How to meditate on the move (and go into a trance)

I can raise and lower my arms from horizontal to vertical thirty times while thinking about how to get fitter and the obligations of the day. Or I can close your eyes and pay attention to my breathing and the sensations of the body as I slowly raise my arms to the vertical and lower them again two or three times.

It may take the same time, but the difference between the two experiences, apart from the fact that the second one is much more pleasant and effective, resides in the quality of care.

“If you remain conscious, everything you do will be meditation,” said the mystic Osho. It is common to imagine that, to meditate, you have to sit and remain motionless, observing your breath, your thoughts, some object, or your own consciousness. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. You can meditate on the move.

Meditation is not a technique, it is a state in which one simply is, without judging, and in which one does not identify with what one does, with what one feels or with what one thinks. Is a state of heightened awareness that promotes the sensation of being in contact with the essential.

Buddhism teaches that part of life’s dissatisfaction arises from having become so accustomed to the world that we stop perceiving its beauty and variety. The tool that counteracts that process is mindfulness.

Moving meditation techniques

Bringing awareness to one’s own bodily movements, physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts allows the mind to distance itself. Help to stay in the present moment no longer live absorbed in thoughts about the past or the future that generate anguish or dissatisfaction.

One of the techniques used in Zen to free the mind from its cage is the kinhin: the meditative march. It is traditionally practiced interspersed with sitting meditation to loosen up the body and work on attention in an act as daily as walking. In Taoism, equanimity and inner stillness are worked on both in the chained, slow and harmonic movements of chi kung as in the fluids of the Tai Chi.The sequences of yoga asanas, when they are not carried out as mere physical exercise but with the attention and dedication that a more spiritual work requires, they constitute another meditative practice. “Yoga” derives from the Sanskrit root yuh, which on the one hand means directing attention and, on the other, union or communion. Dance it can become a powerful meditation. “In communion with the cosmic rhythm, the soul sings, full of light, and the free man comes to dance his life”, wrote the Czech choreographer and dancer François Malkovsky, who, inspired by the laws of movement of nature, systematized the call choreography free dance. Other very different meditative dances are those proposed by Osho in his dynamic meditations, the trance dance or the dance of the five rhythms, in which one reaches stillness after a catharsis. The beautiful and hypnotic whirling dance of the sufis or the sacred circular dances compiled by Bernhard Wosien in the seventies are examples of very different meditative dances, but which ultimately seek that feeling of union with something that goes beyond oneself. Other forms of dynamic meditation would be those in which we pay attention to our day-to-day actions, like when we pay attention to the act of eating.

stillness in motion

Movement and stillness are not exclusive poles, but rather what the Taoists would call complementary opposites. Neither can exist without the other. All movement is born from stillness and stillness is reached from movement. A balance between the two is necessary to calmly face any circumstance, since it is about flowing without losing your own center.

Meditating while remaining still allows you to feel the impulse of vital energy, the air of your breath going in and out, in the same way that meditating while your body moves opens the door to experience a greater inner stillness. In both cases a space of living silence is createda quiet space from which you can act freely.

Movement is natural to the human being. This not only cannot live without movement – ​​without the beating of the heart, the circulation of the blood or the swaying of the breath – but through it it is strengthened and expressed. Movement is part of the human essence and therefore can bring us closer to it. At the same time, it helps to train attention.

It allows focus on what is happening and attenuates difficulties that appear, especially at the beginning, in sitting meditation, such as boredom or drowsiness. That is perhaps why it has been used for centuries as a tool to meditate and quiet the chatter of the mind.

Be a dervish: spin and spin without holding on

One of the meditations that can best illustrate how to reach stillness through movement is the sema or whirling dance of the dervishes. Sufi students practice this dance for years, which they consider a very complex part of their training. In it the dervishes revolve around themselves and around the divinity personified in the teacher.

The dance attempts to reflect the cyclical nature of all things. and constitutes a mystical journey of union with God. The right arm is extended high with the palm facing up, and the left arm and hand are facing downward. The dancer thus becomes a mediator between the infinite and the finite, symbolically taking the energy from heaven, letting it pass through her heart and pouring it out onto the earth. By emptying himself and becoming a channel he lightens his ego. In all this movement there is something that remains unchanged and the sense of union is produced.

