates an image in our mind that directs our body during the meditation.
This image or goal is a product of the logically thinking and calculating left side of the neocortex. Because the left hemisphere is the part of the brain where past and future are located, we tend to repeat what we have once experienced in the past. In that way we re-strengthen the past experience.
So when we approach Dynamic with our therapy-oriented concepts, it is easy to go wrong and hinder
what could be healing. According to Osho and also to the theory of Somatic Experiencing, we need to follow the intelligence of the body. This means that we need to listen to it and let it develop the movements by itself. The process that can heal and clean the body can only happen when we deeply understand how to follow the movements that arise from the core of our body. It is a shift from doing and moving initiated by the left side of the neo-cortex (the “doing and going-for-it” side), to learning how to follow the movements of the body.
Instead of forcing our body to perform according to our ideas and images, our system can learn to listen and follow its own self-regulative, healing capacities. The body knows how to heal itself. The residues of trauma are mainly a consequence of incomplete processes, which means that the body is stuck in the freezing response to an event that was overwhelming to our nervous system at the time of experiencing it. Because of this response the nervous system retains a great amount of activation. Through learning to follow the movements of the body, we allow it to complete the instinctual reactions that the body would have liked to have done and to release the energy that is locked up in the system. At the time of the incident, for whatever reasons, we could not allow the body to complete itself and release the charge in the nervous system.
In the past situation our conditioned minds may not have allowed us to act in an “uncivilized” way, or other circumstances may have prevented the body from completing all reactions and come back to a relaxed natural state. In some forms of bodywork this process is called unwinding, which happens in the second stage of Dynamic.
Biological completion is based on the inherent intelligence of the body to regulate and heal itself.
The neo-cortex, or as Bas Kast calls it, the Social Me, with its rules of how to be and its ideals and moralities, does not allow that natural intelligence to function properly. This is because the Social Me is not oriented by the needs of the body but by the norms of what was “okay” in the society and the group that surrounded us as we grew up. Then there is what Bas Kast calls the Experiential Me, which is rooted in what we call the gut feeling in the belly. In Japanese belly means “Hara” and is translated as “the source of life,” which is the root of our life energy in the belly. Recent research has discovered a second brain in the belly, which is connected to the brainstem or reptilian brain. Together they constitute the oldest part of the human brain and are the root of our instinctual and self-regulative reactions.
If we connect to the second brain, or the hara, we can more easily find what we need and what is good for us.
Or in other words: In the belly we know what we want and need, and we have the drive and force to go for it. This centre is, in many ways, activated by Dynamic, when we bring right attention to it. Connecting to the life source brings healing from the bottom up, and in this way of reconnecting to our natural feelings of ourselves a lot of confusions in the mind can clear up. By bringing our awareness into the centre in the belly through jumping, sensing the energy of the Earth moving up to meet our feet, and feeling the impact of the sound “hoo” in the belly we wake up the hara center in the lower belly during the third stage. When we listen to the instructions for a meditation we tend to listen with the left hemisphere of the neocortex, our logical, goal-oriented side, and try to transfer the instructions we hear into the body. This is then reflected in each stage, as we perform according to the images previously created in our minds.
It is important to become aware of this habit of the mind and to develop a broader understanding so that the healing capacity that lies in the self-regulative movements, the unwinding that originates from the inner intelligence of the body, can happen. We need to find a balance between being “total,” as the instructions say, and allowing the body to relax and not overdo and overcharge. Overcharge encourages re-enacting instead of unwinding past trauma.
When our nervous system goes into a state of being overwhelmed we usually lose the feeling for being connected to the ground, and the energy moves up. That is what usually happens in traumatic events. Remembering to be grounded gives our bodies the possibility of going through emotions and movements, allowing them to pass through and become completed without being overwhelmed as in the past. So staying grounded in all stages of Dynamic is a good indicator and guideline. This way we can make sure healthy completion happens instead of overcharge and “re-traumatization.”
This article is a very welcome contribution.
Authenticity and the revelation and invocation it contains, as illumined above, also defines our interactional development, fluidity and capacity.
