According to Osho, worries about ‘affecting the nerves’ are mostly fear. Any genuine practice will produce an effect—that’s precisely its purpose: to shake and transform your energy. Rather than avoiding intensity, enter it consciously and totally; let awareness, not fear, guide you, and the effects become a doorway to growth rather than a problem.
Don’t be scared; real practice changes you, so do it fully and watchfully.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Won’t doing it forcefully affect the nerves?
All these things people say—yes, all of them—are nothing but our fears. There will be an effect; why wouldn’t there be? Of course there will be an effect. The whole point is for there to be an effect.
Osho: No, no, not at their expense. Tell them about this method. They themselves will feel it. They will certainly feel the change, the transformation. Let them practise it--just as an experiment with their disturbed mind, their doubts. Let them experiment, just as an experiment. If 'something' happens, then the practice goes by itself. There is no need to convince them. And, the anarchy that is within must be exploded. It should not be stilled or cramped down. It must be expressed in total intensity. The calmness, the serenity, the Nirvana comes not by stilling the mind but by explosion. Then the stillness comes but it is not a cultivated composure. Express what you are, totally. Of course that means madness, because we are mad. So, if you express it, the madness will come out. Even you yourself will feel strange about it, unknown to yourself.
Osho, you also said that this is a method of transformation through extremes. So you take us to the extreme of tension so that the extreme of relaxation becomes available. Then is Kundalini practice a practice of tension?
Absolutely, it is a practice of tension. Absolutely, it is a practice of tension. In fact, any practice of energy will be a practice of tension. Energy itself means tension. Where there is tension, there energy is produced. Just as we have generated such immense energy from the atom—because we put even the subtlest particle under tension; split it into two parts and put both under tension. So the entire practice of energy is a practice of tension. If you understand it rightly, tension itself is energy; what you call tension is energy.
When you sculpt an image it is aggression on the stone, on the rock; you start cutting the rock. Whenever you create something first you have to destroy, but it should not be for the sake of destruction; that's all that has to be remembered. The end should always be creation; destruction can be used as a means. And you have that energy in you. If you become afraid of it then you will be afraid of yourself. If you don't use it, if you keep it away from yourself, then you will feel like collapsing. Because it is your energy, so when you are expressive you feel good and when that disappears and you become more feminine, you feel hollow, empty, collapsing, caving in. Your prominent energy is male.
Is there some kind of hypnosis involved in the technique?
The moment a person begins to experiment with this method there is no question of belief or faith, there is no question of hypnosis. The contrary is the case: we have hypnotized ourselves into believing that we are normal and sane human beings. This is the hypnosis! The whole world is a great madhouse and we have hypnotized ourselves into thinking that we are sane, normal. But the insanity that is hidden in the background always tries to come out: it erupts, it explodes out of us in dreams. It explodes out of us when we are intoxicated. LSD or mescaline cause an explosion of madness, but the explosion does not come from the LSD or mescaline, and dreams do not create the madness either. Drugs or dreams just uncover your self, the authentic being that is within you. That is why, for a sadhaka, a seeker, it has been…