Dahn Yoga Colorado Member’s blog

Human touch is one of the best methods of emotional healing. Sadly, touch is often discouraged socially in our culture. Using these healing techniques will be very beneficial for your brain, whether you are teaching them to others or are experiencing them yourself.

SHOULDER MASSAGE

The shoulders very commonly hold tension. Fortunately, they are also an easy place to give a quick massage to a friend.

Squeeze the trapezoid muscles, which extend from the neck to the shoulders, with the flat part of vour hand, without pinching. Release and repeat several times, working vour wav up and down the muscle. Work vour hands down the sides to the shoulders, squeezing; and releasing. Use your thumb and palms to release tension around the shoulder blades.

Tags: Dahn Yoga, Ilchi Lee

This exercise helps strengthen the hips, buttocks, and hamstrings. If you, like a lot of people, have spent a great deal of time sitting in chairs, you may lack mobility in the hip joints. This exercise helps to correct this problem.

Relax the upper body and gently curl the tailbone while standing up straight. At the same time, create firm but gentle tension in the lower abdomen. Hold onto a stable object, such as a chair or wall, if you need it for balance.

Tags: Dahn Yoga, Ilchi Lee

This exercise suggested by Ilchi Lee will help you keep your shoulder joints open. It will also help you relax the muscles around your shoulder blades, which often hide knots of tension.

Put both hands on the shoulders and stretch the elbows forward Lift your elbows to shoulder height. Make a large circular motion and rotate them slowly once. Repeat 6 times front to back and 6 times back to front.

You can think of this exercise as your daily hula lesson. It will help you keep your hip joints and lower back relaxed. Aloha!

During Yoga Practice stand with your feet parallel and your legs spread at shoulder width. Place your hands on your hips. Keep your knees straight. Rotate your hips in a large circle, pushing as far as you can in all directions. Repeat 5 times and then reverse and do 5 in the opposite direction.

Tags: Dahn Yoga, Ilchi Lee

This simple, enjoyable movement helps to release tension from the body and keep you fresh during Yoga Training. While doing it, try to imagine that you have the loose, carefree body of a child as you bounce up and down.

Relax your shoulders and bend your knees slightly. @ Keep your feet planted on the floor beneath your shoulders as vou swing vour arms side to side.

Bounce your knees to the rhythm of the movement. Repeat 20 or more times.

Yoga Program guide by Ilchi Lee.

Tags: Dahn Yoga, Ilchi Lee

In the following chapters written by Prof. Iclhi Lee, you will encounter the term Ki. To the mind steeped in Western science, the concept of Ki (also spelled chi or qi), or life energy, can seem archaic and even superstitious. Isn’t Ki just an Asian myth? Hasn’t it been disproved by Western science? Such questions are natural, and it is important that you know the facts about this ancient concept before proceeding, since it is integral to the BEST method. If you are skeptical, that is good. Open-minded skepticism is a sign of wisdom.

The concept of Ki includes the idea that all living beings contain a circollating life energy that flows through the body along meridians. From the viewpoint of traditional Asian medicine, disease and distress are largely the results of imbalances of positive and negative energies. Ki is the foundation of all traditional Asian medical practice. But is it real, or merely a metaphor appropriate only to Chinese, Japanese, and Korean folk medicine? Some scientists are quick to dismiss Ki as a concept that does not fit into anv accepted models of how the body or brain works. However, tightly controlled experiments have begun to demonstrate that Ki is a real force with real effects. A rigorous experiment carried out in 2001 and published in the American Journal of Chinese Medicine shows that Ki masters and Ki trainees can produce changes in human blood cells. Other experiments have demonstrated the fact that Ki energy can be measured. A growing body of evidence shows that Ki is a very real force for DahnYoga training.

Tags: Dahn Yoga, Ilchi Lee

For all the many ways in which exercise benefits mental function, we cannot directly exercise our frontal lobe in the same way as we can extend a triceps muscle or stretch a hamstring. Therefore, it becomes easv to ignore the link between personal fitness and the health and vigor of the brain. The truth, as we see in the Newsweek story, is that the physical body and the health of the brain are intimately connected, and this becomes truer as we age.

As you are probably aware, Yoga exercise is widely accepted by medical science as a key factor in maintaining health and well-being throughout the aging process. In fact, it may be the most important aspect of successful aging. Most of the physical effects of aging—the natural loss of muscle mass, the decreased flexibility and mobility of joints, the decline of metabolism that can lead to weight gain—can be prevented or even reversed through regular moderate exercise. Exercise helps prevent heart disease; staves off obesity, which can lead to diabetes; is one of our best defenses against cancer; and, as we have seen above, improves brain function. Exercise is the most powerful health care you can give your body, and unless you overdo it and pull a muscle, it has no side effects.

Brain Sensitizing leverages the power of exercise to benefit the brain. Ilchi Lee goal is to teach you to reestablish that connection between your body and your brain—to help you become more aware of the way your brain interacts with the rest of your body and the wav each movement stimulates a different area of your brain. Even more important, we will help you awaken your five senses, the most direct wav your brain interacts with the physical world. Through basic energy meditation techniques and breathing work, you will also learn to develop stronger concentration and awareness of the life force within you, and you will restore a healthy balance of that energy throughout your body. The serenity and clarity that you will experience after even a short period of Brain Sensitizing practice will make spending that time worthwhile.

