It so often happens in the Winter holiday season that we go “home” or to relatives, parents, or loved ones—loaded not only with presents, but with all sorts of expectations, hopes, and unfulfilled longings from the past. The early darkness and cold weather conspire to bring up our deeper, darker layers of feeling.

• Give space to these sometimes troubling feelings in the safety of a closed space that can be yours for 1 hour.
• Be alone in a room, dimly lit and warm enough. Light a candle…
• Let each stage be either 5 minutes, or 10 or 15. Whatever fits for you at the moment, but four equal stages, totaling  20, 40, or 60 minutes.
• Use suitable music that touches you, for a background. Feel and express whatever needs to be thrown out from your body. Move whatever is energetically stuck inside, especially around the heart, the throat, and the belly.

Stage 1: Standing, Shaking, like in Kundalini Meditation.

Stage 2: Sitting or standing and Laughing out loud for no reason; and if tears are there, cry, weep, grieve for no reason, don’t force, and keep the body moving, let it change; either laughter or tears.

Stage 3: Sitting, Swaying like seaweed in the ocean — hug yourself and/or a pillow; softly say whatever your heart needs to say, to whomever.

Stage 4: Lie down, relax, be still and watchful.

The Chakra Breathing Meditation is one of my all-time favorite meditations. It is not one created by Osho, but in the late 80s he gave his stamp of approval to include a new recording of Chakra Breathing in his collection.

There are many benefits from practising Chakra Breathing Meditation, particularly for people who have participated in Pulsation or Tantric Pulsation groups/Trainings. This meditation keeps the body moving and the energy flowing, and it also gives a way to focus your attention inside your own body to feel what happens there when you breathe so intensely.

By breathing deeply and fairly quickly into the chakras, we charge the segments with energy while we move and pulsate that part of the body. This promotes a vertical connection between all the chakras, and offers a taste of inner wholeness as energy flows more easily up and down the spine.

Phase 1: Breathe into the chakras, one by one, starting with the first at the sex center, swinging the pelvis in rhythm with the breath. Move up to the next chakra each time the music moves up a tone, and a bell rings.

While breathing into the chakras:
1) visualize the chakra filling with breath and emptying—pulsating.
2) vibrate a soft sound inside the chakra as you breathe out.
3) breathe, if you can, in the same rhythm as the background music.
4) swing your pelvis backwards with the in-breath, and forwards with the out-breath, letting hands and arms move loosely and rhythmically to support the breathing.

     “The first thing is to learn respect for the body, to unlearn all the nonsense that has been taught to you about the body. Otherwise, you will never turn on, and you will never turn in, and you will never turn beyond. Start from the beginning. The body is your beginning.
    The body has to be purified of many repressions. A great catharsis is needed for the body, a great rechana. The body has become poisoned because you have been against it, you have repressed it in many ways. Your body is existing at the minimum, that’s why you are miserable. Tantra says: Bliss is possible only when you exist at the optimum--never before it. Bliss is possible only when you live intensely. How can you live intensely if you are against the body?
    You are always luke-warm. The fire has cooled down. Down the centuries the fire has been destroyed. The fire has to be rekindled.
    Tantra says: First purify the body—purify it of all repressions. Allow the body energy to flow, remove the blocks. It is very difficult to come across a person who has no blocks, it is very difficult to come across a person whose body is not tight. Loosen this tightness—this tension is blocking your energy; the flow cannot be possible with this tension.”

From: The Tantra Vision, Volume 2, Chapter 7

Last month at the week-long Osho Risk Summer Festival in Denmark, I re-confirmed my deep trust in the alchemy of celebration. Milarepa was there with his band, and I saw, yet again, how dancing, singing, meditating together, playing, laughing, and feasting together creates an energy field that lifts the consciousness of everyone within it, to new heights, towards light.

When I arrived there I was harried, depleted, and nearly - no actually - depressed from traveling so much, and felt in need of a break. “Where”, I asked myself, “am I going to find the juice to lead my events”?

But with no time to think, I jumped into a whirlwind week of Tantric events, singing in the Evening Meeting, Heart Dance, playing in the Cabaret show, parties, incredible food, hugs galore…a veritable love feast!

I saw, within myself as the week progressed, a gradual inner movement towards light, happiness and joy, that welled up naturally. I felt deeply nourished and "simple at heart" in a way that gave me courage to be myself. Now, several weeks later I am still surrounded by the fragrance of meditation and celebration that we all created together at Osho Risk.

Don’t miss your local Osho celebration/festival—feel the love, smell the flowers!
Many Osho Centers have Festivals and Celebrations throughout the year, and in Italy, August Festivals abound.

"So start this breathing. And enjoy it. Just by sheer breathing you can come to a subtle orgasm in the whole body. The whole body can be infused with new energy. You can vibrate all over and you can see many parts of your body that you have denied. becoming alive again."

From: Darshan Diaries, The Cypress in the Courtyard, Chapter 8