Chun
Two years ago, at 60 years of age and with urgent physical problems, I started an intensive Dahn Yoga program. This resulted in my regaining my health in several months, which convinced me to get training in how to heal family and friends, which in turn led me into a new life stage as a holistic healer and peace maker. Throughout this time, I experienced yoga classes, private healing sessions, weekend workshops, training programs in Arizona and Korea, and conversations with Dahn mentors. Having benefited so significantly in terms of my health, happiness and peace, I am most grateful to Dahn for helping me grow.
While always a skeptic, which usual undermined previous attempts at achieving growth, my Dahn journey has proven to me the integrity and generosity of Dahn instructors, and the quality and effectiveness of Dahn methods. At 62 years, the combined effects of many Dahn experiences have been to strengthen and energize my body, clarify and calm my mind/emotions, and activate and elevate my spirit/soul. Indeed my life has been transformed.
Overcoming Physical Problems
It began when I returned to Maryland from Beijing with many exotic souvenirs and a case of lingering digestive distress. Soon after, other health problems cascaded upon me. So, at 60 years of age, I was feeling old for the first time in my life, and becoming concerned about the scenario of declining and dying – much sooner than I would like. I franticly visited several physicians and alternative health practitioners, but with minimal progress and no convincing explanation as to what was really wrong with me.
Then a friend told me about the Dahn Yoga Center in Bethesda. I had an energy check-up during which I realized how tight and weak my body was, and how anxious and stressed my mind was. Moreover, I concluded that decades of bad habits had generated excessive mental stress and physical tension, which now were endangering my body-mind condition. I heard how the Dahn system of stretching, breathing and meditation could restore my health. All this made sense to me. I had hope again. So, signing up for a one-year membership, I embarked on a routine of hour-long yoga classes, one-on-one healing sessions, and multi-day awakening workshops.
The almost daily Ilchi Lee’s Dahn yoga classes helped me become aware of my body, from its muscles to its organs. My body started to feel alive, less tense, more flexible, and stronger. From being unable to do any push-ups (U.S. Marines style), I one day found myself doing 70. A large part of this progress was realizing how much my mind determined by physical actions, and how I could control both of them. Experiencing greater mind-body communication helped me diminish the link between my body’s tension and my mind’s stress. Of course, no pain, no gain applied to my situation. However, I came to see that I create my pain – by how I label and react emotionally to it. I learned to feel the pain (as well as tenderness, spasms, itchiness, etc.) as signs that my body was healing; on the other side of the pain I discovered new health. I even found I had enough motivation and discipline to extend the good effects of yoga by doing exercises at home in the morning. Thus, I could guarantee that I always awoke on the right side of the bed.
As a result of this yoga practice, some parts of my body revealed themselves to be in a very resistant state and candidates for private healing sessions. For months, I gave over my back, chest, intestines and legs to the healing hands of a master healer. Very positive things started to shift in my body. In addition, I benefited from the emotional release and insights that happened in conversations with her, as she worked on opening and releasing thoughts blocking my mind and body. When I finally touched my toes, I celebrated it as the culmination of letting go of decades of a rigid body-mind system.
During this period I participated in a series of workshops in Dahn’s New Human School. Each one helped me do what they promised: To awaken me to the reality of my life. Ready for Awakening was an overview of the Dahn approach to health in which the holism of the body, mind and spirit was explained. This made so much sense that now it is difficult for me to see it any other way. While taking Initial Awakening, I was able to understand how the body works as an energy system, and how I can work it to full functioning and maximum effect. For the first time, I had a blueprint for how I could become the master of my body. After a lifetime of thinking that my body, and therefore I, was weak and vulnerable, I shifted to the conclusion of the workshop: My body is mine, not me. In More Than Body, I took the clearest look so far to what my mind was all about – thinking and thoughts, feeling and emotions. I could view them as negative energy and information, over which I was the boss: My mind is mine, not me. Most revealing was the process I could do to release long-held, bad-habit negativity – angers, fears, hurts, shame and sadness – so I could learn to be freer of them.
Another workshop, Shim, Korean for The Joy of Finding Your True Self, was a major revelation and breakthrough for me. It made vividly clear that I have a choice: To live in the world controlled by my ego (identity or personality), with its accumulated strengths and entrenched limitations, or the world of my true self (soul), with its state of being of love, joy, peace, freedom, wisdom and the like. With each exercise, I found myself breaking down walls of preconceptions that separated me from my heart, and getting in touch with my essence, my true self. This new awareness has helped me discern whether a behavior, thought or emotion is coming from my negative ego or true self. The Healing Chakra workshop introduced me to the seven energy centers in me and how they affect my holistic health. I learned to know my chakras, improve their functioning, and use them in combination to realize greater physical healing, energy activity, and spiritual awareness.
Within several months, the results were positive, bordering on astounding. My health problems went away – digestion under control, legs able to climb stairs without my sweating, hernia surgery no longer necessary, and my complexion cleared up. In addition, I was surprised and delighted with other unexpected outcomes – loss of excess weight and disappearance of my potbelly, sleeping through the entire night (my bladder and me), absence of panic with blood-test needles, more productive and relaxed business trips, strength to do physical feats I had never done before, and greater peace of mind to deal with stressful episodes.