The limitations of morbose and rigid constructs were and are clear to those of us who knew and know in our guts that pre-constructed ‘Social Mes’ that were deliberately forcibly orchestrated. This was achieved through unconscious fear-based impositions, both internalised and similarly externally relational and systematic. It is the greatest challenge that Osho laid out, both for our own health and well-being and as a template for the playful maturing of the spirit, that we, countless of us, feel sublimely touched for His unique contribution.
Many years ago, my health suffered a chronic-fatigue collapse from which my guts never fully recovered. Up to then I had vigorously danced, whirled, hummed and dynamiced myself into areas which only surrender to a Master’s vision would allow and sponsor.
The effects of living in process, with and among the ‘fall-out’, with each other, constantly moving into and out of our ‘authentic’ selves was and can still be, often , a confusing and emotionally-demanding wrenching that this demands as a way of life. Often misunderstood by the mind of society that demands an unsatisfying protocol. Of course, the emphasis is on the intensity , the fullness, the repose, the presence and the coherence and access to these qualities
This helps the opening up to and developing into a much needed ‘sitting with the Master’ or remembrance awareness that all the Pandora’s box-openings ached for as respite, cure and trust and expansion of the self.
But what of my health story? Well, to tell the truth, I was a resentful dynamicer at the best of times, however supercharged my efforts were, and the random times I did it even when young and sprightly could probably be counted at not much more than 50. Sometimes in bundles, sometimes occasionally. I don’t remember ever thinking or feeling that it was worth it. But memory is selective, and it was all a very long time ago. However, all the other combined efforts, especially and principally through being constantly in sannyas’ man-woman relationships , the merry-go-round, sometimes nut-house of delving into the gut brain, translating its knowing and sensations of limitation, fears, and ecstatic potential remain as a grateful benefit of being and remaining Osho’s sannyasin. You have to pay the ferryman.
I recovered from the chronic fatigue syndrome, you’ll be glad to hear, that haunted me for several lost years. However, my body was, though, never to face another dynamic again. Part of that is about growing older in my case, part of that is that the sheer exhortation of the Master’s presence to go beyond one’s limits was done, psycho-physically, as much as I could have done. Less than some, more than others, but done.
What remains is the complete welcome distance and dislocation from inherited confines, the entry into one’s self-regulation, the accountability, the ability to voice, without shame, to Be with and related with others, as what Veeresh used to say as, “if you make a mess, then clear it up”, to thus be accountable and addressable, enduring, fluid, unknown, immersed, devoted and inspired by something intangible and which through the ages is inherently reverential and which we even here, combine with in Love.
“Many years ago, my health suffered a chronic-fatigue collapse from which my guts never fully recovered. Up to then I had vigorously danced, whirled, hummed and dynamiced myself into areas which only surrender to a Master’s vision would allow and sponsor.”
Sounds as if there was a cause-effect connection between this extreme exertion and the chronic fatigue, Martyn. No personal judgment, I share a roughly similar experience.
And, just curious, did the illness, rather than ethical concerns, precipitate your vegetarianism?
Ta for your reply, SD.
I’ve been a veggie since 17 and more veganish with the passing years.
London has got very good vegan and veg restaurants and veg-only pubs. The Coach and Horses in Soho has nice pub grub and is comfortably shabby.
Years of acupuncture and ayurveda in India for two months helped recovery. More importantly, a strong and intimate long-term relationship has been key.
I have no idea as to cause, only guesses in all domains of my life – physical, viral, psychological, environmental etc.
Friends,
I have to give some water in the wine concerning this ´ever curing´ proposal, just can speak for myself though.
I know that Anando (W) is speaking true and honest and according to her ´Hara` work she does with people for such a long time. I have been attending the ´Hara training´ led by her and her assistants at the end of the 90′s.
I also know that it can be quite different to join the Dynamic Meditation in Germany with a German facilitator (meditation leader) or elsewhere in the world like in Pune or with a bunch of Humaniversity tribal friends.
