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 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 Sung, 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.

Seeing Myself as a Healer

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.

Walking a New Life Path

I then asked myself: How can I best support this vision and grow my soul? Because my vision overlapped so much with Dahn’s vision – in articulation, encouragement, values, organization and resources – it was natural for me to want to interact with Dahn instructors and members as often and intimately as possible. I finally admitted to myself that I had found my affinity community, indeed a new virtual family. My first phase of making this real and even routine was to volunteer at the Dahn Center, for many hours a week. The longer the working hours, the more varied the activities (from welcoming to healing and from teaching to cleaning), and the stronger my heart connection with members, the more I learned and grew in terms of my body’s vitality, mind’s range, and soul’s awareness.

My next step seemed natural: To make a bigger commitment to Dahn’s vision and my soul’s evolution by taking the training in Sedona to become a Myungsah Nim – which can be translated as New Human Leader or Bright Spiritual Teacher. This new Dahn rank created a class of leaders who help the staff and members at the centers, and in addition reach out to the community on Dahn’s behalf. The Myungsah Training deepened my connection to Dahn in terms of becoming a disciple of Dr. Ilchi Lee, supporting the global vision of the organization as the basis of my action plan, and following the set of Tao principles as my guiding life philosophy. I was happy to accept these three treasures. In practice, I have found them to be profound forces in strengthening my will power and spiritual evolution. In returning to my region, I found myself more fully integrated into the Dahn leadership and taking on more responsibility regarding programs and projects. The synergy between what I was giving to and getting from the Dahn community had increased significantly.

The next step on my Dahn path came soon and seemed so right: I accepted an offer to work full-time at the Bethesda Center. In a tangible way, Dahn and I were making formal commitments to each other. A few years before, after retiring from three decades in university bureaucracies, I had said that I would never work full time again. Yet, here I was at Dahn – working, volunteering and training – up to 12 hours a day, and parts of weekends too. And loving it. I gladly revised my biography to feature my Dahn job responsibilities: supporting members’ holistic growth, teaching yoga to adults and children, training instructors and new employees, healing members, conducting energy check-ups and new member orientations, arranging organizational alliances, and developing marketing-related documents. Working full time at a Dahn center enables me to help grow the souls of its members by reducing their stress, facilitating their healing, opening their hearts, and awakening their souls. Whether teaching yoga classes, cleaning the center, speaking with members, or distributing brochures, I can keep my focus on being sincere and responsible. So much of the joy and fulfillment in my life comes from having worked at three centers so far. Getting to know a widening circle of staff and members has enriched my life and grown my soul.

My next growth experience came in the form of the 10-day Korea Meditation Tour. It exceeded my expectations in terms of pleasure, vitality and inspiration. Pleasure came from the smooth-run program, Korea’s cultural heritage, people’s warm hospitality, ruggedly beautiful landscape, and friendliness of 30 Dahn participants and dedicated staff. Vitality was heightened by creative, rigorous training exercises, made more relevant in the context of Korean culture and mountains. I felt inspired as I deepened my mind and heart’s connection to the historical source and traditional values of what Dahn is all about.

I now felt ready to participate in the six-day Chun Myung (Heavenly Light) Training. It was about getting to know deeply one’s soul, living according to its guidance, and coming to terms with life and death, which had long troubled me. I learned much about my essential spiritual nature. A major outcome of this program was my quieting a large portion of the chatter in my head, and even more importantly not speaking a lot of throw-away and distracting words to others. To mark the end of my ego-driven life up to now and the start of the soul-driven life for the rest of my days, I selected a new name: Chun Eum, meaning Heavenly Sound. Given my life’s orientation as a communicator, I shall strive to listen to heaven’s sound (inspiration, wisdom and insight) and speak with others from this place. Although okay with me if others still use my given name, Larry, I tell them that I would appreciate their reinforcement of my vision by calling me Chun Eum.

My two-year journey with Dahn has enabled me to live more fulfilled – with new training, health, work, vision and name. I have health and energy greater than when I was half my 62 years, the most peace of mind I have ever known, and an empowering vision of my contribution to the quality of humanity and the Earth for my remaining decades.

Ilchi Lee focuses on research