Prema Jansen was born in 1942 in Kokomo, Indiana, U.S.A. A Catholic priest for 5 years, during his seminary training he earned a Master's degree in Theology and a Master's in Counseling from Indiana University. He went to Zurich in 1972 and, four years later, received his diploma from the C. G. Jung Institute.
He then went on to practice as an analyst in Sydney, Australia, for seven years, and was the president of The Jung Society for 3 years. He worked part time in a hospice in Darlinghurst, and conducted many workshops throughout the major cities of Australia. He has run trainings in Applied Jungian Psychology and worked for several government agencies as a therapist.
Recently, along with a friend, he set up the Diamond Heart Center for Healing and Meditation in Hilton, Western Australia, working with individual clients, running groups and teaching meditation.
My first experience of Osho Dynamic Meditation was in 1984. I can't remember specifics of the first few times I did it, except that, although it was very confronting and physically demanding, I knew it was valuable for me.
One of my early experiences that I do recall was breaking free energetically from what Jung called "the persona." I had understood intellectually that the persona was the mask that each of us develops to present ourselves to the world, and that most of us identify with it: we think we are that person we have created over the years.
The experience happened in this way. Each time I moved into the dancing stage of Dynamic, I felt as though people were looking at me, even though we were doing the meditation with our eyes closed. I felt awkward, stiff, and very inhibited in my movement. I also felt exhausted and had almost no energy to move.
During the third or fourth week I was dancing, feeling looked at in a critical way, as usual, when I suddenly realized that it was I watching myself critically. My persona, my belief, was, "You don't know how to dance, you're awkward; you look foolish." When I realized that this was only an image or the persona, the persona shattered and I experienced a huge burst of physical energy. My body literally danced me.
When the meditation finished I felt powerfully energized and thought, "I have just danced for the first time in my life."
This was a profound breakthrough in simply being relaxed in my body. From that time on I have felt more self-acceptance, not as an idea but as a body sensation.
Another significant experience was to become free of the identification with the physical body.
It is "normal" to think that I am my body, that I only have so much energy, that I don't extend past the boarders of my physical nature. But science shows us that the energy field of a human being extends well beyond the limits of the physical. My experience happened in the following way.
In the fourth stage of the Dynamic, you freeze in whatever position you are in and hold that position for 15 minutes. Each day I would have my arms straight up in the air and after a few minutes my shoulders would begin to experience excruciating pain, to the point that I would finally lower my arms. I kept forcing myself each day to hold my arms up longer, but couldn't go past about 5 minutes. This went on for several weeks and then, one morning when the pain had become unbearable and I was just getting ready to give up, the thought came into my head, "This is just my mind telling me it is painful." With that, within 15 seconds, the pain disappeared, and I have been able hold my arms up for the full 15 minutes ever since. And there is almost no pain at all.
This was a profound breakthrough and has affected my ordinary life in several ways. I used to define myself by my energy levels — "I am a person that gets tired at such and such a point, or after being awake for so long." I also defined myself by certain chronic pain — "This is all the pain I can bear; otherwise I will go crazy, lose control, die, etc."
Now when I move into complete exhaustion and through it, I discover new levels of who I am. And it is the same with pain. When I move into and through my pain I experience new levels of who I truly am, and so become free of the pain controlling me.
I've also noticed in recent weeks that I'm beginning to have sensations in my brain for the first time in my life. I'm realizing that Osho Dynamic Meditation can repair damaged electrical circuitry in the brain.
I have intuitively felt that epilepsy and migraine headaches are symptomatic of blocked energy and that the repeated movement into these experiences could result in a healing and the resultant expansion of consciousness. Now I sense that I am having this experience for myself. Recently, in Dynamic, I am moving into and through the most severe contraction and traumatic pain of an early childhood experience. As a result I am beginning to feel sensation in the brain itself.
Another valuable lesson I have learnt from Osho Dynamic is that when I feel the strongest resistance to doing it — e.g. "I'm too tired; I feel too sick; I need to keep all my energy for the extra busy day ahead, etc. etc." — that is when I get the most from it.
I've learnt that it is at these moments that something is already bubbling up from my unconscious that I haven't yet felt. Sure enough, it surfaces in Dynamic, and then I feel supercharged afterward. It is just like a good rebirthing session where you have transformed a negative experience from the past and have access to all that new energy.
I would like to share one final experience and it is around the blending of male and female energies within — "The Inner Marriage," as Jung symbolically describes it.
I began to notice that if I jumped up and down using my toes I could maintain a strong energy through the entire 3rd stage, the Hoo. But if I landed on the flats of my feet, I tended to stop and rest for a second or two. I began to see the first mode as a use of my male energy and the second mode as my female energy.
One morning after this insight dawned on me, I noticed that I was moving back and forth between male and female energy and the duration of each was becoming shorter and shorter, until finally the two merged and I felt an incredible explosion of energy. This was my first real physical experience of the blending of the male and female. Up until this time it had been more or less a concept in my mind, but now it was beginning to alter how I experienced life physically and energetically.
So now each day that I do Dynamic, something new and different happens. It is never the same, never predictable...just like life itself! And I am so grateful.
To read accounts by two psychotherapists using the Active Methods in their work ...Meditation as an Aid to Self-Diagnosis and ...Stepping Out of the Circle
...Back For More Perspectives on Dynamic
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Prema Jansen
Diamond Heart Center
Hilton, Western Australia
