A recent US study has found that free-form dancing can “count” towards one’s physical activity requirements to stay healthy. The UK’s The Telegraph, reporting on the story, states:
“Dancing in your kitchen for 20 minutes a day could be enough to help you hit NHS exercise targets.”
Groundbreaking…. Who would have thought dancing could be good for your health? It has only taken several centuries of denial of the body and of the simple pleasures of life in general to produce a dis-eased world plagued with physical and mental signs of imbalance, having driven us farther and farther away from our very nature.
The signs are everywhere: from the alarming trend of ballooning obesity, the opioid epidemic, sedentary lifestyles, the ominous rise of anxiety and depression, the general sense of alienation, all summed up by what John Vervaeke calls “the meaning crisis”, with far enough reaching consequences for governments to start paying attention to the fact that, to remain productive and compliant to the vested interests of those in power, “the people” also need to remain healthy.
How far down the rabbit hole of estrangement from ourselves have we already gone for governments to wake up to the dire state of our collective discontent and appoint a Minister of Loneliness?
Dance is absolutely integral to the experience of balance, to the optimum state of health and equilibrium that medical science calls homeostasis.
No wonder then that Osho, in his effort to dissolve the age-long division between body and mind and bring them into a synthesis, makes dance and celebration central to his vision of the New Man.
Never mind the exercise, meant to fit neatly into a laundry list of activities to “achieve” health goals. Dancing is simply fun.
Its very essence is an individual expression of overflowing energy, of pure body creativity, a potential doorway into a higher dimension, that of the spiritual, capable of giving you a taste of meditation, but only if you can let yourself dissolve into the dance.
As Osho explains:
“Dance so deeply that you completely forget that you are dancing and begin to feel that you are the dance. The division must disappear; then it becomes a meditation. If there is division, then it is an exercise: good, healthy, but it cannot be said to be spiritual. It is just a simple dance. Dance is good in itself. As far as it goes, it is good. After it, you will feel fresh, young. But it is not yet meditation.
“The dancer must go, until only the dance remains.”1
Dancing to abandon does not only give you a glimpse into meditation but also a taste of transcendence.
Osho again:
“I have invariably included dance in my methods of meditation, because there is nothing more miraculous for meditation than dancing. If you dance fully, if you dance totally, then in that dance your being comes out of the body. The body will go on moving in rhythm but you will experience that you are out of the body. And then your real dance begins: below, the body will go on dancing; above, you will dance. The body on the earth, you in the sky. The body in the earthly, you in the celestial.
“The body will dance the dance of matter, you will dance the dance of consciousness. You will become Nataraj, the king of dancing.”2
The study further states: “All adults were able to reach a health-enhancing level of activity without being told what intensity to dance at. They just put on their own music and danced around – and even when they didn’t have music on they were still reaching that level.”
In other words, dance is such a natural expression of being human that one needs not be told how to do it, or rather, as Osho more pointedly puts it, how to not do it. Only then can “life energy start flowing”, only then can real health be attained, not just of the body but of the whole being.
“If you can dance wholeheartedly, you will not remain; you will disappear in the dance.
“Dance is a marvelous way, a wondrous alchemy to lose your self.
“And still more, the specialty of dance is that as you start dancing your life energy starts flowing. You have become rigid. You were born to become a river but you have become a dirty pond. You were born to flow but you have become closed. Your life energy should flow again, it should cascade again, and the waves should rise again, because one day the river reaches the ocean…
“Dance! Open your heart and dance! Drop all kinds of miserliness and dance!
“One day you will find – suddenly, in amazement, in wonder, you will not be able to believe – that you have disappeared in the dance and the dance is continuing. The day you find that you are not and the dance is continuing, you will have found all that is worth attaining…3
You may start dancing in your kitchen but be warned, dancing can be contagious!
Osho:
“When you see a few people dancing, suddenly you feel your feet are ready. You may try to control them, because control has been taught to you, but your body wants to join the dance.
“Whenever you have an opportunity to laugh, join; whenever you have an opportunity to dance, join; whenever you have an opportunity to sing, sing – and one day you will find you have created your paradise.”4
Now back to those 20 minutes. Did Osho know something we only now recognize when the Evening Meeting meditation he devises actually starts with 20 minutes of dancing?
END
- 1. Osho, The New Alchemy: To Turn You On
- 2. Osho, Enlightenment: The Only Revolution, Talk #8 – The Gift of Existence
- 3. Osho, Ashtavakra Mahagita, Vol. 8, Talk #4
- 4. Osho, The Razor’s Edge, Talk #7 – When the Ocean Has Called You
