Articles about Navanita's Work
The Rhythm of Life is a Powerful Beat - or - Dancing With the Cows
A life force was flowing through my heart, blood and bones that was the same as the animals i was running with .We were on Australian land and I was an athlete with a well trained body . A farmers daughter discovering a mystery in life that danced through me. It was the same as what danced through the cows and sheep that I was herding. I could sense within me the moves they were about to do before they did them. We were not seperate, we were dancing in harmony - as one body. I knew where to be to stop the cow before she began to break out from the herd.
I had a sense of knowing where to be in the right place at the right time. A non-verbal language which helped me to guide a herd through even the smallest gateway easily. I was discovering that the life force pulsing through me was a guiding force that is shared by all beings on the planet. It was like being connected with an inner guidance. This life force is love in movement (Liebeskraft).
Movement is everywhere and at all times. Movement is the source of life and movement is the source of dance. It is the motion of our cells, the pulse of our blood, the rhythm of our breath. It is also the ocean waves rising and falling and the alternating rhythm of day and night. I learned to use this life force to dance with nature. And I was overwhelmed when I discovered that rocks were pulsing with life like myself. When I am dancing in nature i am part of it and nature is dancing through me.
Listen to your body.
The body has a great wisdom in it.
If you listen to it,you will always be right.
The Discipline of Transcendence
The ocean became a mystical dance, empowering the dance with an ecstatic celebration connected to an ancient life pulse. While dancing in the Australian bush it was also connecting me to a deep ancient rhythm of earth. Aboriginal tunes were singing and dancing through me that I had never heard before and yet at the same time seemed so familiar. add the story here when danced on the rock with a drummer Through dancing with nature I accessed my own nature hidden deep within me. It was like remembering a force of life that is at the same time ancient and very much here in the moment. It makes sense after all: we live in bodies that have taken millions of years to evolve.
To let this dance with nature happen I have to drop any expectations of what it should or shouldn't look like - and, for sure, drop concern about what other people might think of me. To become one with the dance means to be connected to the rhythm of existence. That which is dancing through us also creates a connection between human beings who are dancing together. The life force unites bodies that only appear to be seperated. I have seen it time after time in my dancing events and groups . Everyone is a dancer and when dancing together a force of life is uniting to create a tribal spirit. I delight in supporting the discovery that everyone is a dancer and that life is always celebrating itself through us all. Just there are some who forget.
I am also inviting some people to dance who have forgotten how to play and let go. My own easiness with playfulness supports others resonating with their own. Everyone has it - a natural light aliveness. A little encouragement and soon stiffness and control through social conditioning can melt into a joyful and innocent dance. When teaching I often experience that people who have never thought that they can dance easily and naturally flow into allowing the dance. Personality frames melt at the edges and something begins to magically happen. Dance just seems to take over and the bodies flow and play. It is contagious.
Love your body and you will fell a relaxation such as you have never felt before.
Love is relaxing.When there is love ,there is relaxation.If you love someone-,
if, between you and him or you and here there is love-then with love comes the music of relaxation.
Then relaxation is there .
The same phenomenon happens if you love your body;you become relaxed, you care about it.
It is not wrong, it is not narcissitic to be in love with your own body.
In fact it is the first step toward spirituality.
"Meditation:The Art of Ecstacy"
The amazing and wonderful thing is that it connects a room full of dancing bodies together with life force that is flowing through and between the dancers. This creates a unification which is nourishing. The dancers get filled up with the overflowing life force that has been generated together. Letting go and allowing life to dance through us needs trust. And trusting is an art. Life teaches us step by step how to stay in tune with it. By this dance is just happening without any effort. Life has its own unique rhythm and its easy to feel when we are connected with it. What i call a big training for dancing with life came through a bus accident. What for some may have been a horror movie, became to me an amazing offer from existence to really experience how powerful life's dance is. I was travelling on a sleeping bus over easter in India . There was already a knowing that something was about to happen when i entered the bus .As we drove into the night and the stars were dancing brightly in the huge Indian sky i felt myself inside preparing for something new .
