Before I started dahn I was always restless, tired, sleepy, low energy, nervous, tense, uneasy about everything. I did not have much energy to try something new and challenging and always stick to the known. And I kept on worrying and thinking on something and did not realize how tense my body and mind was. I knew something was wrong in my life but could not figure it out.

After two years of practice of dahn yoga, I am having more energy to try and challenge something new with clear mind and light body. Even if I still have tendency to keep thinking and worrying on something, it becomes easier for me to control my thoughts and mind since I have realized the true self of me is not my mind and thoughts but watcher deep within me.

The biggest discovery of my two years in dahn yoga is that how fun and interesting to watch my own mind and thoughts with clear being within me called “watcher” Once I realized my mind and thoughts are not me, it becomes easier to control my emotions, feelings, thinking, mind and thus my life. Another biggest discovery in dahn is the secrets of humans and universe. The movie Secret has been so sensational worldwide since its first release but dahn masters have known this for a long time before the release of the Secret. And their knowledge expands into deeper and profound principles of universe, death, life and human life.

Ilchi Lee Brain Educator

I once believed the truth about fundamental human issues about death and life does not exist or simply beyond human scope but now I can say it is there out there. What we have got to do is just seek and knock on the door for the truth and it will be open for those who seek and knock as happened in Bible.

Sincerely, Yolanda

Out of desperation, I came to the Dahn Yoga and Healing Center six months ago. I was desperate for relieve from chronic muscle and joint pain. To function, I needed more than 10 hours of sleep a night, plus long naps over the weekends. My weekly chiropractic visit no longer offered even brief relief. At the Energy Check-up, Master Tara worked on a charka point and my upper back pain dissipated. This was not a tradition yoga program!

The classes seemed strange, but I believed in the process and didn’t go back to the chiropractor. Slowly my body began to feel better. I had a two-hour healing session that further helped with pain relieve and flexibility. Plus the healing awakened a creative part of my being, resulting in several paintings of my body in healing process.

Through the Initial Awakening workshop, I began to understand the Dahn philosophy and touch on a deep river of emotion pain deep within myself. I resisted the idea of another weekend away from my family but Master Tara explained the importance of Shim Shun (Finding the True Self) to rid the body of the burden of emotion pain The Shim Shun weekend changed my life. I knew I had a lot of emotionally painful experiences, but the depth of some of the pain surprised me. I left that weekend free of the fearful inner child that stopped me doing what I wanted to do. I let go of my rock and now I flow with the river of life.

I feel more connected to people and the world around me. One dental patient remarked that she noted a change in me. She felt I was a real person, not putting on a front, but genuinely connected to people around me.

After six months my muscle pains occur only occasionally. I am no longer hunched over, but standing tall. My emotions are present, but not overwhelming. I have decreased my medications by a third, and my hormones have stabilized. I am no longer running out of class because of an irritated bladder. Its not enlightenment yet, but I am comfortable in my body, in better control of my emotions, more connected to my kids and husband, and free of a painful emotional past that was ruling my life.

I look forward to coming to class. The Dahn Center is a supportive place for me. With so many demands from job and family, here is a place for me. I am more in tune with my body and understand the signals of what is wrong and have more tools to help myself. I am embraced the notion that joy comes from within, and I am finding that joy. Even my voice is lighter! I haven’t lost weight because I have gained muscle – my clothes fit better and my body doesn’t wiggle like Jell-o.

I have defined a life purpose of helping others start their life-healing process-giving others a point to ponder to change their direction for the better.

Chun

Based on my short-run healing success, my attention turned to what I must do to maintain my health over the long run. I concluded that with my stress-tension-illness cycle, I needed to stay with Dahn to build my wellness further and prevent new health problems – often produced by stress, aging and my hereditary tendencies (my parents had blood, heart and colon problems). So, I invested in a lifetime membership, making Dahn yoga practice as regular as showering. Then I observed that relatives and friends of my generation were also exhibiting a variety of physical and mental symptoms. Like me, they were wearing out from excessive stress, bad-health habits, and insufficient inspiration in their lives.

