Dynamic meditation, practised totally, at least several times a week, often nearly every day, for about 15 months, rescued me from 4 and a half years of debilitating, dysfunctional depression (all the negative influences in my young life finally ‘putting the boot in’ – and keeping it there) that had descended on me shortly after my 21st birthday, and which a considerable amount of individual and group therapy – including an ongoing group with Veeresh (pre-Sannyas), 48 hours ‘marathon’ encounter weekends and 1-to-1 sessions including bio-energetics, both led by Ma Yoga Sudha (pre-Sannyas) and over 3 years of 1-to-1 NHS psychiatry sessions – hadn’t managed to shift.

In fact, within a few days of starting the initial 2 weeks course at the Centre I noticed very beneficial changes, telling a friend, “My body’s starting to un-suppress itself!”

It was one of the most wonder-ful periods of my life, a psycho-physical ‘rebirth’, with multiple spin-offs, a significant part of the beauty and the value of which was that it arose directly from accessing my own vital energy and didn’t depend on anyone else, notably including realising, for the first time, the therapeutic benefits of let-go dancing – not to mention being opened up to the magnetic attraction of ‘Bhagwan’ and his world….

Over and above that, if we were inclined to be in our heads types, well, no being in your head doing dynamic. Sheesh.

Not sure what you mean by “a play” here, Parmartha. I never regarded dynamic as just ‘playing around’ or indulging in some kind of ‘energy play’, or whatever, for me the purpose was always pretty serious, ie freeing myself from whatever was screwing me up, and I gave it everything I had, as per instructions!

I recall a young ‘veteran’ of very early 70s India advising us newbies at the Bell Street, London centre in ’73 to “breathe until you die!” in the first stage, as all would flow from those initial 10 minutes – and I tried hard to do just that. Hellish, but it worked.

But you probably mean something else?

Thanks for that.

I have often wondered if cathartic practice might have some negative effects, but having never seen any concrete evidence myself, I was curious to know what shape and form it might take.

Osho was laughing as he recounted how he encouraged the participants of the camp, which was on Mt Abu, to just do whatever they felt like for a while. Someone took his clothes off, someone climbed up a tree and threw coconuts at people, and someone else ended up trying to push Osho’s car, or Osho’s drivers car, off a cliff!

I think that after that camp Osho was dissallowed to hold any more camps there.