I can say by my own experience of dealing with trauma that one can not simply proclaim the dynamic as THE trauma cure – and good for everybody. I belong to those who had to look for other ways as how this process, German-style, was mainly led – the Dutch or the English situation I don’t know about – I just can compare it to the places where I have been and I found it less re-traumatizing and less military-style. Not to mention other painful stuff.
Who added the pic to the thread by the way?
-
What I also know by experience is that some I was temporarily with, who did dynamic everyday – sometimes even twice a day – have not been less violent in everyday terms or more peaceful and so grounded – some, on the contrary.
I also remember the long, long time when discussions were simply closed with “Shut up!” and “Go for dynamic!”, or “You are just a fucking mindfucker!”
However, it is clear that being rooted in the Hara spares others and oneself indeed a lot of destructive behaviour – be it in words, be it also violent body action, be it to be constantly in a trauma and re-Trauma tunnel.
Even to post this thread subject has already done its good work, hasn’t it?
Madhu
PS:
To spare somebody to ask me what I mean by asking about the pic poster tooI, I want to share what I am seeing:
Two or three men looking like very ´moderate kind of dancing´ while a woman is totally lost in the dance. I remember how good that was and maybe is, that when attending to ´dynamic´ we sometimes wore blindfolds (everybody) so that the temptation just to peep at others was out of the question.
So, it DOES look like ´dynamic´ – but very different, so to say.
In this last hour, a lot of trauma stuff also came up – decades-old but yet stored – and work on this is in progress. AND I like to share once again how long it sometimes takes to digest in terms of dissolving.
And it´s all about acceptance about was is and was, that is and was.
And for me, the balance to sit together in Silence had a balancing power to pain – for example – and still has.
What nonsense. Who invented dynamic meditation? Osho. You do not need to do it or advise anybody how to do it in any different way from Osho’s instructions. Do something else. Here, I really, really like how OIF keeps it that way.
Perfectly correct, Fresch!
Now the absurd baboons are raising themselves upon a pedestal and criticising the meditations of the master, like monkeys while the zoo-keeper has gone away! These vile baboons and therapriests, who have completely abused the freedom that Osho has given them!
Instead of vomiting their mindstuff in the form of intellectual nonsense about meditation which they know nothing about, unlike many easterners, like myself, Arun and Shantam, who are absolutely totally surrendered and absolutely drenched in it!
These western minds which are nothing but mind, these vile, low, unmeditative, unconscious, polack pygmies and self-appointed dogs and mongrels and absolute bastards of extremely suspect heritage, what to say of spiritual heritage, should be doing dynamic exactly as Osho ordered and drop their ridiculous little angry minds immediately!
Yahoo!
Hari Om!
Fuck you!
Ah, Fresch reappears after a long break. Dynamic meditation might be a remedy for your ills. Apart fom some idiot calling himself Sufi you are the only one to have written a lone star Amazon review on my book, Mind Bomb. I doubt you actually read it, because it really isn’t that bad. I suppose this was some form of revenge for informing you that I skipped most of your comments because I found them uninteresting. Does it still taste sweet? Ho hum.
Now you return to SN to share your insights into the world of Osho. Shantam is in a way right about people hiding their ID on this site. I doubt you would have behaved like such a nasty creep had you revealed your true identity. So keep those hoo hoos going, you are definitely in need of a good catharsis. Clean out all that anger and resentment etc. Good luck with it.
Freschie has returned.
Yee Haaa.
┐(‘～`；)┌
Active meditations…freedom or irreversible neural damage?
Tantra…Mahamudra or a dose of the clap?
Drugs…mind-expanding or a trip to A and E?
Therapy…mind expansion or mind-control?
Enlightenment…ego-death or just brain-dead?
Going with what is…taoism or doh-ism?
Getting into the hara…finally getting your feet on the ground or the next lift-off for space-cadets?
Do what thou wilt until it wilts, maybe?
The only answer that sums it up for me (cred. to Sam Beckett) is:
Nothing is better than meditation.
Fresch, back again!
With a kind of Russian ´opening´!