The body and mind were relaxed and yet anticipating. When we began to roll over and down a hill i heard a clear voice inside: "This is the next Step in your Dance". Oh yes this is what i had been waiting for. I giggled when I woke up in a funky hospital and heard the voice of the radiologist: " Madam, your head is OK! ". My legs however were badly broken. "We need to operate on you", said the doctor, "and give you blood transfusions - otherwise you will die". The treatment was rough but it did not touch the life force that i was busy watching. It had not left me when I left my body right after the accident. And when I came back into my body I felt it very strongly. During the healing time i lay in intensive care (by now in another hospital with lots of loving friends around ) with broken legs, back and ribs. I was amazed at how much pain the body could handle and be alive. In my crumpled body the life force remained untouched. It was dancing a powerful dance. I was full of grace and gratitude. I felt as if i had tuned into a celebration of life and I discovered that this dancing life force is the power of healing. Always pulsing in and through each cell.
Renewing itself with this mysterious life source. As my body lay quite immobilised the toes continued their joyful dance. Delightful to feel the life spirit dancing a wordless message, encouraging the body to keep dancing for its very life . And although the body was not able to move much, the toes started to move very slowly and continuosly. The dancing toes connected with the flow of the life force and eventiually wellness happened. Step by step the dance continues and the body is being moved by a life force.Whatever happens and no matter what physical movements the body makes its always dancing through the body.Dance is life and life is dance. Teaching ,sitting,walking,talking,eating,cleaning,resting.....its all a dance. There is still gratitude for that bliss energy inside which keeps quietly expanding DAnce is a path to focus on and remember
The Rhythm of Life is a Powerful Beat.
LOVE IS THE HEALING POWER LOVE IS HEALING, HEALING IS LOVE
Love Is In The Air....I was in the air ...only the I was fulI of love and i had no body.I had left the body and was in an expanded space of ,bliss ,freedom,.isness or being space It was a vast and peaceful space only at that time there were no words for it .” Love” was a word that came after i had c’ome back in to the body and could actually describe the experience with words. The word itself of course is undefinable yet to keep things simple ..i can call “it “Love. . Whatever it is ,it feels good anyway!
The bus i was travelling in had rolled down a hill and turned upside down . Luckily it was in India so there was a spiritual flavour in the air .I was out of the bodies form and free from it, yet i knew the body lying smashed in the bus below me was mine . Compassion filled the empty space as i recognised the crumpled body lying below .There was a pull of love .to return to it. I consciously checked in, examining its damage. I was sensing wether the condition of the body was a safe enough place to return to.The valuation was given the “O.K”. . On Returning to the body the space of freedom from the body ......“peace and,love “ was still present. Again ,there were no words, However there was a clear “knowing” that i had chosen to come back to “Learn to Live Love”
.This body on this earth was a teacher or vehicle to learn the art of love .This was a stable anchor and a clear focus in the healing journey that followed .Learning to love was healing and healing was living love .They were not seperate.I did not know how the healing would happen, and at the same time i trusted that i would be guided in the healing . I had the gift of watching the mystery of an unseen and fully present source of life and love grow a smashed body back to being whole again. The journey was a door to anchoring in trust ing in the power of love as a mysterious healing source The healing journey was about receiving and listening to inner guidance.I was being taught how to take care and support the healing .
The most important thing was to practice staying connected to this state of love or spaciousness on the inside Another word is being whole .It became clear it was a healing journey on an physical level as well as emotionally and spiritually.From the near death i had connected to an undestanding that what ever has not been completed needs to be ,to support the capacity of love to grow.TO live love. Conscious relaxation became a dailly meditation first thing in the morning .Letting go of tensions in the body helped me stay connected with the inner space of relaxation.Soft stretching (which was sometimes interesting with all sorts of gadgets ,tubes and odds and ends attached to me body .It was always possible.
Noticing where there was tension in the body and consciously letting it go. It was helping relaxation grow and it did By focusing the body mind on remembering its natural stat e of being easy or relaxed affected the nervous system and it became easier to simply relax.By taking the awareness inside and recognising tension without fighting ior judging it created a gentle space of love and expansion.The edges of the tension gently dissolved .After stretching into relaxation the 2nd phase of the meditation was jibberish to help the mind relax to laughing to help the heart relax and let go of tensions .From here i would consciously rest in the spaciousness that happend inside the body and then ask the wisdom of the body what was needed for healing.
