According to Osho, when you relax immediately after a wave of tension, the knot of contraction dissolves and your scattered energy returns to the center. Breath deepens, thoughts slow, and a clear, watchful awareness appears. The body-mind resets without residue or repression, turning the same energy that fueled anxiety into silence, sensitivity, and spontaneous intelligence.
If you calm down right away after feeling tense, the tightness melts and you feel clear and peaceful again.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
[A sannyasin who had been celibate for several months on Osho's suggestion, said she had been feeling very sexual lately and did not know what she should do about it.] Just do one thing whenever it happens again. Sit straight -- on a chair or on the floor -- with the spine straight, but loose and not tense. Inhale slowly and deeply. Don'tbe in a hurry; very slowly go on inhaling. The belly comes up first; you go on inhaling. The chest comes up next, and then finally you can feel that the air is filled up to the neck. Then for a moment or two just keep the breath in, for as long as you can without straining, then exhale. Exhale also very slowly but in the reverse order. When the belly is being emptied, pull it in so that all the air goes out.
In fact, anxiety is not anxiety then. It is as if you are solving a crossword puzzle. It creates anxiety but that's just a game. Or you are playing cards or chess. You know that the whole thing is created by you. Don't play the game -- get out of it! Nobody is forcing you to play it. You enter it on your own initiative, voluntarily, because you enjoy that sharpening, that state of tense consciousness. There is nothing wrong in it. But then the whole life is nothing but a chessboard and any moment you want to get out of it you can throw the board and finish the game. You have the key and you can move. Then problems are like toys and you play with them. So that is exactly the point to be understood.
Question: in hatha yoga there is an exercise in which one tenses every muscle in the body and then releases the tension and becomes relaxed. Is this similar to what happens in dynamic meditation?
You are not aware of the spiritual because you have so much tension in the body, so much tension in the mind. But if you are not tense in the physical and mental realms, you will automatically know the bliss of the spiritual, the relaxation of the spiritual. It comes to you; it has been waiting for you. Your whole attention is so absorbed by the physical and the mental that there is no attention left to divert to the spiritual. Only if the body and the mind are not tense can you delve into the spiritual, can you know the bliss of it. The spiritual is never tense; it cannot be. There is no spiritual tension, only bodily tension, only mental tension. Bodily tension has been created by those who, in the name of religion, have been preaching anti-body attitudes. In the West, Christianity has been emphatically antagonistic toward…
One winter day, a masterless samurai came to eisai's temple and made an appeal: 'I'm poor and sick,' he said, 'and my family is dying of hunger. Please help us, master.'
DEPENDENT AS HE WAS ON WIDOWS' MITES, EISAI'S LIFE WAS VERY AUSTERE, AND HE HAD NOTHING TO GIVE. HE WAS ABOUT TO SEND THE SAMURAI OFF WHEN HE REMEMBERED THE IMAGE OF YAKUSHI-BUDDHA IN THE HALL. GOING UP TO IT HE TORE OFF ITS HALO AND GAVE IT TO THE SAMURAI. 'SELL THIS,' SAID EISAI, 'IT SHOULD TIDE YOU OVER.' THE BEWILDERED BUT DESPERATE SAMURAI TOOK THE HALO AND LEFT. 'MASTER!' CRIED ONE OF EISAI'S DISCIPLES, 'THAT'S SACRILEGE! HOW COULD YOU DO SUCH A THING?' 'SACRILEGE? BAH! I HAVE MERELY PUT THE BUDDHA'S MIND, WHICH IS FULL OF LOVE AND MERCY, TO USE, SO TO SPEAK. INDEED, IF HE HIMSELF HAD HEARD THAT POOR SAMURAI HE'D HAVE CUT OFF A LIMB FOR HIM.' Even if you feel, or you think you feel, or you pretend that you feel, compassion, just go deep and analyze it and you will always find…
Please tell us something about the tensions and relaxation of the seven bodies.
Your body can be non-tense only when you are living a moment-to-moment existence. If you are eating and the moment has become eternity, then there is no past and no future. The very process of eating is all that is. You are not doing something; you have become the doing. There will be no tension; your body will feel fulfilled. Or if you are in sexual communion and the sex is not just a relief from sexual tension but, rather, a positive expression of love -- if the moment has become total, whole, and you are in it completely -- then you will know a positive well-being in your body. If you are running, and the running has become the totality of your existence; if you are the sensations that are coming to you, not something apart from them but one with them; if there is no future, no goal…