:: HEALTH ::

RELAXATION :THE ART OF LET GO

To relax is a unique individual activity. While some may find sports relaxing, others find them stressful. Napping or reading a good book might be your idea of relaxation, but the inactivity might drive your best friend crazy. Finally, many people need, or want, a structured relaxation program, such as meditation, martial arts, or yoga, while others prefer to be spontaneous and avoid structure at any cost. 
Osho shares "A relaxation which has been managed is not much of a relaxation. There is bound to be a subtle tension around it -- you are holding it. You can sit silently, still, but deep down you are very tense, you are holding yourself still -- no movement. This is not stillness, this is fake. Stillness should be natural."

Read on as Osho brings out the essence of relaxation.

"I am not against work; work has its own utility -- but only utility. It cannot become your life's all and all. It is an absolute necessity that you need food, that you need clothes, that you need a shelter. Work, but don't become addicted to work. The moment you are out of work, you should know how to relax. And it does not need much wisdom to relax; it is a simple art. And it is very simple because you already knew it when you were born; it is already there, it just has to be made active from its dormant position. It has to be provoked.
All methods of meditation are nothing but methods to help you to remember the art of let-go. I say remember, because you knew it already. And you know it still, but that knowledge is being repressed by the society.
Simple principles have to be remembered: The body should be the beginning. Lying down on your bed -- and you lie down on your bed every day, so nothing special is necessary -- when you lie down on the bed, before sleep comes, start watching with closed eyes the energy from your feet. Move from there -- just watch inside: Is there some tension somewhere? in the legs, in the thighs, in the stomach? Is there some strain, some tension? And if you find some tension somewhere, simply try to relax it. And don't move from that point unless you feel the relaxation has come.
Go through the hands -- because your hands are your mind; they are connected with your mind. If your right hand is tense, the left side of your brain will be tense. If your left hand is tense, the right side of your brain will be tense. So first go through the hands -- they are almost the branches of your mind -- and then reach finally to the mind.
When the whole body is relaxed the mind is already ninety percent relaxed, because the body is nothing but extensions of the mind. Then the ten percent tension that is in your mind... simply watch it, and just by watching the clouds will disappear. It will take a few days for you; it is a knack. And it will revive your childhood experience, when you were so relaxed.
Have you ever watched? Children go on falling every day, but they don't get hurt, they don't get fractures. You try it; whenever the child falls you also fall.
One psychoanalyst was trying some experiment. He announced in the newspapers, "I will pay enough money if somebody is ready to come to my house and just follow my child for the whole day. Whatever my child does, you have to do that."
A young wrestler turned up and he said, "I am ready; where is the child?"
But by the middle of the day the wrestler was flat on his back. He had already got two fractures, because everything that the child was doing he had to do. And the child got excited: This is strange! So he would jump unnecessarily, and the wrestler had to jump; he would climb the tree, and the wrestler had to climb; and he would jump from the tree, and the wrestler had to jump. And this continued. The child completely forgot about food, about anything; he was enjoying so much the misery of the wrestler.
By the afternoon the wrestler simply refused. He said to the psychoanalyst, "Keep your money. This child of yours will kill me by the end of the day. I am already ready to go to the hospital. This child is dangerous. Don't do this experiment with anybody else."
Every child has so much energy, and still he is not tense. Have you watched a child sleeping? Have you watched a child just sucking his own thumb, enjoying it, dreaming beautiful dreams? His whole body is in a deep let-go.
It happens -- it is a known fact -- every day, all over the world, drunkards fall but they don't get fractures. Every morning they are found in some gutter and brought home. But it is a strange fact that they go on falling....
I have heard about a drunkard who was coming home and got hit on the head by an electric pole. He looked at the pole and he saw at least eight poles. He said, "My God, how am I going to reach home?"
He tried this way and that way, but nothing helped. Every time the same electric pole would hit him hard. Finally he shouted for help. A policeman came and asked, "What is the matter?"
He said, "I am surrounded by electric poles and I cannot get out. And you know my wife! I have to reach home. It has been almost two hours that I have been struggling! Who has made this? -- because in the day I saw that there was only one electric pole!"