There was always a trust that the guidance or love that w as always focused on healing .I just had to ask for help.It was a natural state of being to return to health. From the “leaving the body “experience i had understood to live love meant that i and to complete and let go of olde wounds or stories that were stopping me living love . When i did then i could fall back into the healing space from within..I began to become aware that there were olde wounds or memories stored in the cells of the body .To bring conscious to them was to support letting them go I guess you can say they are tensions stored in the cells and in the body.
So, one morning during the deep relaxation phase of the meditation when i asked the inner healer what was needed i felt the sentence “ I need love “I understood this and the olde me would at this point run away from it .i had made an effort to get love through many games my whole life .Now lying here in the bed with 2 broken legs and a broken back i had nowhere to run HMMMM MAy as well face it ! There were protected places that were not open for love . So i had to prepare for an adventure into finding the clues.IT felt as if steell walls appeared all around me and i hung suspended in space at the same time . I prepared to go in !IT was like strapping myself into a parachute and a scuba diving outfit at the same time readying to unlock the door of the fortress.I felt as if i had been running from this my whole life .
I had been playing games my whole life to “get love” to be good enough for it or get approval. i gathered courage to continue leting go of the old ideas of love and creating space for the new .I had already seen by being completey physically incapacitated that i had to receive instead of” giving to get,which had been the olde “love “programme ” I was learning to “get ‘ without the games . .I had been watching my friends actually enjoying to give When they took care of me they were feelig good and connecting to their own love . So,i was already letting go of the belief that love happens through effort or doing something to make it happen . .. i moved through many layers in the next days . “love “ had many tangents and trapped beliefs As i stepped in to the first layer shame hung in the air and.. was sluggish and took alot of space .A belief that it was not Ok to even feel that i needed it. In this case feeling became the healing . I Felt it ...and it disappeared.I surfaced took a fresh breath and then took another dive into “i need love “ with the full intention and trust that by feeling it healing was happening. Next came shaky ground... .lifewas trembling .
That which i had been familair with and had been standing on as solid ground was falling away and crumbling. My identity with the person i had thought i was no longer stood firm.Memeories and pictures came This life source that was trapped in holding onto olde wounds was becoming available for healing by letting them go . I lay in the bed with the bed covers pulled up around my ears ...humiliation was all that existed .Then complete not knowing if any other way would be possible . I only appeared to exist as a “NEED BLOB””.STill behind all this was TRUST and GO ON i could hear . At this point a friend appeared in my room and i could only mummble “i Am onLy a need Blob “’’and splutter “my whole reality in this moment is that my whole life has only been about creating ways to get love “ I felt totally engulfed in it ..and yet could still describe the reality i was watching and feeling in this moment . “im here watching . “He did not try to console me which was a relief and felt respectful.
He left me to it and i continued to dive . What happened was gentle . LAyers continued to unfold and at the end the last one where the The power and intensity of the embarassment had taken so much life source space dissolved and space expanded inside . The same space of peace that i knew and loved and yet more delicate and fragile unfolded. Very innocent.IT was a space i could call love . It was new . It did not move outside or reach out. It seemed to be gently growing from where there had been darkness.A GENTLE LIGHT WAS NOW GLOWING AND felt warm and comfortable . A safe space to quietly rest in. The healing journey when the body is damaged -needs alot of care and respect.
When healing means to look at beliefs and feelings on what is stopping living love -it can take energy that is needed physically for the body. I had to be very careful not to overload the nervous system. I was learning to love and listen to myself and my needs as the journey continued. Resting,integrating,physical care,nourishment,exercise ,sleep,creativity humour,fun with friends and flowing with life are part of learning the art of love . IT meant learning what i really needed ,not what i was told was good or imposed from outside Loving myself meant allowing feelings to resolve and it needed a clarity that did not throw them out to gid rid of them Just feeling them and then the trapped olde protecting energy was released from the cells as a healing .life and love force The body is a beautiful guide andvery clear signals from the body began to let me know when i was falling in to olde “unloving “patterns .