Military style though…
Madhu
“As a lover of Osho’s Dynamic Meditation, I was perplexed to hear that practising it could be re-traumatizing.”
Now who says so, Hara Anando?
The dynamic is not a meditation, it’s a Reichian preparation for meditation, and Osho always intended it as such.
I led dynamic in London for three years in the nineties. It was well populated at 7.30am on a Saturday morning in Jackson’s Lane. Usually well attended.
Many people seemed to experience a lift and freeing of energy which was more or less immediate after the ‘exercise’.
I also freely admit two or three people who must have had an undeclared mental health difficulty did seem to NOT benefit, and seemed disturbed. I discouraged them from trying it again but encouraged them to try the kundalini meditation which I also ran at the time.
I don’t dig intellectualising around something as simple as the dynamic exercise. Just do it, that’s what I say, and forget all this crap about which chakra one is in!
The article seems like part of the paper read in a university auditorium during text payers funded annual conference of shrinks and sharks. (MOD: text payers OR tax payers?)
Beauty of Osho lies in simplicity of expressions and easy to follow, easy to do meditation techniques without much of intellectual jargon.
El Chudo, what is going on? I actually find myself agreeing with something you have said. Wonders will never cease.
“I don’t dig intellectualising around something as simple as the dynamic exercise…and forget all this crap about which chakra one is in!”
Well said, Parmartha! Your view pretty much reflects my own on Anando’s article, which I think is really the equivalent of a glorified wank on paper, taking things much too far. Well, whatever turns you on Wurzburger (brilliant name!), however, I can’t say it did a lot for me.
Gor blimey, doing dynamic meditation doesn’t mean you automatically get in touch with deep trauma held in the body, does it? It could be that you might need to just shout and scream a little bit, so as to expel from your system the negative feelings associated with one of life’s many minor and frequent, setbacks! ( Frank, though, may disagree with me on this point, particularly if he were facing the major trauma of yet another disappointing Arsenal performance).
To my mind, going thru a good physical work-out first thing, whilst possibly getting a few upsets from the nite before off your chest, so to speak, you can face the rest of the day in a more relaxed frame of mind and body. In particular in my case, having got the blood-pumping system and breathing apparatus into top gear, I generally find that ‘Percy downstairs’ (translation for the non-UK viewers = penis), is a little bit more perky than he normally is. It’s all about getting the engine warmed up in the morning, which gives better performance throughout the day, dunnit?
Do we need to say any more than this?
“So when we approach Dynamic with our therapy-oriented concepts, it is easy to go wrong and hinder what could be healing. According to Osho and also to the theory of Somatic Experiencing, we need to follow the intelligence of the body. This means that we need to listen to it and let it develop the movements by itself”
It seems you didn´t really read that and other parts of the well done article by Anando (Würzburger) – you didn´t even read your name properly, Ashok.
And you didn´t even recognize, Paramartha, that Anando is all with you, praising the Meditation as such. It was me, overwhelmed by memories of misuse and abuse issues also INSIDE communal affairs, who was relating to the very well done article this way, Parmartha. And I want to add here that I strongly contradict the following of your remarks: “forget all this crap about which chakra one is in!”
And I dare to say also that the Master too has not been indifferent to this issue.
And as you mention the work of W.Reich, Parmartha, I love this man, as he shared his insights about a mechanically performed loveless fuck in contrast to a state of how the whole body can be an orgasmic responding manifestation. So, he was all against ´rape´, raping oneself or raping others.
It’s a very limited understanding to hold ´dynamic´ as a kind of ´viagra substitute´. He (Reich) was misunderstood in his time, prosecuted and also killed, a way some are killed who come ahead of their time, having to deal with inconvenient, uncomfortable stuff to share, confronting majorities who don’t like to hear that.
To get back to the string here, Osho in his lifetime would have loved what Anando in this article here has to share specifically, I guess. Me, I love it when all are coming into focus – also those who think to ´know it all and better´and some of those are very noisy (!).
This article is not that way, so maybe some could read it again instead of a mixed chakra ‘response’ of it doesn´t matter from which chakra is responded. (MOD: CLARITY HERE, PLEASE, MADHU!)
