Majid presents the accredited 3-year degree course hosted at Osho Miasto, Tuscany
In 1975, at barely 18, Deepti arrived in Pune. She met Osho, and returned home with a personal mission: with dance already part of her life, she embarked on the task of integrating her bodywork with meditation. She became a choreographer and dance teacher, and started experimenting with different therapy modalities, meditation and body expression techniques, finally making them her own.
Fifty years after that journey, Deepti is a doctor in Psychological Sciences and Techniques and a meditation teacher. She developed Deep Stretching, a new postural stretching technique that, acting in conjunction with breathing, relaxes and decontracts our deep muscles, re-harmonising both posture and deep and superficial muscles (see second and third photos in slide show below).
For wellbeing and personal growth she has also created a psychodancetherapy method she named Metaphysical Dance. It includes psycho-dance therapy, art and meditation, plus over 30 active meditation techniques she has designed, inspired by Osho and the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra sutras. Also included are small and larger ‘choreographies of the soul’ which can be adapted to each individual.
“Metaphysical Dance helps us experience that everything which happens in the body produces a subtle vibration in the mind, and that everything which happens in the mind vibrates in the body. It so becomes clear that it is possible to reach the mind through the body, and the body through the mind. This gives us the possibility to deal with any problem starting from both sides at the same time – affecting both body and mind. We also come to experience that we are not merely body and mind, but a body/mind,” writes Deepti.
I have known Deepti since 1977 and have seen her evolve and shape her spiritual and professional path with such determination and rigour. A truly rare sight!
I saw her become a proficient teacher who could transmit energy and knowledge in an inspiring way. Then, together with her team of assistants and teachers, she was recognised for her work, even at an institutional level – which is an even rarer event in Italy – a country lacking in regulation and official recognition of those who work for the evolution and growth of humankind.
This recognition crowns a gradually-developed, year-long, theoretical and practical journey. It started when, in 2005, Deepti’s unique and original Metaphysical Dance therapy method found its way into the official training programme of the University Jean Monnet in Brussels.
Then, in 2020, the national holistic association Conacreis* offered Deepti the opportunity to formalise her professional training for the Italian academia. This was possible thanks to an agreement with the Università Popolare degli Studi di Milano, an open university subject to international law. (It’s the only Open University in Italy which is authorised by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research to grant official degrees.)
Thanks to this agreement between Conacreis and the Università Popolare, Deepti and her staff, who are all trained and recognised by the Jean Monnet in Brussels, have embarked, in turn, on signing an agreement whereby the Metaphysical Dance training course will be recognised by the Università Popolare. Metaphysical Dance becomes thus an accredited three-year degree course.
The aim of this course is to train counsellors in a metaphysical and experiential way, and to allow access to a degree. This training presupposes strong commitment and determination on the part of the students, requiring compulsory attendance at all stages of the training.
After a student attends the course – which from 2025 will be hosted at Osho Miasto in Tuscany – and completes all exams and acquires the 146 training credits – the University will issue the three-year degree of Counselling in Psychodance Therapy Metaphysical Dance. It is possible to access the studies and enrol directly into the 3rd year, and in order to complete the necessary 180 training credits, one needs to take only three university exams and undergo the discussion of the final thesis.
In addition to going though personal growth during the course itself, the accomplished trainee can then work as an individual Counsellor, lead Osho’s active meditations, and the meditation techniques developed by Deepti, as well as run experiential workshops on specific themes.
At the end of the three years the skills and knowledge acquired during the course will ensure that as a Counselor in Metaphysical Dance the graduate can accompany a person on the path of self-knowledge, give the required support and facilitate an integrated development to help them rediscover the strength and power of their healthy side, as well as find psychophysical harmony. The practitioner can help prevent existential discomfort and support health promotion, as understood and defined by the Ottawa Charter of 1986.
It’s a journey that I would endorse, not only for the purpose of teaching and passing knowledge on to others, but because it ‘teaches’ us to experience, through the body and other artistic media, our automatic and repetitive patterns of behaviour, conscious or unconscious, that have lead to emotional, cognitive, and behavioural discomforts and hindered the fullness of our lives.
What a way to grow as human beings!
Note: * Conacreis stands for Coordinamento Nazionale Associazioni e Comunità di Ricerca Etica, Interiore e Spirituale (National Coordination of Ethical, Inner and Spiritual Research Associations and Communities)
First online module of the new course will be on 29 January 2025. First in-person module is scheduled for 29 May at Osho Miasto. oshomiasto.it
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