Therefore, I signed up for the Dahn Healer School, basic and advanced courses. This six-month program alternated three training sessions at the Sedona Ilchi Meditation Center, Arizona, with twice-monthly days at Greater Washington Region centers. Healer School introduced me to a healing lifestyle – for advancing my self-healing, healing individuals one on one, and taking action to heal families and society, and the world and the Earth. There were many techniques and skills to learn to become an effective healer. But more important was acquiring the attitudes, philosophy and sensitivity so that my natural healing power was awakened and enhanced. Through theory, method and practice, my confidence grew. I accepted that I had healing hands. Physicians believe that they can remedy only 10% of what patients bring to them. I was being educated in how to help with the other 90% of people’s health-related complaints.

During Healer School, I learned to sense receivers’ conditions and needs, mainly of their physical body, but increasingly related to mental and spiritual matters. I became comfortable finding appropriate healing approaches, through the invoked power of Cosmic Energy, to help relax and energize receivers. Practicing healing both informally with friends and formally with Dahn Center members generated positive feedback and gratitude from receivers, and deeply satisfying feelings inside me. Making more of a soulful choice than a rational decision, I shifted my professional and even self identity. I announced to others, as well as myself, “I am a holistic healer.” By this time, my management consulting business was waning. The choice was between incrementally fixing up the past, ego-based activities, and shifting the focus and structure of my life to soul-driven behavior. Because I had found few accomplishments in my life more fulfilling than contributing to the healing and well-being of others, I accepted that I had embarked on a new path. I had found a new life passion. With 77 million Baby Boomers in the U.S. starting to enter their 60s, there will be an expanding number of people wanting to maintain their physical health, keep their mental capacity, and seek spiritual meaning and life purpose during their mature years. I was indeed feeling part of the big picture of humanity’s and the Earth’s well-being.

Another strong focus and pleasure of my life has been children. I realized how wonderful my life would have been had I as a child exercised my body, mind and true self using the Dahn system. So, I was drawn to the Brain Respiration Instructor Course in order to be trained in sharing yoga with kids. I then applied it in classes at the Bethesda Center and a Washington, DC, private school. After a long career of teaching university students and corporate managers, here I was seeing young children come alive, have fun, discover more about their bodies, stimulate their imaginations, focus their minds, and at times speak from their true selves. They amazed me with their capacity to enjoy their bodies and expand their minds. With them, I have learned to be more open, creative and joyous.

Too often, my mind and emotions did not work well. So, I did what many in my generation did: I entered psychotherapy, a few different times in my life. Talking about and feeling my problems, and thinking of solutions, as well as listening to the therapist’s suggestions, always helped to some extent. When my situation seemed okay again as I saw enough progress in my life, I stopped seeing the therapist. It was painful emotionally to go through this process, so I did not relish going further and deeper.

Basically I had concluded that I could adjust my behavior by getting smarter, but that I was who I was, my personality was set, and I had to make the best of my mental/emotional make up. So I settled for dealing with the symptoms (my mind’s thoughts and attached emotions) and not daring to address the causes (back then not knowing how my brain worked and that it held the keys, along with my body and mind, to making me into a truly healthy, happy and peaceful human being).

Then, after a month of physical deterioration and mental distress three and a half years ago, I found that I could educate my brain to heal my body through a system of exercises, improve my mind by getting outside of stressful situations, and feel inner peace by accessing my spiritual dimension.

My efforts to work on myself through Ilchi Lee brain education – holistic fitness classes, various body-brain workshops, and private energy healing sessions – and the growth I have achieved across the board – health, wellbeing and soul – have made me realize that I have been going through the five steps of a program – l called the Brain Education System Training, or BEST 5, given its five steps.