For example when i caught myself wanting love from the outside one time then sharp pain happened in my legs. i found that when i touched myself the pain went away.So, i explored loving myself through touching myself .Very nourishing. and very easy for the love to continue to flow inside . Access or focus on healing is the same as being real TO love and take care of myself was like being a new born child Practicing and learning daily what supported love and returning to Innocence. I had a song i loved “Return to Innocence “It helped me to resource in the space of love ANother song i loved and played was “I wanna know what love is “....for obvious reasons .
The focus to live love has created a never ending dance Many many forms and offers to help love dance through this body and a trust that whatever comes is an offer from existence to enrich and help continue the flow of love . When i discoverd that i had hepatitus C there was a knowing again that, . WOW we had another trail to follow to find the clues directed to the soure of love .Again i took it as an offer that the signals of the disease had something to help me , to feel and let go to create space for love . Strong and deep feelings revealed what had been lingering in the cells ..
The feelings were alot to do with the dance of relating and living love with friends and loved ones .Inwardly and outwardly letting go of olde wounds and expressing and honouring the love that flows between and through the loved ones My hepatitus C is now healed and gone and with the healing came new understandings of what living love is.I did not take any drugs to”get rid of it “. and now all test results are clear The symptoms are gone as love comes dancing through . There are many journeys still about learning the art of living love .Celebration of life is loving life and this is always the essentiial .ingredient . I am alive that is a gift of love .
The art is learning how to live it.Life is a dance of love .
How will you know that someone is religious?
If you see in his step there is a dance, know that he is religious
"The Divine Melody
Relaxation-Just Being Natural
An alive colourful setting .I was sitting in our beautiful garden scribbling,writing and rewrtiting.Simultaneously the life source was bursting through the flowers,blossoms,bees and birds , perfumes filled the air and a concert of birds were singing of the awakening of spring .Nature was unfolding its magestic power. At the same time ,with the same force was the ever present stillness. Its an alive silence and stillness..a constant rememberance of the life power that is pulsating through the trees,the blossoms and the earth that is noursihing the budding nature.When i look up into the blue sky its there too, alive with its vastness and spaciousness. An open, endless sky that has no limits, i cannot touch it and yet it is there always .Life source eminent and alive in all. Remembering this potent alive , stillness and silence as my nature , Remembering this connection to the source as a point of relaxation A place where we are at home inside .
So, i explored ,sitting in the beautiful garden with its carpet of yellow dandelion flowers, the gentle wind dancing in the trees and the warmth of the sun softening and melting tensions in my body. I noted a sense of not feeling seperate from this. My mind is active as i write this article .I had been playing ,...sensing ,scribblingi ideas ,chatting about relaxation...... A sense of no-time, no mind and a not having a to do ?ist.That slowed down time , a timeless space .Until i eventually realized that timeless space needed some organizing into something constructive .There was actually a time that this article needed to be written by, which was very close to the before now time .Meaning i was late with handing the article in.
I could now watch a time pressure from the outside . and how it affected the natural state of relaxation What happened physically was a contraction in the belly, the breathing became shallow and energy seemed to be squeezed from the centre of my body and went to the periphery ,to my arms and legs which wanted to push away and run away from the tension and time pressure . My head became unclear and could not function with any creative ideas. In body tanguage this meant i had been activated through external pressure. I had the thing many people nowadays seem to have ....a more and more common symptom called Stress.Its caused by being busy here in the present and wanting to be there in the future Stress happens when this moment in itself is not lived for now , In our ?usynessness? lives we often are busy with the intention to get into the future . Getting caught in the idea when you have finished work ..then you can relax or .when you have finished the project in front of you ..be it in the office or housework .then you can have fun .