Tags: Dahn Yoga, Ilchi Lee

For decades, during most of what comprises the history of modern Western medicine, it has been assumed that once a person reached adulthood, that was the end of increasing brain function. Brain cells, they thought, would begin to die rapidly starting in the forties and would continue to shuffle off this mortal coil; there was little anyone could do about it. However, Ilchi Lee says that  it turns out that the conventional wisdom (as often proves to be the case) was wrong: the brain can indeed form new neural connections—in a process called neurogenesis—leading to faster communication and greater ability to learn and remember. The brain can and does continue to improve throughout life. There are many possible ways to improve various aspects of brain performance, but physical exercise is one of the best ways to take advantage of this marvelous brain ability.

Until recently, most scientists believed that the positive effects of exercise came about largely as the result of increased blood flow to the brain. Although a boost in circulation certainly has its benefits, as it brings more oxygenated blood to the brain, the complete picture is more interesting. It appears that with each movement in rigorous exercise, the muscle releases a hormone that stimulates the growth of new nerves in the brain’s learning and memory center. So when you do DahnHak exercise, you’re ordering the brain to produce more cells and more connections. No one knows vet whether new cells can grow in the rest of the brain as a result of exercise, but there is little doubt that the entire brain thrives on the extra blood and oxygen that flood it when we hit the elliptical machine, lift weights, or swim a few laps in the community pool.

Tags: Dahn Yoga, Ilchi Lee

Energy emitted by the brain is represented by brain waves, which are classified into different categories depending upon the frequency. From the gamma waves, which characterize an overly excited state, to delta waves, which correspond to a state of deep sleep, these waves represent your brain activity.

Alpha waves, which occur when your mind and body are at rest, free from tension and stress, often represent a state of high creativity. This is an optimal mental state in which to process information. If we could maintain the Alpha wave state in our everyday lives, instead of only briefly during meditation, we would be better able to deal with our own emotions and the emotions of those around us. Ilchi Lee says that we would even have enhanced intellectual and academic abilities.

Vibration Training uses sound to induce an Alpha-like mental state. The sound Om also helps maintain harmony and balance of your internal organs. As with light and vibration, sound has a profound influence on every cell in your body. The act of giving voice to inner energy is called “Toning!’ According to Dr. Don Campbell of the American Sound Education Health Research Institute, “Toning” increases oxygen supply and enhances relaxation of the body by facilitating the flow of energy. Sound or voice is a very effective way to slow the flow of thoughts and emotions and create space in which to concentrate on your body, mind, and energy during Yoga Practice.

Tags: Dahn Yoga, Ilchi Lee

“Circuit” in this case, refers to the pattern of energy movement that is unique to all things. Everything in the cosmos has its own characteristic pattern of energy flow according to its shape, color, mass, and size. The circuit itself, depending on its shape and pattern, emits its own energy. According to Ilchi Lee research about brain there are many traditional disciplines that use patterns and shapes to help induce deep meditative states, including branches of Buddhism and Hinduism. The labyrinthine patterns on the windows and floors of ancient cathedrals also have a very calming effect on worshippers.

Shapes and patterns have unique energy emissions. A square emits “square” energy, and a circle emits “circular” energy. In feet, the personality of a person can be predicted by examining the characteristic pattern of the energy flow emitted by the brain.

When the brain is in a peaceful state, a certain energy pattern emerges. These images of the energy circuit have been drawn to resemble the patterns of neural energy flow in the brain. The uniquely repeated patterns of this neural energy flow induce a very7 calm and peaceful mental state in the observer. As your consciousness traces the patterns of the energy circuit, the stagnant energy in your brain is cleansed, resulting in a more stable and harmonious energy emission pattern.

Read all about Dahn Hak.

Tags: Dahn Yoga, Ilchi Lee

Professor Ilchi Lee three keys to Brain Respiration are energy (Ki), message (information), and action. You have now familiarized yourself with the abilities of your brain and have learned ways to utilize them with energy and conscious will. Now it is time to find out who is the true master of your brain. This is where you go beyond the capabilities of the neo-cortex and the limbic system into the realm of the brain stem, where cosmic energy, the ultimate source of life, exists. This constitutes reintegration of the three “layers” of the brain, as explained previously. Your own divine nature resides within the brain stem. And you will experience this divinity by integrating the three layers of your brain.

There are two ways to approach brain integration for DahnHak: the software method and the hardware method. The hardware method consists of stimulating the brain by using currents of energy. Energy is expressed as light, sound, and vibration. Light can be further divided into shape and color, while sound can be subdivided into rhythm, tone, and beat. Vibration is characterized by variation in frequency.

Brain Rewiring utilizes the power of light, sound, and vibration to reintegrate the three layers of the brain.

The software method consists of asking you to contemplate and formulate answers to the following questions, “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?” Having answered these questions means that you have chosen your own identity, or who you are in this \vorld. When you determine your own identity, your brain will act to support that identity and help it to manifest. Through this process, you will re-examine old preconceptions and information to determine whether they are helpful or harmful to your new sense of self. Then you have to decide what to keep and what to throw away. You will be reinventing yourself based on your own decisions rather than on what others have expected you to be. This is ultimate self-liberation.

Since the Brain Respiration Stem Stage requires that you delve deeply into yourself, you must believe in yourself and have the ability to concentrate for prolonged periods of time. You must also have a sincere desire to get in touch with your inner soul. Therefore, it is recommended that you embark on this stage ot Brain Respiration training with an experienced trainer.

Tags: Dahn Yoga, Ilchi Lee