In His lifetime and even earlier in His Lifetime, when He was leading the Meditations Himself and talking to His people, these questions were all embedded and merged with the Love to His people, anyone being unique on his or her path to develop.
If we can not hold such a climate around questions which come up by meditation issues, we could well remember that such a climate IS possible.
Madhu
Yes, Madhu, I agree, A.Nando’s Worstburger creation was very ‘well-done’, to the point of being ‘over-done’, in my opinion.
As it happens, I did in fact read the whole article and I think I understood it? But you never know, do you? Whatever, I decided to give my own take on it, twisting one or two bits ‘n’ pieces in the spirit of non-seriousness and light-heartedness, which is why you probably thought I had not read it. Does this make me a bad person?
Truth is, Madhu, I think it has suited your own purposes to have pigeon-holed me as being some sort of a ‘baddie’, hasn’t it? From this starting point you enjoy projecting all your negative stuff in my direction, don’t you?
Or alternatively, it could be that you have developed some kind of a crush on me, what with love and hate being two sides of the same coin and all that? This latter explanation would appear to be borne out by the fact that you recently revealed yourself to me as somebody who likes to go ‘knickerless’! Unbeknownst to you, I have been thru this experience many times before with sannyasin women who present themselves to me in this way, hopeful and expectant of a blessing from my magic wand. I trust you do not fall into this category?
Finally, Madhu, p’haps you could enlighten me as to how I am supposed to pronounce my name?
Dynamic in my experience is a good cleaning / clearing agent, but to put it simply, like all active meditations which are a base for the real meditation.
There was a time when I saw a few Poona-1 sannyasins doing Dynamic very intensely during my Dynamic days in the early 90′s – mid 90′s, they really gave me a lot of inspiration to go for it.
It’s totally a personal choice to continue doing it. It helped me realise that the last stage of dancing was the best stage for me!
Dynamic medicine, you do it till it drops away. It can become compulsive though, like any other meditation, it gives a high afterwards, then the low appears and you (I) want to do something about it and presto, you (I) are in business again.
As I see it, they are all systems to wear you out and bring you to a final stopping. Still, I liked the thread and my interpretation is that the dynamic is very pushy (which initially we might need) compared with, for instance, Latihan, where the let-go is more flowing, spontanous and gentle, which helps in a more natural let-go, also of the traumatic past.
Also, what I have experienced in the meantime is that by just expressing traumatic patterns the patterns don’t go away, they even intensify if you keep expressing them, they like it so much to get heard, ha, ha, but still it is the only way to see they are here; and then the next hurdle is what happens to the pattern when it rears its head and you don’t suppress nor express it?
I do think that Anando Wurlitzer has got a point.
I have noticed that some of these Krauts and Humaniversity types go at dynamic with a level of playfulness redolent of a battalion of wounded Waffen SS out of their heads on crystal meth attacking a machine-gun post on the outskirts of Stalingrad.
From my side, I found it all quite macho, too…
I felt that not even a wrathful deity in the Bardo was gonna be stupid enough to mess with a veteran of umpteen months of dynamic…
Don`t give me your bullock cart bollocks, I`m in first-class on the Concorde of consciousness here…
Made me feel like a psycho-spiritual hardman.
Heavy breathing like a red-faced monkey with a bike-pump up his ass…
Shouting “fuck you!” and “Arsenal!” louder and louder every day…
Projectile vomiting my negativity…
I actually heaved my ego wholesale down the toilet at one stage…
Jumping up and down like a pogo-ing punk on meth
Standing still as a Gurjieffian yak-killer
And then dancing like Nijinsky on E at a rave.
I was definitely ready to rumble after that…
Compliments to the chef….
Ah, now I remember why I didn’t and don’t like Dynamic…
It is a complete pain in the arse, getting up at some ungodly hour with the sensation in the pit of your stomach that “life’s a bitch (girls, no offence, it’s a common Anglo euphemism) and then you die”, putting this lovely body designed for early morning tea and the breath of life without obligation, in the embrace of some babe’s arms – instead into contortions of achievement and release, because otherwise life is bondage?
