Ilchi Lee Educating Brain, Dahn Yoga

This collection of information changes faster than your body. Although your body shape and your physical abilities change over time, they don’t change as quickly as your mind. Have you ever thought about how fickle your feelings of self-worth are? One moment, you are King of the World, a truly magnificent person. The next minute, you are in despair with feelings of inadequacy and weakness. You are full of life’s meaning and motivation one second, but succumb to despair and emptiness the next. If your body changed sizes as capriciously as your mind, you would change your clothes thousands of times a day. That is how unstable and fleeting information is.

Prof Ilchi Lee observe your body. It breathes. You breathe when you are asleep, when you are no longer conscious of your own ideas of self-identity. Who, then, is breathing? The collection of information that you mistakenly think is you is not the main protagonist in the activity of the breath. In fact, you are not breathing; breath naturally happens in you. You can purposely end your life, but you cannot purposely keep your life going. The expression, “my life” is actually an oxymoron, a result of ignorance and mistaken assumption. You don’t possess life; life expresses itself through you. Your body is a flower that life let bloom, a phenomenon created by life.

When you say, “My body is mine, but not me,” you have realized that the real “me” is a self-perpetuating, eternally existing process/entity called life. You can call it the Tao, true self, nature— it doesn’t matter. It exists without your understanding, beyond the realm of your information. It exists by itself, for itself, and of itself. When you say, “My body is mine, but not me,” you have realized who’s the true master of your breath, your life. I would like to call this realization “meeting the divinity within.” This is the second insight.

Life is suffering. Birth is suffering. As long as you are mired in the illusion that your body is you, life cannot be anything else but an endless cycle of suffering and pain. To know that life is suffering alleviated only by intense moments of happiness, is the first insight. To realize that a spark of divinity exists within you, in midst of suffering and emptiness, is the second insight.

The second insight that you need to experience is that your body is yours, but not you. My body is mine, but it is not me. When you feel yourself slighted and angry, when you feel your life is a sad joke, take a moment and ask who is this “me” who was slighted. You will realize that this “me” is a product, much like an appliance, packaged with various features such as age, job, religion, and hobbies. The “me” who was slighted is just a collection of information that you have gathered along the way. All the happiness, sadness, anger, and joy are generated by the mistaken assumption that your physical form is you. You are not unhappy. A phenomenon called the body and the layers of information that clothe it feel happy, sad, angry, or joyful. However, your body is never you, though it is yours.

What does this mean? If my body is not me but it is mine, who is the “me” that calls this body its own? If the entity that experiences my everyday life is just a phenomenon of a physical manifestation sheathed by layers of information, what is the real “me”?

To know that “my body is mine, not me” signifies that you know who the true master of your life is. The “me” that you have known throughout your life is just a collection of information that you started accumulating just after you were born. Your religious faith and your God are just a part of the information shell that you have constructed around yourself. Information did not cause your existence. Information started to form a shell around you after you were born, and this shell will disappear just before your body dies. It is akin to the programs inside a computer: all programs are closed before the computer turns itself off, read more article by Ilchi Lee.

We start asking about the meaning of life when conditions that produced our happiness disappear or when we realize that such conditions never last for long. At this juncture, we start asking questions: Why is this happening to me? What point is there to life? But when we are surrounded by happiness again, we forget about these questions and go merrily along our way. When “happy” conditions disappear once more, we start asking the same questions again, such as “How can this happen to me again?” When we have finally become jaded and distrustful of this thing called happiness, when we have finally seen happiness as the illusion that it really is, our questions start becoming more urgent: Who am I? Why was I born? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Read more Ilchi Lee’s articles.

As our questions become deeper, we start stripping off the layers of meaning that we had so carefully constructed around our lives, a process that leads to emptiness and loneliness. Most of us cannot bear this loneliness, and try our best to forget about the questions, yet we remain haunted always by their echoes in the back of our minds. However, if we wish to realize the truth behind life, we need the courage to look this emptiness straight in the eye. When you have realized that life is basically suffering punctuated by fleeting moments of happiness, when you are caught in that state of unbearable emptiness, you need courage and discipline to hold on to the questions that cry out from the depth of your soul. When you find yourself wishing, with all your being, to search for the unchanging truth, then you have taken that first step toward true freedom.

I copy this content from Prof Ilchi Lee’s book for great experience. Please read carefully and understand thanks. “Happiness is a state of mind.” “Choose to be happy.” “Create your own happiness.” We have heard these and similar sayings so many times that they are almost cliches. Let us ask a more basic question: Why do you seek to be happy? Why do you put forth such an effort to be happy?

“Life has a meaning.” “I am a good person.” “My life is a worthy life.” “I am happy.” “I create my own happiness.” Why do we need so many self-motivational maxims? After spending your whole day in the never-ending pursuit of happiness, have you ever gone to bed wishing that life could be over as soon as possible? Real happiness is not generating conditions that can produce happiness, but being free from the pounding pressure to always be happy. Real happiness is going beyond the constant need to be happy.

