Ilchi Lee Blog

Healing the Earth means to establish equitable and lasting peace, for benefit of all people of the world and for Earth herself.

Ilchi Lee thinks that an important part of healing society is to heal the family, for families make up the smallest and yet the most essential unit of society. Healthy families are necessary to the health of society, and humanity. Parents must assume responsibility for health of the family. They must help children understand who they are and to find their purpose in life. Parents must convey to children, their inalienable right to enlightenment. Parents who are Earth-Humans will teach them what it truly means to be a citizen of the Earth.

Parents must be healers for the family. I am not speaking merely about healing physical ailments, but the caring and accepting attitude of love. All that is required to be a healer is to facilitate a deep level of trust among family members. When we communicate trust in the world, peace will be possible. Conflict in the world today is fundamentally due to the lack of trust.

Parents also have responsibility to make the family a joyful unit. To stay together, a family must play together. Without a playful atmosphere, there can be little communication between parents and children. We must be able to play well not only with each other but also in society, and in nature. Healing is creating an atmosphere in which to play well, for when we are having fun, we do not fight.

With Brain Mastery, you can break free from the unrealized goals of your past. You become a new person with new perspectives and a new ability to harness the creative and reasoning powers of your brain. Free from past fears, prejudices and preconceptions, you can create a new future and do after seventy the things that you wanted to do at thirty-five. Have you read about those men and women in their seventies and beyond who are climbing the Himalayas, winning literary awards, and starting world-changing charities? There’s nothing in them that is not in you. You cannot go back and rewrite chapter one, but you can start now to make a fantastic finale.

Through the continual, lifelong practice of Brain Mastering, you will truly become master of your brain. This means building a lifestyle centered in part on the four previous stages of BEST. You will continue to engage in Brain Sensitizing, Versatilizing, Refreshing and Integrating. As you do, over time you will continue to create new neural pathways that will help you discover new abilities and new ways of thinking. In short, vou will find new solutions to the problems of living.

This new lifestyle can truly lead to a new life! For example, it you were not previously interested in writing, but then in your brain education journey you discover an urge to write your memoirs, you might find yourself in, writers’ workshops, meeting other writers, and engaging your creativity to the fullest. Who knows, you could be a published writer for the first time in your seventies. The important thing is that you tried something new.

Brain Mastering makes maturity what it should be: a prime time of life when you are free of the constraints of work and children and are free to pursue a rich, rewarding existence. So many older adults miss out on this time because they cling to old grudges or let their minds become frail and halting, but that is a fate to which no one need be consigned. Science is showing us that our minds, emotions, and attitudes affect how long and how well we live as much as, or more than, what we eat or how much we exercise. A positive, hopeful, curious mind is a resource for exploring all the wonders that later life has to offer: Want to travel? Go back to school and get your master’s degree? Start a company? Volunteer? Learn to meditate? Do it. When you are master of your brain, you are master of your life.

You might also inspire others. Not all people who reach maturity will hear of BEST on their own. Some short-sighted people might even consider it New Age mumbo-jumbo. We know the truth: You must grow older, but you don’t have to grow old. You can just grow—in sagacity, purpose, joy, and energy. By pursuing your Brain Mastering lifestyle, you may well motivate others to do the same. You may change one life or a dozen.

This story is universal. By opening their minds and seeking beyond themselves, wanderers come to a wider wisdom, a larger view not only of the world but of themselves. They learn to give and to be enlarged by the act of giving. Others rnav scoff and misunderstand their intentions, but in the end, they are transformed.

This is the essence of your journey. As someone who has lived five, six, seven decades or more, you have probably found that you were expected to adhere to a set of predetermined ideas. But all the while, you have wondered if there was a way you could escape the limitations of your thought habits and become a larger person with greater vision.

There is. It’s Brain Mastering, in which the skills and concepts you have learned throughout the first four stages of BEST come together as a single unified discipline.

A Spiritual Quest

BEST is a spiritual quest—a quest to become a person of greater enlightenment as you make the transition into the mature years of your life. You have plenty of goals: to heal from the traumas of the past, to find peace, to develop a healthier body, and even to discover a new purpose for your life. Brain Mastering is discovering the life you want to live and developing a mental discipline that allows you to turn your brain into a tool to create that life. It is a continual process of improving your brain to become a better human being.

Essayist Sidney Smith said, “Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.” Many of us struggle with regrets about the things we have not done in our lives. These regrets become more acute and painful as we age, like a disease that eats away at the peace and serenity of many older people, turning what should be a time of exploration, vitality, and joy into a shadowy country of unfulfilled promises and resentment.

