Darshan Diaries Meditations

Meditation for Restlessness

[A sannyasin says she feels a certain restlessness about her which she experiences mainly as being in her arms. They feel like they need to do something energetic.... ]

Osho - Mm mm, it can be. Start doing one thing every night: sit in a chair and rest your head (Osho demonstrates, his head resting back on the chair like you do at the dentist). You can have a pillow, mm? so you are in a resting posture. Then release your lower jaw, just relax it so the mouth opens slightly, and start breathing from the mouth, not from the nose. But the breathing has not to be changed, it has to be as it is – natural.

The first few breaths will become a little hectic. By and by it will settle down and the breathing will become very shallow. It will go in and out very slightly; that’s how it should be, mm? Keep the mouth open, eyes closed, and rest. Then start feeling that your legs are becoming loose, as if they are being taken away from you, broken from the joints. Feel as if they are being taken away from you, they have been cut loose, broken, and then start thinking that you are just the upper part; the legs are gone.

Then the hands: think that both the hands are becoming loose and being taken away from you. You may even be able to hear just a click! inside when they are broken. You are no more your hands – they are dead, taken away. Then just the torso remains. Then start thinking about the head – that it is being taken away, that you are being beheaded, that the head is broken. Then leave it loose: wherever it turns – right, left – you cannot do anything.

Just leave it loose; it has been taken away. Then you have just your torso, mm? Feel that you are only this much – this chest, the belly, that’s all. Do this for at least twenty minutes, and then go to sleep. This is to be done just before the sleep. Do it for at least three weeks and then you tell me how you are feeling, mm? This restlessness will settle. It is just that your body is not aligned, the energy is not proportionately distributed. Taking these parts as separate, only the essential will remain, so your whole energy will move in the essential part.

That essential part will relax and the energy will start flowing in your legs, in your hands, in your head, again, in a more proportionate way. A new distribution of energies is needed. It is always energy being more in one part, less in another, that makes you feel lopsided. So your hands must be getting more energy than other parts.

Then you want to do something with your hands, and if you cannot find anything to do you can become angry. The hands get angry if they have too much energy: when they cannot do anything, they want to destroy. Either they create or they destroy. If you can create, good; if you cannot create, then destruction. So just do this for three weeks and then come back, mm?

Source: from Osho Book "This is It"