In order to gain the freedom referred to previously, you need to gain an insight into three basic truths of life. The first insight is that life is suffering. Birth is suffering, as well as eating, drinking, loving, parting, coming together, drifting apart—all these are forms of suffering. Forget about the things we actually admit to be suffering; even the things that we define as joyful create stress for us in that they take us away from a state of equanimity.

If birth is a blessing and life a source of continuous happiness. then we don’t need spiritual maturity or enlightenment, for when you are happy, you look for a continuation of that happiness. But you are not looking for something else, something better. When you look for something else, you feel a lack of something in your current reality. We try to solve a problem only when we perceive a problem, and we try to fill a space only when we see that it’s empty.

When a person is happy, she does not ask for a reason. She is satisfied in just being happy. When you are happy, you dance, sing. and laugh; you don’t think about the deeper meaning of life. A Buddha may laugh, but not a philosopher, for joy and happiness are contrary to the motivation to philosophize. In a happy country. should such a place ever exist, all philosophers would be unemployed.

Exhale, and as you do so, lower your raised hand. As you inhale again, press upward toward the sky with your left hand and downward toward the ground with your right hand. As before, use only about 80 percent of your strength.

Inhale and press upward toward the sky with your right hand and downward toward the ground with your left hand while lightly flexing the Dahn-jon. Do not completely extend your arms at this time, but give your elbows a slight, natural bend, using only about 80 percent of your strength. Stop your left hand at the height of the Lower Dahn-jon.

Two Hands Press toward Heaven

Inhale and lift both of your hands, pressing them toward the sky. Use only about 80 percent of your strength at this time. Take care not to allow your buttocks to protrude, and lightly spread your palms to stimulate energy in your hands.

Ensure that energy does not rise upward as you lift your hands. The key is to raise your arms without using excessive strength, and to keep the mind centered on the Dahn-jon by Ilchi Lee.

When we train the Dahn-gong Ki Accumulation Form, our bodies overflow with life and vitality as they are filled to the bursting point with energy, like rubber balloons. In this state, our bodies move quickly and agilely with appropriate tension, and our concentration and awareness are deepened.

In the Ki Accumulation Form, the space between the legs and the degree to which they are bent varies according to the practitioner’s level of training. With greater proficiency, practitioners increase the space between their legs and the angle of their knees, working to develop flexibility, strength, and stability.

Progress in Kigong training depends on how constantly we practice. We will be able to achieve our desired goals if we practice ceaselessly, applying precise principles and methods.

Stimulating Energy

Before we begin the regular Ki Accumulation Form, we perform basic Ki-circulation movements for stimulating the energy in our entire bodies, including our hands and arms, chest, neck, and legs. Make Fists and Beginning Posture movements are performed as they are in the Dahn-gong Basic Form.

Continuing from the previous movement, cross your wrists over your head and then lower them to your Dahn-jon along a central line. (These lines are copied from Ilchi Lee’s book)

Inhaling again, spread your arms outward to the sides and raise your hands above your head.

Gather energy from your Baek-hoe to your Dahn-jon, exhaling as you lower your hands.

Clap your hands as you bring them together above your head.

Drawing a huge circle toward the outside with your hands, raise them ( above your head).

Bring your feet together and lower your hands, crossing them in front of your Dahn-jon.

Shift your weight to your left leg and, at the same time, cross your arms in front of your chest.

Bend your left knee and straighten your right leg as in the previous movement. At this time, the right hand extends downward and the left hand blocks upward. Its all about Ilchi lee’s experience.

The line from the Baek-^oe to the Hoe-eum should be kept perpendicular to the ground to prevent the upper body from leaning to the front or back.

Open the Ah-mun

Inhale as you raise your hands behind your head and cross them at the Ah-mun point.

Exhale as you slowly press your hands out ward to the sides.

Ah-mun Point: Located between the first and second cervical vertebrae. It is situated on the center line of the neck and head, in the depression where the neck and head meet.

Continuing from the previous movement, press forward with the center of your palm as you turn your body to the front. Look in the direction your hand is moving.

Exhale as you press forward fully with the center of your right palm. Bend your front leg and straighten your back leg. Stand straight with your upper body erect.

Of the six basic movements, this one trains stepping for the ll-ji Posture, which is also called a front stance. Now repeat the movement in the opposite direction.

Switching hands, repeat the previous movement.

Here is an other article by Ilchi Lee.

Beginning Posture is for initiating circulation of internal Ki in our bodies. Through this movement, we create respiration and energy conditions appropriate for doing Dahn-gong. The Beginning Posture movement promotes the flow of energy along the body’s vertical meridians.

The breathing method in Dahn-gong, except for the Beginning and final Breathing postures, involves exhaling with 30 percent of the breath left in the lungs. In the Beginning Posture, however, breathing is controlled so that 80 percent of the last breath is exhaled, with 20 percent retained by the lower abdomen.

Stepping in the Dahn-gong Basic Form generally employs movements trained in the ll-si and ll-bon postures.

Exhale as you lower your arms. Beginners may straighten and bend their knees as they raise and lower their arms to match their breathing. Once they develop strength in their legs, however, they should practice this in a horse stance, without moving the lower body.