Step 1, Brain sensitizing

I learned about my brain and worked consciously with its potential. I was able to strengthen and energize my body, clarify and calm my emotions, and activate and elevate my spirit and soul. My life was transformed.
I hadn’t realized how tight and weak my body was, and how anxious and stressed my brain was. Moreover, I felt that decades of bad habits had generated excessive mental stress and physical tension, which now were endangering my health and clearly shortening my life as well.

I become truly aware of my body for the first time, from its muscles to its organs. I started to feel alive and full of energy, less tense, more flexible, and stronger. From being unable to do any push-ups, one day I found myself doing seventy without strain. A large part of this progress was realizing how much my mind determined my physical actions, and how I could control both of them more consciously. Experiencing greater brain-body communication helped me gain motivation and discipline, and now I could guarantee that I always awoke on the right side of the bed, eager to face the day.

As a result of my training practice, things started to shift in my body. I realized that I was becoming more aware of my brain and the power I was accumulating in my brain-body system. A yogic approach to the energy that connected body and brain to each other was based on stretching, strengthening, breathing, deep relaxation, and energy accumulation. At last, I was sensitive to the state of my body and brain, their interconnection, and how to improve them systematically. I had found my center.

Step 2, Brain versatilizing

I took courses in how the body-brain-mind system works from an energetic viewpoint (with a 10,000-year health tradition in Asia), how to get in touch with and open my heart to feel whether a thought or emotion is coming from my ego or soul, and how to use martial arts for self healing and empowerment through greater body and brain discipline. The net effect has been for my body and brain to have an amazingly expanded repertoire of movements and states. I have developed the competence and confidence to recognize and then go beyond my old habits and automatic responses. This ability to overcome many of what I used to call my inherent limitations is in essence my brain having become more versatile. I can feel and do things that I only used to dream of.

Step 3, Brain refreshing

Why do so many of my negative feelings about the world and myself persist over the decades? It is something to do with the wiring in my body and brain; it is as much physical/chemical/electrical as it is mental/emotional. Wouldn’t it be valuable to have a delete function for my negative thoughts/emotions, just like a computer does? I have come fairly close to developing such a delete function – not of the old memories themselves, but of their intensity and hold on my thinking and behavior. I have identified the negative thoughts that used to rule me and learned ways to lessen and even eliminate their emotional control of me. When my old fears come up, I can hear them for what they are and talk them back into the darkness. One part of the process is physical and emotional releasing, while another part is the mustering of spiritual energy to see the big picture and interconnectedness of my life and the world inside of me and around me. I now possess sufficient energy, philosophy and methodology to catch myself when a negative thought wants to run my actions, and thus switch to a more positive source of guidance. My brain operating system has been renewed in profound and permanent ways. I am no longer a slave of my past and a victim of my present.

Step 4, Brain integrating

Then I realized that my brain education was shifting to building up the positive sources for me to live my life like I really want to. I can choose who I want to be and do what is most meaningful to me. I have discovered the capacity to improve my brain through deep self-reflection and the insertion of positive ways of thinking, feeling and behaving. Through energizing exercises, affirmations, visualization, meditation, and insight and inspiration, I can integrate new, positive and powerful components into my brain-body system. I have come to revise my self-concept, and thus elevate my self-esteem, to be fundamentally loving, joyful, peaceful, creative, powerful and wise. And I look and feel young and handsome too.

Step 5, Brain mastering

We cannot live all the time in courses and workshops. As useful as they have been to me, each day, even each minute, I am the creator of my life. This feeling of mastership of my life is supported by many principles and practices that I have learned in the past few years. My challenge is not to forget what I have learned, and through mindful action reinforce and strengthen the best of what I have installed in my brain and body. It helps to have a big vision of the purpose of my life. This vision for me has taken the shape of working to heal humanity and make peace the norm in the world – by become a more competent and passionate communicator and leader. I am a person with a mission and my life has never felt more full, meaningful and promising. And the best is yet to come, as I work on it each day.