Ah, the sound of spring beckons…Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
The ‘Know Thyself’ of Socratic statement becomes by some form of punitive endeavour, auto-sado-masochistic, Spartan cleansing.
When I was a lad, I much preferred ‘Jeux Sans Frontieres’ or ‘It’s a Knockout’ to wet, muddy football and cricket pitches and stone-cold swimming pools. They never made me a captain of the football team after I organised an on-pitch strike, of no effective or strenuous movement, only walking, which led to the other team scoring 22-0. Leading to team hilarity and ensuing detentions.
I have always disliked, since my nasty public school days and beyond, those gruesome cross-country running sensations, making life so much pain for nothing. I hereby state that any non-sensual, impositional exercise is not good for you, at any level. So Gurdjieff and Osho go Itchitndi.
Gymnasiums and Olympics – what a load of crap.
And add to that the psycho nutters in Dynamic and hey presto, you’ll find me planning my beach escape (at least in my mind)…plus the fact that any group you did then, the Nazi brain-dead Gauleiters forced you to do this shit. I once told a Dance Training therapist in Pune, to the quiescent ears of the others in my group, that despite the constant Osho-deriving demands that all groups must ‘do all the daily meditations’, I, as a Buddha-in-waiting, would not be coming to Compulsive Die-namic at all.
‘Shock-horror-disapproval-heretic-burn-him’ was the reply from the Gauleiter. I said I would be staying in bed, that Die-namvomit was the worst breakfast I could think of. And thanks, dancing all day in hundred degree heat was plenty nice for me and does the job, ta. Just telling them to sod off seemed not part of the edict ‘s-expectant-nodding-response team’s planning.
My age-old and well-honed homespun philosophy came into play: ‘You tell me what to do, I tell you to sod off’. (I pay for the group, YOU go do Dynamic). Why did it always have to be so corporate to fulfil the morals of what enlightenment should look, sound and feel like?
Yukkkk, there’s a place for organised religions and it’s in the latest episode of ‘Carry On Up the Bum’.
I continued to say that I would be staying in bed, that Die-namvomit was the worst breakfast I could think of and Thanks, dancing all day in hundred degree heat on amoebas was plenty nice for me ,and does the job, ta’.
Next week, we ask:
Why do marathon runners always look so fucked-up when running around the streets?
Well, I’ve heard some scandalous comments in the Sannyas Courts, but this miserable, self-serving claptrap, this so-called ‘defence’ takes the biscuit. As I’ve long suspected, this chap’s a clear-cut case of LMF*.
Laziness disguised as Being ‘True to Oneself’, Utter Irresponsibility as Personal ‘Freedom’. The, er, Movement simply can not afford such a liability in its ranks.
Prem Martyn, you are hereby sentenced to 6 months of daily early morning dynamic meditation (no later than 6am start), in Munich, under the supervision of Ma Madhu, who will assess your performance and progress, keeping both video and written records (to be made available here at SN) and, not least, your general, er, ‘attitude’.
Take him down!
(*LMF: Lacking Moral Fibre – a term used in the British Army)
Dynamic is a puritan’s wet dream.
As in,
Easy – No good.
Arduous – Excellent.
I think even thinking about dynamic may be re-traumatizing Satya `Bomber` Deva with his past life memories of being a rear-gunner over Berlin, out of his head on wakey-wakey pills…
Then in this life he finds himself doing dynamic under the supervision of an uber-frau Ma…
And now he has Madhu refusing to laugh at his jokes and threatening to string him up with piano wire…
Heavy Karma, man…
Here, try a blast of LMF, it’s good stuff…
And remember: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Re this apparent obsession with war, with bombing, death and destruction – you’ve been ‘under surveillance’ for quite a while, ‘Frank’, and I must inform you that you’re strongly suspected of being a renegade member of Is-Is*.
