“Dancing meditation is one of the easiest ways to discover a calm, quiet,
place inside you that is filled with joy, wisdom and love”
– Pragito Dove
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BENEFITS
When you do this dancing meditation, you release a tremendous amount of tension, and creative insights arise. Tension is simply trapped energy. The wild and free movement of the dance is a great way to set this energy free and get it moving. Feeling free in your body allows your mind to expand, your heart to open, and your spirit to soar. Then, when you lie still immediately after dancing, your gross level of activity—the body—is stopped, and the energy you have released travels inward to the subtler layers of your being. This technique allows the dynamism of the dance to move to your roots, to the very core of your being, liberating great feelings of joy and positivity.
Do you ever put on your favorite dancing music when no one is around and just cut loose? It’s a great way to release tension and unwind.With a few simple additions, this pleasurable experience can become a meditation.
Historically, Sufis have had a tradition of dancing as a meditation in celebration of life. The following Dancing meditation, created by mystic and teacher Osho, is called Osho Nataraj.
You can do this meditation any time of day. It takes about sixty-five minutes. (You can also do it for four minutes — two minutes of stage one and two minutes of stage two—or for any amount of time that you have. Just know that the deepest benefits come when you do the full sixty-five minutes.) Do this technique especially if you are having trouble coming to stillness when you meditate. Dancing into meditation is a great way to direct your energy inward.
STAGE ONE: DANCING (FORTY MINUTES)
Clear a space where you can dance safely with your eyes closed. Put on the Osho Nataraj CD. Close your eyes or cover them with a blindfold, and dance for forty minutes. Let go of any sense of control and disappear into the dance. Allow your body to respond to the music any way it likes, from wildly to very slowly and gently. Celebrate yourself. Become like a child again, in love with movement for its own sake. No one can see you, and this experience is not about performing or looking good, which always creates a subtle tension. If feelings arise, express them through the dance. You have complete freedom to do any movement you want. Let the sense that you are observing yourself dance fall away naturally. You and the movement and the music are one.
Dancing is no longer a doing, but a happening. As you continue to dance, you may start to forget that you are dancing and to feel that you are the dance. Unlike those times when you are still aware of the separation between you and the dance, between you and the music, it becomes a meditation when the divisions dissolve and you are totally involved, totally merged into the dance. You do not need to do anything to force this shift; just allow it to happen.
STAGE TWO: STILLNESS (TWENTY MINUTES)
The next stage of the meditation is silent. The Osho Nataraj CD includes this twenty minutes of silence. Keeping your eyes closed, lie down and be totally silent and still.
STAGE THREE: GET UP AND DANCE AGAIN (FIVE MINUTES)
To complete the meditation, the music starts up again and you dance for five more minutes. Celebrate and enjoy your body and the sense of total freedom dancing like this gives you.
Excerpted from the book 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), a meditation master, keynote speaker, and trainer. Visit Pragito’s website at discovermeditation.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.
Pragito demystifies meditation for beginners and inspires experienced practitioners.