OR, getting mad at the slow traffic and blaming it for stopping you being somewhere OR for being somewhere and thinking you should be somewhere else .All ideas that there is another place you should be other than now . So...to begin with relaxation it is good to BEGIN WITH AWARENESS . Simply become aware of where you are in this moment for bringing the focus that was on the outside of you back to being right here. in yourself . So thats what i played with as i sat in the garden where i had been in paradise ,one with existence,in other words totally relaxed...I had wandered off into a land of effort and tension in the head....I took a deep breath and landed ?lop? back home? inside my body.Ahh... a sense of relief...At the same time ..please note .i did not try and relax.... I actually used the energy to create .So ,tension need not be misunderstood as something to get rid of .It had motivated me to use the energy creatively...which i am doing right now as i continue to write this article. You can make relaxation happen It happens because its our very nature We have often forgotten and become identified on becoming ... rather than simply BEING OURSELVES? When there is a continual focus on...
How to become something because you have the idea that then you will be happy or then you will find peace is saying to yourself that you are not Ok the way you are Wether its about having A better personality , improoving your work skills, becoming a better lover or even the trying to become a better meditator it is creating a seperation from being where you are in this moment. Shift the FOCUS and REMEMBER your natural state of BEING. is EMBODIED here BEING EMBODIED... Awareness supports relaxation...you can experience yourself in your body right now ...Breathing is always of course easy to sense and feel and its happening all of the time . A little stop in the day or even during your activity and notice where the breath touches the nostrils ,mouth ,lungs ,belly.How the diaphragm continues its expansion and contraction and supports the lungs filling up and emptying out .That you return your awareness to the body creates an immediate let go of the focus or distractions on the outside and away from yourself and you can return to .Inhabiting your own body and its innate wisdom .Relaxation begins with awareness.Notice ,sense feel and be in your own body .The dance of the heart and its contact with the parts that are supporting it AS the heart beats it affects and creates movement withln and all around itself such as the connections and attachments to it .The valves moving in and out ,the surrounding fluids supporting and protecting it with their continual movement. Notice the back of the heart,surrounded and protected by the rib cage The heart is in a continual dance with your whole body It is always here.Through sensing yur own body something slows down and there is a return to settling within your own skin YOu practice staying connected to being at ease and at home with yourself no matter what is happening around you and and this affects the quality of life that you are living WHEREVER YOU GO YOU ARE THERE..YOUR LUGGAGE IS ANOTHER STORY .
Remembering your natural state of relaxation. I heard myself say once (probably more than once ) when i am doing Nothing? and realized this is actually not possible You cant do relaxation ...you can support yourself being relaxed...Just as I dont do a dance... Dance happens I dont do a meditaion ,Meditation happens This idea that we have to do something to be ourselves creates a continual state of Dis Ease Relaxation is just dropping in and being ourselves The very consciousness and awareness you bring to the body empowers this WHO IS BETTER QUALIFIED TO BE YOURSELF THAN YOU? FInd a comfortable position and look inside Telling the body you are here .Sensing the body from the tip of the toes to the top of the head moving consciously through Notice where there is tension,relaxation ,expansion or contraction.Notice what is without interpreting it as good or bad That very presence is already awakening the relaxation from within .When you noticie where there is a tension Speak to it in a friendly way and send a message that its OK to let go now . Maybe there was a time when tension was needed Now you are here to take care.It? not that you just feel better when you dop the tensions - its that you develop a trust and confidence in yourself,that you can stay present and support relaxation as a quality as a way of living your life.Surrender to the state of being relaxed and learn to practice its art. You can do this as a meditation at an alocated time of the day or spontaneouslly during your daily life by stopping and remembering for a second or for a few moments Give energy and focus to the times when you are relaxed . This awareness you carry in daily life .Walk,eat,talk in a relaxed and easy way . .THIS WAY YOU CAN TAKE RELAXATION AS A PATH TO STAY PRESENT It need not become another thing to perfect or make into a skill. Approach relaxation as an art of loving and taking care of yourself .
Our life will have the quality of dance to it. the whole of existence is dancing - except man. the whole of existance is in a very relaxed movement. Movement there is certainly - but it is utterly relaxed. Stress are growing and birds are chirping and rivers are flowing, stars are moving, everything is going in a relaxed way.
No hurry, no haste, no worry and no waste.
Osho