I hear the authorities are onto you, so, as B-P so wisely advised, ‘be prepared’…
Meanwhile, to quote the title of the famous British cinematic comic blockbuster, ‘carry on meditating’…
(*Is-is – a dangerous group of anti-western psycho-spiritual fanatics, originating in the East, who believe ‘whatever is is’).
Prosecution, Trial and Error
and Orders are Orders…
Memo to all NCO’s at the Eastbourne Sannyside Barracks.
Crime and corporal punishment: Training video COMPULSORY. 6am start. No shilly shallying.
For obeying and surrender in No-minds land, going over-the-top and High Moral Public Schoolboy Fibre
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xzpl3j_blackadder-season-04-episode-02-corporal-punishment_shortfilms
Dynamic, Kundalini, Nadabrahma, Nataraj…
By promoting them one can not earn a decent living, neither the tag of great therapist.
So such powerful meditation techniques have become like over-the-counter medicines!
Indeed so, Shantam.
Btw, just curious…When was the last time you yourself ‘performed’ any of these “powerful meditation techniques”?
Or have you ‘moved on’ from such beginners’ stuff, into, you know, ‘deeper waters’?
“I want to train my disciples to teach Dynamic to the world. For this reason, I need to develop a city where the quality of speakers and microphones is world-class.”
(Preamble to Sannyas, New edition, 2014)
It is the easiest way to learn military science by playing computer games!
Hi Ashok,
“Does this make me a bad person?”
No, Ashok.
“From this starting point you enjoy projecting all your negative stuff in my direction, don’t you?”
You´re imagining that – it´s not where I am at.
“I trust you do not fall into this category?”
That´s right, I do not belong into that category, Ashok.
“Finally, Madhu, p’haps you could enlighten me as to how I am supposed to pronounce my name?”
Ashok, it was wrong on my part (change ´your´ to ´her ´name, please, it was my writing mistake. As I know her personally I d like to have her name spelt the right way in terms of respect, if you know what I mean.
Hope all your questions are answered.
Madhu
Given the pervasive tone of equanimity and common sense that are apparent in your reply, Madhu, I shall give you the benefit of the doubt regarding the answers you have graciously provided to my comments and queries, and will therefore accept that you are being honest and sincere at this time.
Furthermore, might I be so bold as to suggest that the simple, clear and generally precise writing manner you have employed on this occasion, be adopted in all your future communications to SN. This change of approach I believe, would be of great benefit to both yourself and others here.
I hope you will not think of me as being impertinent for making such a suggestion, but will receive it instead, metaphorically speaking, as my extending an olive branch in your direction, to reconcile what has been in the past a rather troubled and difficult relationship!
With very best wishes,
Ashok
Apropos of nothing, commentators might get fun from this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kDso5ElFRg&feature=youtu.be
Thanks, Parmartha, for this video. Watching this is like watching projections.
If I am a chairman of Osho Foundation Multinational, be sure, such people will be invited regularly for stand-up comedies during Osho festivals.
Just do dynamic every day and you won’t need therapists like ‘Hara-Anando’ and their psychological babble.
Therapists are like priests, they want to convince you that you need them, so they tend to overcomplicate simple things, just to give you the impression: “this is complicated, you need a therapist to help you”.
Dynamic meditation is like Nike: “Just do it!”
Of course, if you get into a mental pattern and you do dynamic the same way every time, you need to be aware this is a mental pattern. Dynamic will be different each time you do it, if you do it right, chaotically – not rhythmically.
Other than that, no need for psycho-babble.
I have a mixed and sometimes critical appreciation of Wilhelm Reich.
I can’t find the reference but one remembers Osho saying that the dynamic meditation first three stages were partly influenced by Reich. However, as I understand it, the third stage was an adapted old Sufi exercise? Anyone know more?
A group of sannyasins tried to make a Reichian orgone box in Pune 2 – with the approval of the then Inner Circle. Their account of it does seem tending strange! If you reach the end of their story, one might say it is what it deserved.
Here is the account:
http://www.oshonews.com/2013/09/orgone-accumulator-egg/
http://en.textsave.org/SYsb
That’s a key discourse, well found indeed, sir.