We conclude with a look at Brain Mastering, the collected disciplines of BEST, which, when practiced as a lifestyle, will give you greater control over your brain and a greater ability to achieve cherished goals. But first, a brief story…

In the ancient Native American tale of Jumping Mouse, a mouse once lived with other mice in their village, and he spent all his time as other mice did: gathering seeds, moving pebbles, and running about. But all the time he heard a strange roaring sound. When he mentioned it to the other mice, they scoffed at him. But eventually, Jumping Mouse had to find out what the roaring sound was. He met Raccoon, who took him to the Great River. where he met Brother Frog. Frog told him that if he wanted medicine of his own, he should jump as high as he could. Jumping Mouse jumped and saw the sacred mountains, and that is how he pot his name.

Once he had seen the mountains, Jumping Mouse went back to his people to tell them about his vision. But they would not listen to him. They could not see through his eyes. They could only perceive what others before them had perceived. So Jumping Mouse set off alone to find the sacred mountains. Jumping Mouse gave his eyes to other animals in order that they should see, which left him blind. With their help, he continued his quest. Finally, he reached the summit of the sacred mountain and found the great lake where all the world is reflected. Left alone with only his sense of touch, Jumping Mouse was content, knowing the great Eagle would finally get him. An eagle swooped down, he heard a rush of wings, and everything went black.

Suddenly, Jumping Mouse awoke and realized he could see colors. A voice asked him if he wanted medicine, and he said yes. The voice told him to jump as high as he could. The wind caught him and took him high into the air, where he could see Buffalo and Raccoon and the medicine lake and the sacred mountain. He saw his friend Frog by the lake and called down to him, “Hello, Brother Frog.” The frog called back, “Hello, Brother Eagle!”

In this chapter, we will discuss Brain Versatilizing, the process of creating new neural connections in the brain, which allows you to make your brain more flexible and to overcome resistance to changing negative habits.

In his book The Memory Prescription, Dr. Gary Small, director of the UCLA Center on Aging, writes, “Research has shown that it first takes a healthv and agile brain to motivate us to treat our bodies right and achieve our highest quality longevity throughout each phase of life.”

We could not agree more. Health and vitality begin with the brain because this organ is where everything begins. Walking, picking up a child, kicking a soccer ball, stirring cookie batter in, and furling the sails on a boat at sea all begin the same way: a stimulus stirs an electrical signal between various areas of the brain that are related to the part of the body that is involved. Within milliseconds, those impulses travel from the brain, along the spinal cord, and into the branched nerves that control the arm \ve want to raise or the leg ready to be lifted into a conga-line kick. Voila—the movement happens. But it all begins in the cranium.

One of the more toxic ideas spread by modern culture is that the brain is static from birth to death. The conventional conception of the brain is that it grows in childhood and perhaps early adulthood, but at some point it begins to shed brain cells and neural connections begin to die, and this process is inevitable and irreversible. That may explain the deep dread with which many people regard aging: They assume that in their later years they will plummet into forgetfulness, senility, and finally the loss of identity. It is a fate that many of us fear more than the certainty of death: the possibility of mental decay.

Pull your hands apart and push them closer together again as you maintain your concentration. You may feel a tingling sensation, like that of electricity, a magnetic attraction pulling your hands toward each other or pushing them apart. You may even feel as if you were holding a soft cotton ball between your hands or moving slowly through warm water. All these feelings are manifestations of your energy flow When the sensation becomes more obvious, pull your hands farther apart or push them closer together. The sensation will not leave you; it will expand and become stronger. O Breathe in and out slowly and deeply 3 times. © Rub your hands together briskly until they are warm; then gently caress your eves, face, neck, and chest.

Breathing properly is essential for stress management. When you were an infant, you did this very naturally; no one had to teach you how. But over the years, your body began to collect a lot of tension, and soon your breath became shallow and incomplete. This is very unfortunate for vour brain because it thrives on oxygen from your blood. Practice this exercise to learn how to breathe like a baby again.

Lie down on your back on a hard and warm surface.  Squeeze your legs tightly together and then completely relax them. They will part naturally, about the width of one foot. Your angle of your feet should be about 30 to 45 degrees from the floor.

Relax your body completely, especially the upper body, chest, and shoulders.

Curl your tailbone gently up, letting the lower back touch the floor as much as possible. As your tailbone tucks in, imagine creating a bowl in your lower abdomen to collect energy, trying your best not to tense your legs in order to do so. You will automatically feel slight tension in your lower abdomen.  Close your eyes and focus on the energy flow inside your body. Breathe deep down to the lower abdomen.

Thanks Prof Ilchi Lee for helpful info regarding abdonimal breathing.

If you have not regularly made an effort to stretch your inner thighs, you may find this exercise difficult at first. To avoid injury, start with only a light stretch and work up to a deeper one.

