According to Osho, the danger does not lie in dancing itself but in your inner stance. If you dance in surrender, forgetting the body and remembering the divine, no harm befalls you, and even 'harm' then becomes a blessing. But if you dance while fixated on weakness and fear, trouble is likely. Decide by your courage: either trust, let go, and dance, or, if fear dominates, refrain and care for yourself.
It’s not the jumping but your mindset: if you trust and forget your heart trouble, it’s okay; if you’re scared and thinking of your heart, don’t do it.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
A friend has asked: Osho, he has suffered from heart disease; will this dancing, this jumping be dangerous for his health?
It’s a little difficult to say, because it depends on many things. If he forgets the body and keeps only the divine in remembrance, then it can never be harmful. But if he does not remember the divine and keeps remembering the heart’s weakness, then it can be very harmful. It depends. Where is your attention? If you have forgotten your body, then no harm can ever befall you. And even if harm does occur, that too is a gain. To begin with, no harm can happen, because there is no reason. One who has surrendered his body wholly to the divine—his heart and its beating are no longer his responsibility; they are in the divine’s hands. And the same divine whose effortless presence keeps such a vast universe moving—there is no reason to think your heartbeat would not move by that very effortless presence. And if, in a moment…
Osho, I am not a dancer, but I love to dance. At times I would like to leap and twirl and stay in the air. But, Osho, I worry about enlightenment. Does an enlightened man dance?
You must have come from a Christian family so you don't have any idea that enlightened people have been of all kinds. It is a spectrum, the whole rainbow. There has been Krishna -- the dancer, the flute-player, the singer. There has been Chaitanya -- a mad dancer, he will dance and dance for hours, until he will fall in ecstasy; the joy will be so overflowing, uncontainable. There has been Jalaluddin Rumi who twirled -- he became enlightened while twirling. He whirled for thirty-six hours continuously, non-stop; then he fell, exhausted by the ecstasy, and when he opened his eyes the old man was gone and the new has arrived. It is Jalaluddin Rumi who founded the whirling dervishes and their whole beautiful tradition. There has been Meera in India, who danced to abandon, who danced from one village to another village, almost covering the whole north of India.…
My understanding is that dance, in the beginning, was born out of meditation. And I think all that is significant in life has had its origin in meditation. Meera did not have to go anywhere to learn dancing. People are mistaken if they think that Meera found God through dancing. Meera burst into dancing when she found God. The fact is otherwise: no one finds God through dancing, but one can dance if he finds God. What can a drop do but dance when a whole ocean enters into it? What can a beggar do but dance when he suddenly comes upon a treasure of infinite wealth? But man has been so much crushed and crippled by civilization that he cannot dance.
Osho, in meditation, should I dance, or should my body dance?
As yet, you are not there; for now only the body can dance. When you too arrive, then you can dance as well. Right now you are not; right now there is only the body. Why are you raising matters from a place where you are not? You have heard about the soul, but have you known it? You have read about the soul—have you experienced it? For now you are the body. For now the soul is only a dream. Can you make a dream dance? How will you make that which is not yet, dance? For now, let the body dance. Dance with what you have. Begin with the body. People come to me and say, “We want to take sannyas; but give us the inner—what is the use of the outer sannyas?” I tell them, where is your “inner” yet? I am ready to give you the…
It has been asked: “Even while living amid home and family, I feel that no one is really mine.”
It feels perfectly right, auspicious, true. But chances are your efforts are running in the opposite direction: you’re trying somehow to get rid of this aloneness; in fact, you want someone to truly be yours. Many will even reassure you, “We are yours,” but that’s only reassurance, consolation; you’re being lulled. Those who are not yours—how could they ever be? And how can anyone truly belong to anyone? However much a son tells his mother, “I am yours,” tomorrow the mother will die—the son won’t go with her. However much a husband says, “I am yours forever,” when the wife dies, the husband will not die with her. Who goes with whom? These are just words—necessary perhaps, because man is very restless. He needs the liquor of consolation; he needs an opium so he can sleep, so he can keep the notion that all are his. “What a full, brimming…