Dear friends,
Just I want to quote few things OSHO is saying about DYNAMIC.
1. Do it from sex centre, hit it by breath in the first stage.
2. Continue the deep breathing hit while you are in catharsis. Catharsis means expressing yourself, bringing out yourself, without all masks and pretentions.
3. Go mad consciously, enter into chaotic stage, so your mind gets confused and stops and your body takes over.
4. Let the ‘hoo’ come from sex centre, jump to help it and fill your whole body with “HOO”.
I do lots of dynamic, at least 3 days in a week, rejoicing the beauty of it, and lots of people who are afraid of doing Dynamic are enjoying it now with me. I do few things before dynamic to prepare the body to enter into the chaos and to give its full energy to go mad consciously.
It is really a Master’s piece and a wonderful magic given by OSHO to come back to the body and rejoice the miracles of it and then cross over it also.
Though I do it for long time, still every day it opens new experiences of the body, I fell into the yin-yong and then into the silent centre beyond it etc. etc.
After the first breath it is an opening of a world beyond mind.
So all sicknesses will go in it and I have seen it helped many and for sure it helped me a lot in all my journey to become free from mind, free from body – first from its illnesses and then from it, opening of the heart, getting expanded, feeling the hara, feeling the earth and sky meeting in me and so on…
Nothing wrong in expressing, analysing and sharing the experiences of dynamic. But it is just a sharing. Not a dogma or rule or definition of it. It may be just a tip to trigger the other to do the dynamic. That’s all for me. Rest you get when you do it totally.
I have done it first in 1975. It is very difficult at that time of my young age. But now at 60 I am rejoicing it completely. My journey of dynamic is not mine, it has to be called ‘journey of dynamic on a weak body-mind personality and change him to his peak potentiality, to a rejoicing friend’.
My preparation exercises are all different kinds of breathing, shaking only. It clears the path and warms you up to jump into dynamic. That’s all.
Thank you, Osho.
Siddharth
Interesting post, Siddharth, thanks for taking the trouble. Queries re your points 1 and 2 though.
Re 1, I don’t see how the chaotic breathing needs to be done from the sex centre, although yes, it’s supposed to be deep, not shallow. Perhaps that’s what you’re emphaseming – er, sorry, emphasising?!
As for 2, I assume you don’t recommend chaotic breathing in the cathartic stage, but deep breathing if/when ‘stuck’ what to do (as it were)? My experience was if the first stage had been done totally – “until you feel you’re dying, then more”, as I recall someone once urged we beginners back in ’73 – then the second stage pretty well took care of itself.
As well as simply doing gibberish with body movements, a useful option in that stage if ‘nothing’ seems to be happening is just to gently allow your body to move however it wishes, without forcing anything, ie as in latihan, co-operating with it, as it were.
In fact, this can be an individual stand-alone process/meditation in itself, independent of a formal dynamic, yet very cleansing, liberating. Somendra (now Michael Barnett) used to call it ‘Doctor Body’ and rated it more powerful than any other bodywork method, including bio-energetics, tai chi and, I believe, even dynamic itself! The beauty of it is that it can be done for any period of time one wishes, from a few minutes to half an hour or longer. All you need is a space where making a bit of noise is ok.
(Anyone know such a place in north London, for example?! And/or fancy a regular session of ‘Dr. Body’? No double entendres, please, Martyn, btw!).
Yes, Satyadeva, you are right. In the 2nd stage I mean deep breathing and not chaotic breathing. In the 1st stage the breath hits the sex centre for sure, but as you said it is an individual process, so it does not mean that all the time it has to hit the sex centre.
Also in the 2nd stage, I suggest to make the body tense, face tense to touch the unconscious, no relaxing. in relaxation the unconscious won’t be touched. Maybe conscious mind tensions can be released, but again it does not mean you must be tense all the time.
To open up the body is the key, then flow and I always suggest to move more and more energy to the body, until it takes over.
It is a play with the body in its peak energy and so it thrills me every time.
I love this sharing of dynamic by all of us.
Thank you, Osho.
Siddharth