Keeping your feet parallel, spread your feet widely, about twice your shoulder width. Place your hands on your hips or hold onto a stable object.  Bend one knee and lower your hips toward the floor while keeping the unbent leg extended.  Adjust your stance as needed to achieve a solid stretch in the inner thigh. Hold for 10 counts.  Repeat on the opposite side.

Energy Awareness Exercise

Do you have a sixth sense? You might without even realizing it. By sixth sense we do not mean some sort of advanced psychic ability, but rather the ability to sense energy. Following these exercises will help to develop your ability to feel energy, while also helping to calm and focus your mind.

FEELING ENERGY

Ki energy cannot be seen, but it can be felt. This exercise will help you learn to sense its presence. It requires deep, relaxed concentration, the perfect remedy for stressed-out brains. You should be as relaxed as possible before attempting this exercise, so stretch your bodv before you begin. At first, the feeling might be very subtle. Do your best to clear your mind and focus on that sensation. Keep practicing this and soon you will find that the sensation prows stronger.

Sit comfortably on the floor or on a chair and straighten vour back.   Place your hands on your knees, with your palms facing up, and close your eyes. Relax your body, especially your neck and shoulders. Relax your mind. Inhale deeply; let go of any remaining tension while exhaling. (Soft meditative music in the background may be helpful.) Raise your hands slowly to chest level, with your palms facing each other but not touching. First concentrate on any sensation you may feel tween your palms. At first, you may only feel the temperature of vour hands.

Now create about 2 to 4 inches of space between your hands and concentrate fully on the space. Imagine that your shoulders, arms, wrists, and hands are floating in a vacuum, weightless.

Your legs, especially the hamstrings, can tighten up very quickly if you do not stretch them regularly. Do this exercise every day and you will be touching your toes in no time.

Sit with your legs together, stretched straight out in front of you.

Place your hands on your knees. Move your arms in a circular motion toward the backs of your hips, circling them up over your head.  Bend your torso and lower back so that your hands can touch your toes. Concentrate on keeping your legs straight while you bend at the elbow, bringing your chest and head toward your knees. Hold this position for about 10 counts, and then return to your original posture. Repeat this exercise several times.

HIP STRETCH

If you are like most people, you have probably spent too much time sitting during your life. This exercise will help you open up your hip joints and possibly help you avoid injury in the future.

Lie comfortably on the floor. Bend one knee and grasp your shin with your hands. Pull your knee in toward your chest and down toward your armpit.

Ilchi Lee An Expert of Breath Respiration.

We all want our consciousness to evolve continuously to reach greater heights. However, according to Dr. David Hawkins, on average, an individual will advance only two or three lux in a lifetime. Let’s think for a moment about what you were most concerned with ten years ago and what you are most concerned with now. Although your thought process may have become more complex, actual areas of concern have not changed all that much. In other words, you are worrying about the same things you have always worried about. Your consciousness, therefore, has not advanced significantly.

How can we increase our consciousness level? The answer is with vision. Human beings can only mature through the process of formulating a vision and then achieving it. Vision should consist of goals that lie at the farthest reaches of our abilities, at the very edge of our knowledge and the depths of our wisdom. In order to achieve the vision, we must go beyond our previous limits and create a new standard for what we can do.

Therefore, you must be honest and courageous when deciding on a personal vision. You cannot pretend to be less than what you are, or more than who you are. Be honest and accurate about your limitations so that you can locate your vision just beyond its boundaries. If you place your vision within easy reach, to feed your ego or because you fear failure, your consciousness will not grow, even when you achieve your goal.

We are often mistaken in thinking that level of understanding is equivalent to level of consciousness. Just because you read the bible and understand its messages, or read the Buddhist Sutra and can interpret its teachings, does not mean that your consciousness is on par with that of Jesus or Buddha. Then, on what basis can you evaluate a person’s level of consciousness? More importantly, how can you measure the progress of your own level of consciousness?

There are two general standards for evaluating level of consciousness in Doctor Ilchi Lee’s point of view. The first is your purpose in life. What do you live tor? Two people might do the same work for the same company; yet their purpose in life may be totally different. Second is the home of your consciousness. This refers to the equilibrium of your consciousness. It is the level to which your consciousness most readily returns to rest. As you can see from the diagram, the range of consciousness for three people may be the same, but the home (equilibrium point) of their consciousness is different.

Once you have chosen the new “you,” then you must begin to act and behave in a manner that befits your newly chosen self and its corresponding level of consciousness. With continuous effort, you will be able to move the equilibrium point of your consciousness to a new level, making it your new home.

Advantages of Dahn Hak and Dahn Yoga define by Ilchi Lee.