First Published October 2005 at www.travelblog.org/bloggers/gypsygal

It’s called “active meditation”.

Our facilitator, Selena Bulan, explained that this meditation technique is different from what we usually do at the tailend of our yoga class – where we sit down, cross our legs, our eyes closed, breathing in and out, reciting a mantra. In active meditation, we have to move, literally, and dance, with our eyes closed.

Dancing must be easy for Selena. Tall, slim, long curly hair, she generates an aura of natural born goddess. She’s a woman who can’t be loved and possessed because has to be adored and worshipped. She’s both earthy and spiritual.

Selena’s one woman who can dance well because she can just let go and be her own goddess self.

And me, I’m such a horrible dancer. I’m not surprised. Really. Reared in repressed, guilt-ridden Catholic environment. I was raised in a society which is unforgiving of free spirits. Conformity is the norm. It didn’t help that I spent over four years of life in Singapore – where the word “anal retentive” defines the national psyche.

But the active meditation, which Selena learned from the Osho ashram in Pune, India, allowed me to let go, unload the heavy baggage, and it just feels sooo light, so right.

We started with wriggling our bodies – which reminded me of someone who’s having an epileptic seizure. We stood up, with our eyes closed so we won’t feel self-conscious.

I bent and unbent my legs. I wriggled my hands, my flabby arms. My breasts bouncing freely, like beach balls. I swayed my neck. I took off my scrunchee and let my long thick wavy hair fall down.

Selena said we have to wriggle our bodies to let go of all the tension that’s holding us down.

And that’s just what happened. As I stood there, wriggling my body, I felt that I released this huge and heavy energy within me.

And then I danced.

My body suddenly remembered the long-forgotten moves which I learned from my belly dancing sessions in Singapore (I’m a belly dancing class drop out). I squeezed my tummy, and gradually, squeezed it out, undulating like a dancing snake. Then I swayed my hips to the left, and then to the right.

I rotated my hips, clockwise to form the letter s, counter clockwise to form another letter s – forming a spiral – the symbol of inifinity.

Then I shimmied — and my body – my breasts, hips, legs, arms —
released all those negative vibes which has kept me in my shell for such a long time.

I’m FREE!