Modita tells her story
Seven years ago Osho News brought out a review, with a few excerpts, from my book Depression, a Stepping-Stone towards Bliss, which had just been published. I had written it out of gratitude that my last depression episode was over.
Seven fruitful years followed. My company, Joy in Meditation – through which I offered Family Constellation and Somatic Experiencing (trauma work) consultations – was flowering in my city, Eindhoven (in the Netherlands).
And then the breakup from a 29-year-long relationship – suddenly, and without closure. A deep abandonment wound was touched in me.
In the beginning: grief, then freeze, total shutdown, no future in sight. I lost connection with life, with myself, with the people around me, with nature. I felt as if I had lost heart and soul. I doubted I had ever had a soul at all.
Fear started increasing, and flared up as a fire that made it impossible to undertake anything. I was glued to the computer to try to find solutions, therapies that might help.
For two years I was imprisoned in the chains of my own nervous system, which tried to protect me, through this freeze, from feeling what was there. Somatic Experiencing tools, plus various meditation techniques, no longer helped me. I found myself in social isolation.
And then I received one of the monthly newsletters from Osho News. Instead of comparing myself with the sannyasins who wrote about their wonderful times with Osho, I looked at a tiny advertisement at the side, with the friendly face of a beautiful shining loving woman: Maneesha’s Dance Academy Training Part II, at Osho Miasto in Italy.
Something resonated. In my mind’s eye it appeared that from the advertisement a cloud of soft, lit-up snowflakes were floating towards me. Little sparks, so soft and gentle – hardly noticeable – and then they landed somewhere inside me.
I decided to first do an online class with Maneesha, which she gives on the first Saturday of each month. Even if now – although in the past I had loved dancing – I was experiencing my body as just a corpse, hanging below an overactive mind.
The class started with moving each part of the body in turn. It was discomfiting to realise that I could hardly feel my feet, legs and pelvis, and that I had almost no sensation in my belly. It was so lifeless in there! Moving from the solar plexus gave me some strength. But when, in the end, we had to move all the individual parts of the body at once, I said to myself: This is too much! I don’t want to be this much alive! At the same time, my body spoke to me: To move part of me feels okay, but to move all of me is too much!
This was a revelation to me. This was something that was really from me: a message from my body. This had nothing to do with any of my medical studies, or with being a therapist. This was me… my body telling me: Right now, to move just our legs and pelvis is enough.
That’s the difference between thinking, and feeling the body. And that’s the acceptance Maneesha is transmitting in her class – and to which she is inviting us. I felt that, starting from what is, the real me could start re-appearing.
I danced the fear: constricted, struggling to come out of the chains that held me. Dancing the fear was so different from trying to push it away or being afraid of it! Dancing the fear, I felt the energy that was in the fear. It was an entity of its own that wanted to express itself… that wanted to be seen. It wanted me to be in communion with it, to absorb it. The label ‘fear’ disappeared – it then just became an energy.
Maneesha then asked us to dance something else, something we wanted to invite. The new element I invited was my longing for life-flow. And as I danced this longing, it was so flowing, so alive, so light and easy! And I could feel it: there was still flow in me!
When all these elements came together – the energy and intensity of the fear, the fluid movement of my longing – the alchemy happened: there was this feeling of ‘me’, without a definition of me, because the energies change every moment… And if I moved with these energies I allowed them to keep changing. Nothing was static. The class was, after all, about our reaction to ‘change’.
New connections started arising in my system.
I pulled myself together and booked the training.
When I arrived at Miasto I was in a hurry to fix myself as quickly as possible. I wanted to come out of my shutdown, and was so afraid that I would go back home in the same desperate state in which I had arrived.
And there was Maneesha: with her loving eyes, radiating a trust that for her everything was okay the way it already was. I felt she was appreciating my awareness, my courage, seeing my creativity, holding the space for everything that showed up in me, not calling anything a problem, but just something that so much wanted to be seen. Not giving solutions, but helping to embrace what was, inviting me to express anger, grief, in the dance; helping me to open new pathways in my heart to embrace what was there.