I have been a practitioner of Dahn Yoga for almost three years. In this time I have experienced many improvements in my health and happiness. Before Dahn, I was emotionally depleted. Stress in my job and in my personal life was damaging my health. I felt sad most of the time. I was bored and frustrated in my career as a physician. I had lost touch with my original intention of providing compassionate care. In fact, I often felt irritated with my patients and angry at myself. I was tired all the time. I had digestive problems and frequent migraine headaches. I heard about Dahn Yoga from a coworker. It sounded like an interesting combination of fitness activities and meditation techniques. After only one class I was hooked! The exercises were simple, but challenging. The meditation was so refreshing, and I had a strong energy sensation in my hands. I could not remember feeling so calm and awake and alert at the same time! I began to attend at least three classes a week. Within several months I felt transformed. My headaches almost completely disappeared. My digestive problems improved, and I felt rested with less sleep. I lost weight and became much more flexible. My family and friends noticed the change in me also.

Since then I have attended many workshops and training programs, each one enabling me to go more deeply into the experience of my deeper self. The inner sense of an infinite and loving presence in my life has been a great blessing! I have also rediscovered the gift of my calling, even though I still have the same job. I am a more focused and caring doctor than I was 3 years ago. I am also a nicer person, and a better parent. My self esteem has improved so much, and I feel confident and stable in my core being. Now I find myself feeling happy much of the time, for no reason at all! I have been so impressed with my growth through Dahn Yoga that I have begun to incorporate it into my medical practice. Now I teach a free lunchtime Dahn class three times a week in my clinic, and have seen my own students experience similar benefits. As a Dahn Healer I have also enjoyed volunteering for outreach activities in my community, including stress reduction workshops for a substance abuse program, an MS support group, a local nursing school, and a center for developmentally disabled adults. I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute in my small way to making our society happier and healthier. And I am most grateful for all the priceless benefits I have received through my practice of Dahn Yoga! I know I will continue to grow in my practice for the rest of my life.

Sincerely,
Deborah

My name is Vicki, I have been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis since April of 2006. I have numbness and balance problems with my entire right side. After trying so many ways to manage this debilitating disease and nothing work I decided to listen to my Doctor and try yoga. Dahn Yoga! The Yoga center is near my office and home and very convent to attend. This Yoga has changed my life. I feel almost normal some days. Others I still have issues but it has been the best move ever since my diagnosis. I would recommend this to anyone. What a difference it has made in my life! How do I feel today? I feel wonderful today!

Thank you Dahn Yoga staff and all of the support I receive at the center I attend in Dallas, TX!

Sincerely
Vicki

Before I started Dahn, several life events combined to create depression and a number of physical challenges. I retired from a 45-year working career, my sister had a major mental break, and my aged mother passed away. Arthritis, a couple of degenerated discs in my back, and soft tissue damage from a car wreck 40 years prior made getting out of bed in the morning very painful. I’d walk bent over from the waist for a few minutes before standing up strait. The Chiropractor and I had standing appointments 10 days apart. Activity always attracted me, but with pain and without a routine to follow inactivity took over, and I lost interest in life. Even thought I didn’t do much, I was tired all the time. The local senior center offered free access to physical fitness machines, but somehow I couldn’t get up and out the door by 10:30 a.m. to drive (not walk) 2 miles and take advantage of those machines.

It’s interesting how my membership came about. Since the story is long, I’ll just say that on 3 different occasions the subject of Dahn Yoga came up. The final was at a Body, Mind, Spirit expo where my girl friend and I signed up for an Energy checkup. Interestingly, we both bought memberships and she went to just 1 class. I am happily still with Dahn 3-1/2 years later. The drive to the Kirkland Center is often an hour each way, but I’m able to get up and be there at least 3 times a week.

Within 2 weeks of beginning Dahn I noticed an amazing increase in my energy level. I painted walls 13’ high from a ladder. I felt alive again. My many women friends asked “What are you doing, Leanne? You’re glowing!” I’d say “It’s Yoga”. There is no Dahn Yoga center near us, but now 5 of those friends are taking some form of yoga because they’ve seen how much Dahn did for me.

