Teaching & Training

Active Meditation

Active meditation is a great way to factor some zen time into a busy day. It’s also the ideal way to meditate if you’re the type of person who can’t sit still for too long. A couple of years ago, I did a Vedic meditation course. It’s an ancient type of meditation that requires you to sit still for 20 minutes, once in the morning and again in the afternoon. It’s highly effective, but I wasn’t able to stick with it in the long run because life got in the way. When I was meditating, however, the benefits were incredible—I was more focused, less overwhelmed by life, work pressure or my inbox groaning under the weight of so many unread emails.

I felt lighter, calmer, and less on edge.Luckily, it’s possible to reach a meditative state when you’re in motion. I know this only too well. I was running the Copenhagen marathon in 2014 and I won’t go into details, but let’s just say from mile two onwards I needed the toilet badly. My tummy wasn’t right and even though a bartender let me use the facilities, I couldn’t shake the need to go as I progressed along the race course. Then, the heavens opened. Every time I ran, I needed to go to the toilet, but walking in heavy rain, sodden through, was miserable. And so I focused on my breath and repeated the mantra just keep going over and over. I was in such a zone that I couldn’t hear the playlist that was blaring in my ears or feel the rain pelting down. I just focused on putting one foot in front of the other, breathing and repeating my mantra.

Of course, we’re not all running marathons with dodgy stomachs, but life can be pretty overwhelming at times and while we don’t all have the time to sit still and meditate, it is possible to be more mindful on the move. I spoke with two meditation experts Adreanna Limbach—senior teacher at NYC meditation studio MNDFL and Karunesh Bodhi, an Osho meditation facilitator—to find out how we can incorporate active mediation into our day to day.

OSHO Devavani Meditation

Devavani meditation lasts for one hour. There are four stages of 15 minutes each. Keep your eyes closed throughout. Devavani is the “divine voice” which moves and speaks through the meditator, who becomes an empty vessel, a channel.

OSHO Mandala Meditation

This is another powerful technique that creates a circle of energy, resulting in a natural centring. There are four stages of 15 minutes each.

OSHO No Dimensions Meditation

This is a powerful method for centering one’s energy in the hara – the area just below the navel. It is based on a Sufi technique of movements for awareness and integration of the body. Because it is a Sufi meditation, it is free and non-serious. In fact it is so non-serious that you can even smile while you are doing it.

Dynamic Meditation: Osho’s most popular active meditation.

Dynamic Meditation lasts one hour and is in five stages. It can be done alone and will be even more powerful if it is done with others. It is an individual experience so you should remain oblivious of others around you and keep your eyes closed throughout, preferably using a blindfold. It is best to have an empty stomach and wear loose, comfortable clothing. “This is a meditation in which you have to be continuously alert, conscious, aware, whatsoever you do. Remain a witness. Don’t get lost. While you are breathing you can forget. You can become one with the

Passive Meditation

This also could be called non-mantra meditation. For we don’t force the mind to think a mantra but just let it think whatever it will. However, we have to observe or be aware that it is thinking. But since the mind can only do one thing at a time, either think or be aware, it must flip back and forth between the two states. It thinks, then it remembers or becomes aware that it is thinking; it thinks again, and again it becomes aware, and so on.

A common occurrence, especially for those just beginning to do meditation, is that the mind gets sucked into thinking, and is no longer aware that it is thinking. It begins to daydream, and perhaps even fall asleep. With practice, however, the mind’s balance shifts the other way, from thinking to awareness; and it is possible for some that thinking stops altogether, and the mind reaches the state of no thought.

Passive meditation requires less concentration than active or mantra-directed meditation. For in passive meditation the mind is allowed to pick the subject and go with it, with only the requirement that it must stop on occasion to remember that it is thinking. At times, this won’t be easy, stopping thinking to remember, because the mind is a powerful thinker, even an entertainer. It has the capability of generating or manifesting a spectrum of thoughts, recollections, images and plots, from the wonderful, sublime, loving and humorous to those not so wonderful, sublime, loving and humorous. Therefore, it can bring up strong emotions so much so that frequent breaks are needed to halt the show, and let the mind remember that it is only a show.

Osho Feel Your Body as Empty

Really this is the case: thoughts are just like clouds moving in the sky. They don’t have any roots and they don’t belong to the sky, they simply roam in the sky. They come and they go and the sky remains untouched, uninfluenced.

OSHO Disidentify From Your Thoughts

Tweet Close your eyes, then focus both of them just in the middle of the two eyebrows, as if you are looking there with your two eyes. Give total attention to it.

OSHO On Creativity

Tweet What Is Creativity? – Creativity Is a Quality I believed I was uncreative. What else can be creativity besides dancing and painting and how to find out what my creativity is? “Creativity has nothing to do with any activity in particular – with painting, poetry, dancing, singing. It has nothing to do with

OSHO Meditating In Dawn

Tweet Deva means divine, and aruna means early morning, dawn… the sun is just going to rise, just before sunrise. Mm? the East becomes red but the sun is not yet on the horizon – it is coming; it is very imminent, just within a second it will be there but it is not there

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