She created such an inviting, loving, safe space. And I felt she trusted my ability to explore. She was so humble and so clear that she did not have a solution, but could feel that things could just unfold. When no pressure of any kind was there… Just by living the energies, expressing everything in the dance, being aware of it all, embracing it.
Then we worked with our beliefs. I had the belief that I should not show my needs – my mother had already had enough pain from the traumas she had faced in the Japanese concentration camp. It was so healing when, sitting in a circle, we expressed the many needs we had: for food, for love, for attention. All needs that are so important and valid. I was not alone in having needs. And I expressed it… out of the space in the middle of our circle I grabbed whatever I needed – it was so good to recognise and value my needs!
That was a transformation! Where I thought that I didn’t know what I needed – because I had not been validated in that – I could suddenly feel what I needed. Without hesitation I took the food I liked most in that moment; my body simply got it from the canteen without thinking. I bought nourishing body cream where in the past I would have bought just a cheap cream; I went up to people and asked for or gave them a hug; I leaned against trees; I enjoyed taking a shower and took my time with it.
The first four days of the group was taken up by a powerful process that was developed in Pune in the 90s, known as Childhood Liberation – but we also called it Mystery School Primal.
It was so good to say “No” to what hadn’t felt good to me, to things my parents had done to me. I felt validated! And to realise that my parents couldn’t have done differently because of their own upbringing and traumas, and acknowledging that they had also done many good things.
Dancing my feelings and my journey in front of another person, looking into their eyes, gave me a deep feeling of being seen, being received. It created more trust in life. It became part of my limbic system, which registered that what I needed was available now… and that created new pathways in me of confidence, trust, self-esteem – and also the feeling of being received with love, attention and care.
My nervous system relaxed. It not only relaxed but became very alive again! And the dance also strengthened my body and made it flexible at the same time.
I came back home a totally new person. I was born again. A conscious birth. The green of the trees had become so intensely green, I was drinking nature, I met people with such joy and dignity, I could listen to them from my heart – whilst before everything had felt so boring. I even enjoyed the smell of the concrete at the airport in the rain!
I feel full of energy now and can integrate Dance Alchemy into my Family Constellation sessions and into my daily life: by dancing what is happening, and bowing with love to what is emerging in me.
It feels like such a gift when I can meet all my feelings and emotions, when I am in communion with them, when I am one with them and can fully feel them. I put on some music and dance the feelings… Sometimes I start by sending my heart energy to the feeling (or to the no-feeling when I feel numb…) and sometimes I start by becoming conscious of the feeling (the awareness). All three are equally important.
The connection with others is joyous now and I am curious towards them, whereas before I would tend to isolate myself.
I turned more and more from the teacher or therapist in me, towards the human being. And in my work as a healer, I now find myself to be one who plays, loves and shares from equality, appreciation of the other, curiosity, readiness to experiment, and a sense of meeting with the other – instead of deep down wanting to fix the other. So the sessions I give have changed a lot.
And I appreciate myself… as a mystery to be enjoyed!
So many, and such valuable, jewels!
Maneesha’s work is worth gold!
I hope to meet you in Denmark or in the group The Joy of Rebellion, 1–4 July at Osho Miasto! I am looking forward to fully living my rebelliousness!
At the end of July Maneesha will again give a Dance Alchemy week: Transform Your Emotional Life, 26 July – 1 August 2026 at Osho Risk, Denmark. (oshorisk.com)
Links
- Maneesha’s website: dancealchemy.us
- Modita’s presentation, Dancing, acceptance & awareness can dissolve depression & shutdown, on YouTube: youtu.be
- Transform Your Emotional Life, 26 July – 1 August 2026 at Osho Risk, Denmark: oshorisk.com
Related articles
- Depression: A Stepping Stone Towards Bliss – Lysan van Winden reviewed Modita van Zummeren’s book, and after an interview with the author wrote a piece about Modita’s life as a doctor, sannyasin, and therapist, and about her healing from depression
- Maneesha, dance for me! –In this first part of an interview with Bhagawati, Maneesha talks about how she came to hear about Osho, the period in Oregon and her move to Europe (February 2017)
- In the master’s buddhafield – In the second part of the interview, Maneesha talks to Bhagawati about her time in Pune 2 and Sedona (March 2017)
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