On the physical level, I noticed an immediate improvement in my back. I could get out of bed! (I’ve been to see the chiropractor only 5 times in the past 3-1/2 years!) Something, else, my eyesight improved. I went from a 2.50 magnification to a 1.25 magnification. I gained back 1-inch in height I’d lost. Energy filled me up. My body changed. Weighing the same as I had 6 years before, I lost 19-1/2 inches in my arms, thighs, waist and bust. I am wearing clothes I wore 20 lbs. less than I am now.

On an emotional, level traffic has always been a challenge for me. I’d be angry or anxious, frustrated and impatient. I mentioned a 1-hour drive. Well, that drive is only 20 miles, so you can imagine how congested it is. Before, I’d be mad and/or angry. Thanks to Dahn something switched. Now, it just doesn’t bother me. I still move in and out and do my best to find the lane that’s moving, only it isn’t a contest or a personal insult any more. I’m relaxed. It’s just traffic. It hasn’t changed, but I have. A number of personal issues from long ago have resolved themselves, come full circle. Thanks to the various programs Ilchi Lee created at Dahn, I don’t feel guilt or shame for not succeeding in some life choices a long time ago. I carried those failures for years, and now I’m free. That freedom improved my self esteem to the place where I felt good enough to start internet dating. I’m now in a serious relationship with a gentle, kind, thoughtful, funny gentleman.

Meditation calms and centers me. I value the serenity. Dahn practice teaches me that there are many ways to meditate, and the exercises we do in class take me right into a meditative state. It seems that when I start my day with meditation, everything goes better. Little things don’t bother me, and I handle big stuff better. I was a typical Type ‘A’ personality, and now am a Type ‘B’.

Leanne

Ilchi Lee collected content

My workshops and classes at the Dahn Yoga studio have changed my life for the better – physically, mentally and spiritually.

After many years of going to the gym regularly, I was looking for something more than just exercising my body. I was ready to change my mind and heart, and to turn my exercise time into something spiritual.

I signed up for a three-month trial membership at the Dahn Yoga Center last August. Quickly, despite my demanding schedule, it has become a three-times-a-week staple that I can’t imagine living without.

The benefits from Dahn yoga have come both slowly and fast and furious. Slowly my flexibility has improved. I feel younger than when I walked in eight months ago. I can stretch in ways I haven’t in years. My arthritis doesn’t restrict me as it once did.

Prior to Dahn, my physician had warned me about my cholesterol level. I tried exercise and diet. No change. Then, a physical four months into Dahn showed my cholesterol had come down significantly – a result my workouts at the gym hadn’t been able to accomplish, even when accompanied by a low cholesterol diet. Clearly, the stress-reducing effects of Dahn were working!

I am a writer and editor, and a wife and mother, so I have lots of stress. My ten-year-old son noticed immediately a change in me when I started going to Dahn Toga classes. “You seem brighter, Mom, more calm.” And when I lost my temper, he would pipe up, “Remember your yoga, Mom!” And he was right. Dahn Yoga has helped me to change my energy. After each class, I am literally vibrating on a higher level – calmer, happier and refreshed! What more could I ask? This is a program for life!

I enjoy my Dahn Yoga program because:

The teachings, philosophy and exercise have led me to a greater understanding of myself. I feel more healthy and happy than before I started this practice.

My Dahn practice has benefited me in the following ways:

More flexible body and mind. I carry less stress the time I get to spend with my wife and children it better less arguing and fighting. We have greater happiness and love because my ability has increased as I have become more in touch with myself.

I believe Ilchi Lee should be recognized because:

The teachings, philosophy and exercise taught at Dahn are a direct result of the dedicated thought, practice and sharing of Ilchi Lee. I think the whole humanity can benefit from the peace and love that result from the teachings of Ilchi Lee.