The essence of all meditation is to sit silently, and allow thoughts, feelings, moods, and sensations to flow through the inner sky of the consciousness without concern. As experiences come to feel more and more peripheral, we become more and more aware of the consciousness which is aware of the experiences; this consciousness is our inner nature.
In the time of Gautam Buddha, it was easy to attain such meditation simply by sitting and watching the breath. But the world then was immeasurably simpler than today. People lived active physical lives in supportive communities and in harmony with nature. Our lives today are complex, fragmented, non-physical, directed to things outside ourself, and alienated from nature. Meditation is no longer easy.
“Active meditations” are meditations designed to help people in the modern world to meditate easily. They were created by the enlightened Indian teacher Osho. But there is no need to feel an interest in Osho to benefit from his meditations. They are stand-alone experiences. If you already practise some other form of meditation, then doing active meditations will support and deepen your existing practice.
I’ve been meditating for 30 years (in this lifetime!). I love just sitting silently. But silent sitting on its own is far easier – far easier – with the support of active meditations. And in fact there are areas of the being which silent sitting doesn’t reach – there are meditation experiences I could not possibly have had, doing only silent sitting.
Active meditations are structured meditation exercises, commonly one hour long, with several stages. Typically the first stage(s) involve movement, ranging from the gentle to the highly energetic - dance, shaking, deep breathing, emotional catharsis, running on the spot. Then the structure progresses to end in the silent awareness we more conventionally think of as “meditation.”
There is no need to have any interest or connection with Osho or his teachings. The active meditations do not imply any belief system or school of thought. Anybody can use the meditations in their lives in their own way. The meditations rely on no dogma, belief, worship, or cultural (Indian, Chinese, Tibetan) system of thought.
Active meditations are equally suitable if
- You’ve tried to meditate and found it hard
- You’ve never meditated but want to explore it
- You love to meditate and want to try new methods
- You have a meditation practice and you’d like to go deeper
For example, Osho Nataraj meditation consists of: for 40 minutes, dance with wild abandon; then lie on the ground for 20 minutes and watch your thoughts and feelings; then for 5 minutes dance to soft, gentle dance music to celebrate the inner peacefulness.
There is a CD with wonderful dance music specially made for the meditation. But you can also do it yourself using any neutral, joyful dance music. The music should not tell a story or have a romantic or sexual theme – you want music of pure joy. Drumming would be suitable.
The simplest active meditation, which is very powerful and requires no CD, is Osho No-Mind meditation – talking gibberish. This has a page to itself,
http://www.themagicofyou.co.uk/blog/radical-meditation-2-when-you-cant-meditate/
The most famous active meditation is Osho Dynamic Meditation. Again, there is a CD with special music. This meditation is perhaps challenging to do on your own for the first time. It is better to learn it in a group.
Eyes are closed throughout, except as necessary to stay safe and not bump into anything or anyone else.
• 10 minutes deep, fast, unstructured breathing to awaken supressed energies in the unconscious. These are what make ordinary sitting meditation hard; they manifest as thoughts we can’t silence.
• 10 minutes going consciously and playfully crazy – letting the body and the voice do whatever they want to: laugh, cry, scream, jump, sit, roll, shout, go mad, go crazy. And all the time being conscious and watchful; this is meditative madness.
• 10 minutes jumping continuously in the air with the arms raised, shouting “HOO”. This grounds you and brings you back into here-and-now reality. Then a voice on the CD says “STOP!” ….
• … and for 15 minutes you freeze in whatever position your body is in, no sound, no movement. Be totally still, totally silent, and watch, meditate, be aware. When the supressed energies have been thrown out, the silence can be very deep.
• Finally 15 minutes of joyful dance to celebrate the inner silence.
Perhaps the most popular active meditation is Osho Kundalini Meditation (again a CD is available).
- 15 minutes shaking the whole body,
- 15 minutes dance,
- 15 minutes standing or sitting in meditation listening to quiet music,
- 15 minutes lying down in silence.
This is a great meditation to do at the end of the day.
More information: Maneesha James’s site:
has good information especially about Osho Dynamic.
There is complete information on many of Osho’s meditations on www.osho.com, including video demonstations you can watch. For reasons of space I shortened the instructions a little. Exact instructions are on this site. On this site, you need to click on “Meditations” (on the front page), then on “Active meditations” in the left-hand panel; the site doens’t have permalinks.
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