If there is one factor that the vast majority of us have in common today it is stress.

Chronic stress affects us on every level, negatively impacting our health, our contact with ourselves and others, our ability to function optimally in the work place, and in all other aspects of our lives.

Stress also becomes a barrier to turning inwards.

What is "turning inwards" and why would I want to do It?

Turning in, or meditation, allows us:

    •  to "recharge our batteries" whenever we need to.

    •  to experience a relaxed, silent state of awareness,which both nourishes us, and connects us with who we really are.

    •  to nurture and call into play the many qualities that lie dormant in us.

    •  to realize our full potential

We may understand the need to minimize stress and to unwind; we may appreciate that moving inwards is the way to go.

But to sit down for twenty minutes, to close our eyes and attempt to still our incessant thoughts and feelings and restless body, is impossible. In fact, trying to relax creates more tension, as we do battle with ourselves and then emerge from the attempt feeling demoralized, feeling that "meditation might work for others but it is not for me!"

Sound familiar?

The good news is: The problem lies not with you, but with the method.

The even better news is: The Osho active or moving methods take our chronic restlessness and tension into account, and are designed specifically to address this issue.

Your body is restless?
Give it permission to move, to dissolve nervous tension – through, for example, certain energetic breathing, through dance or spontaneous, random movements.

Your mind is on over-drive?
Let it run itself out! Methods such as "Gibberish" help you unwind, while humming allows you to rechannel the energy that was fueling your mind.

Your emotions are giving you headaches, stomach pain, or sleepless nights?
Release them through vigorous movements, and through catharsis: laughter, shouting, crying and so on.

Tune In to Turn In

The chaotic or active methods are not really meditations but simply a way to prepare ourselves for meditation. They are a kind of existential weeding.
The steps within each active technique unburden us so that nothing comes in the way when we want to be silent and relaxed, present, and alert.
These moving techniques can be seen as a way to "tune in" to ourselves.

Osho likens their function to the process Indian classical musicians go through before they play:

"For half an hour, or sometimes even more, they simply go on fixing their instruments. They will move the knobs, they will make the strings tight or loose, and the drum player will go on checking his drum...whether it is perfect or not. For half an hour they go on doing this. This is not music, this is just preparation.
"Kundalini is not really meditation, it is just preparation. You are preparing your instrument. When it is ready, then you stand in silence. Then meditation starts. Then you are utterly there. You have woken yourself up by jumping, by dancing, by breathing, by shouting – these are all devices to make you a little more alert than you ordinarily are. Once you are alert, then the waiting.
"Waiting is meditation...waiting with full awareness. And then it comes, it descends on you, it surrounds you, it plays around you, it dances around you, it cleanses you, it purifies you, it transforms you."

...To find out more about Osho

Meditation is not something to do once or twice a day in order to chill out for a time, before resuming your normal activities in what may be your usual frenetic, mechanical, unaware way!

In fact, meditation is not something to be done but a quality – of relaxed awareness – that we can access and have as a current running through all that we do.

"Of course in the beginning you have to start. You do [the method] in the morning, sometimes you do it in the evening; then you forget about it. Even that helps," Osho acknowledges, "but it is not meditation yet; it is still an activity. It has not become part of your being. It is not yet like breathing. Can you do breathing in the morning and then leave it? It must become like breathing, continuously with you. And a moment comes when it becomes even deeper than breathing.
"Meditation is deeper than breathing because breathing belongs to the body. Meditation doesn't belong to the body. Meditation belongs to the seed, to the very center around which body revolves. The body is just like the wheel.
"Breathing is necessary for the body and meditation is necessary, just as necessary, for the soul. Without breathing you will be dead; that means the body will be dead. Without meditation you will be dead; that is, the soul will be dead."

The Osho Active Meditations™.

All seven Osho Active Methods feature at least one active step – of, for example, dancing, breathing, verbal release, jogging, laughter, crying, or shouting, and so on – which then leads you, easily and naturally, into a passive stage or stages.
These seven methods are known as: Dynamic, Kundalini, Devavani, Nataraj, Nadabrahma, Mandala and Gourishankar.
To read more about the other...Osho Active Meditations™

...To read about the five stages of Osho Dynamic Meditation in detail

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