Trying to rotate for a long time on oneself with suitable music, one realizes that, in order to do it without losing balance, it is just as important work the roots of the body as its verticality, that is to say, to feel the support of the feet well and at the same time to be able to rise upwards as if a thread were pulling the crown of the head. It connects with the earth through the rhythm that guides the steps, and the elevation towards the sky allows it to turn and turn on its own axis as a piece of ceramic would on a potter’s wheel.

my dervish experience

The first day I tried the dance of the dervishes, everything around me was a continuous coming and going. A lamp, a column, another person who turns, a curtain. Once again, the lamp, the column, the other person turning, the curtain… Fixing my gaze on any of those elements, clinging to them for longer than the duration of my eyes, I unbalanced and unleashed dizziness.

Clinging to sensations also made me lose balance. If he paid too much attention to the dizziness, it would get worse. On the other hand, if he slowed down without giving it much importance, he subsided. The same was true for shoulder and back discomfort. It’s easy for that feeling to make you lose concentration, but you can rest your arms by crossing them over your chest.

See, let go and stay on the axis while dizziness and discomfort come and go. Little by little one melts into the music until drums and heartbeats seem to be one. There are moments when you are the music, which vibrates and expands. Everything changes, everything moves, even oneself, except for the center itself.

It is a very didactic experience meditation embodied in the body itself. Sitting, wandering thoughts can drag on and detract from meditation. Turning, it is necessary to let them go instantly.

dance and be the dance

The dances of the animal kingdom –such as the circles that bees draw to warn each other when they have found nectar or the courtship of cranes– indicate that the human desire to move rhythmically is rooted in the limbic system or “reptilian brain”, the most primitive and instinctive part of the brain.

The dance, especially if it is repetitive, could connect with our most animal part and calm the mental chatter that other parts of the brain control. This would explain why dance has had a transcendent meaning for human beings from its origins.

It is evident that not always when you dance you enter a meditative state, but the music and the performance of movements natural to the human being paying attention to the breath and how that music resonates inside the body can help to focus the attention and favor moments of connection.

“In that state you can live and express emotions without getting carried away by them. You connect with that presence that defines you and that goes beyond what you think and feel,” says Nuria Banal, a free dance teacher at the Marabal school in Barcelona.

Free dance is based on precise and structured movements that are natural to the human being and connect it with its essence. With Beethoven’s Claro de luna, a simple choreography is practiced that can be useful to those who want to meditate and in which the vertical and horizontal planes are symbolically united.

You walk in circles marking the four beats of the measure with your breath, your steps and the movement of your arms: first you raise your arms to the vertical, as if collecting energy; then the hands are brought to the solar plexus; then the hands are slightly separated from the body; and finally the arms are opened to the horizontal, as if the energy were released. At the end it starts again. Thus, a continuous circle in which each movement is breathed and the music is allowed to resonate inside and expand it.

Dancing into a trance

“Forget the dancer, the center of the ego, and become dance“, said Osho. No one knew how to exploit the concept of dynamic meditation like him.

Osho considered that for Westerners, unaccustomed to remaining still and concentrated, movement facilitated meditation. He also believed that a catharsis had to take place as an unavoidable previous step to meditate.

With these two ideas he created his Dynamic Meditation, in which through breathing, movements and sounds one goes from stillness to ecstasy and from this back to stillness. To this technique he added others that included dance, even a call whirling inspired by sufi dance.

in the catharsis the person is consciously carried away by emotion, chaos and experience; The goal is that, when they begin to give way, you can observe that there is a calm inside that it is not necessary to force it because it arises on its own.

The trance dance and the dance of the 5 rhythms

This discharge can be experienced in other dances that are practiced today for sometimes meditative purposes and inspired by shamanic dances, such as the “trance dance” or the dance of the 5 rhythms created by Gabrielle Roth.

In shamanic cultures, it was already danced as a means of entering a trance. The sound of the drums allowed access to altered states of consciousness that could provide experiences of ineffable unity and happiness.

life as meditation

Music, the voice of a yoga teacher or the performance of specific exercises can help direct attention to the movement and what is happening, but attention can be trained anywhere and at any time in everyday life. In this way all movement and all action can become a meditation.

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