The policeman took him out from those imaginary poles. He had been struggling for two hours, but he was not hurt, because a drunkard is relaxed.
I have known accidents in which only drunkards remained unhurt; everybody else was hurt.
Once a train fell from a bridge -- that happens two, three times almost every year in India. Bridges simply collapse, particularly the newly built bridges, because there are so many people to be bribed before you can get the government permission to build the bridge, that finally the constructor, the builder, has to take money out of the bridge -- he has spent so much. You have to bribe almost every person who is concerned.
Naturally he does not use cement, but only sand. So the first time the train comes on the bridge... with the bridge the whole train goes into the river.
Just near my village, once it happened. I rushed to see: only one man had remained without being hurt, and that was the village drunkard. When I saw him he asked me, "What has happened? In fact, I don't know why I was traveling in this train. Some idiots put me in the train. I resisted, but before I could get out the train moved and then suddenly I found myself swimming in the river. I don't know what happened in the middle. The middle portion of the story is completely missing!"
I said, "You just come home with me, because everybody else has to go to the hospital." A few people were unconscious, a few had died, a few had many fractures, multiple fractures. Everybody was in a mess except that drunkard, who was asking me, "What has happened?"
I took him back home. He was asking me on the way, again and again..."You can tell me, I will not tell anybody."
I said, "I don't know. You were on the train."
He said, "That I know. I remember a few people had pushed me in the train. And I was absolutely reluctant, because I didn't want to go anywhere. I was going to my home! I thought perhaps the train is going towards my home. And then finally I found myself in the river. But in a way it is good, because for at least two, three months I have not taken a bath. And the cold water in the river has also made my senses come back. I am a little conscious."
The drunkard will not get hurt, because he does not know he is falling, so he does not become tense. He simply falls without becoming tense. It is the tenseness that gives you fractures. If you can fall relaxed you will not be hurt. Drunkards know it, children know it; how did you manage to forget, Kavina?
Start from your bed, every night, and within a few days you will be able to catch the knack. And once you have known the secret -- nobody can teach it to you, you will have to search within your own body -- then even in the day, at any time, you can relax. And to be a master of relaxation is one of the most beautiful experiences in the world. It is the beginning of a great journey towards spirituality, because when you are completely in a let-go, you are no longer a body.
Have you ever observed a simple fact: that you become aware of your body only when there is some tension, some strain, some pain? Have you ever become aware of your head without a headache?
If your whole body is relaxed, you simply forget that you are a body. And in that forgetfulness of the body is the remembering of a new phenomenon that is hidden inside the body: your spiritual being.
Let-go is the way to know that you are not the body, but something eternal, immortal.
There is no need of any other religion in the world. Just the simple art of let-go will turn every human being into a religious person. Religion is not believing in God, religion is not believing in the pope, religion is not believing in any ideological system.
Religion is knowing that which is eternal within you: satyam shivam sundram -- that which is the truth of your existence, that which is your divinity, and that which is your beauty, your grace, your splendor.
The art of let-go is synonymous with experiencing the immaterial, the immeasurable: your authentic being.
There are a few moments when, without being aware, you are in a let-go. For example, when you are really laughing -- a belly laughter, not just from the head, but from your belly -- you are relaxed without your knowing, you are in a let-go. That's why laughter is so health-giving. There is no other medicine which can help you more in attaining well-being.
But laughter has been stopped by the same conspirators who have stopped your awareness of let-go. The whole of humanity has been turned into a serious, psychologically sick mess.
Have you heard the giggle of a small child? His whole body participates in it. And when you laugh, it is very rare that your whole body laughs -- it is just an intellectual, heady thing.
My own understanding is that laughter is far more important than any prayer, because prayer will not relax you. On the contrary, it may make you more tense. In laughter you suddenly forget all the conditioning, all the training, all seriousness. Suddenly you are out of it, just for a moment. Next time you laugh, be alert about how relaxed you are. And find out other times when you are relaxed."

Satyam Shivam Sundaram
#5, Remember the Art of Let Go


Any act done with totality becomes your prayer."

THE HIDDEN SPLENDOR
CHAPTER #11, A NOAH'S ARK OF CONSCIOUSNESS