Ilchi Lee, Healing Society

To determine your information nutrition level, Ilchi Lee suggest in his new book Brain Wave Vibration, you ask yourself three basic questions:

1. Is the information I am receiving empowering to me?

No piece of information is worth having if it weakens you or detracts from your ability to realize your full potential. Throughout their lives, many people receive disempowering information, messages that tell them “You are not good enough,” “You are not pretty enough,” “You are not smart enough,” and so forth. You must learn to view these beliefs as tragic pieces of misinformation that have given rise to disastrous results in the world. You must be willing to reject this kind of information, because if you believe any of it, even a smidgen of it, you have unconsciously allowed a destructive virus into your brain.

The worst is when you give yourself this informatioin. Your brain will take you very seriously if you tell yourself that you are not good enough or that you are lacking in any way. It will live up to what you tell it you can do, so always give it clear and positive information about yourself. You can acknowledge that you have shortcomings to work on, but you should not think that your faults are a permanent part of who you are. When doing Brain Wave Vibration, imagine that you are shaking all of this kind of limiting information out of your brain.

The two other questions will be featured in next posts.

The history of humanity has been a constant progression toward the limits of rational thought. Through our ability to judge, analyze, and plan, we have gone a long way toward controlling the vagaries of human existence. In some ways we have tamed the uncontrollable, mysterious aspects of life on this planet. In doing so, however, we have introduced imbalance, both in our own personal lives and on the planet. The effect of imbalance on the Earth is becoming obvious, and the effects on our health are becoming clear as well.

Modern life essentially puts us each at war with our own brain stem, says Ilchi Lee in his new book Brain Wave Vibration, as we suppress the prerational, subconscious side of ourselves in favor of rationalistic obsession. Our educational system currently favors those whose gifts are in analytic, left-brain activitites, like reading and mathematics. Psychologists acknowlege that there are many forms of intelligence, including interpersonal, emotional, and creative intelligence, but these are not the talents that usually earn the accolades. We do not educate the whole brain; rather, we develop and reward the prefrontal cortex nearly to the point of excluding the rest. The same continues throughout life as congnitive-based skills usually earn greater money and status within society.

Of course, Ilchi Lee adds, the other parts of the brain keep working for us, but we do not educate ourselves to use them well. The thinking mind has become so central to our lives that it often carries us away from ourselves into patterns of negativity. Constantly judgin everything that comes our way, we send our bodies into a state of continual alarm and lack of equilibrium.

Many recent studies have shown the beneficial effects of meditation, Ilchi Lee says, which is essentially the practice of slowing, or even stopping, the thinking mind. The physical benefits occur because meditation gives our brain a much-needed rest from the constant mental chatter that keeps us stressed. Thinking is not necessarily bad, but at times we need to find ways to move beyond thinking, for our own health and for the health of others.

Miracles are really not so extraordinary. Actually, just the fact that all your bodily functions keep going as they do is a miracle in its own right. Ilchi Lee says “When we say something is miraculous, to me it only means that someone has managed to tap into a power that was already within his or her brain, waiting to be discovered.”

One of Ilchi Lee’s students had sustained an injury to her tailbone that caused her constant pain. She went to many doctors, but they told her the problem could not be fixed. She came to a Dahn Yoga center in Arizona to practice Brain Wave Vibration, hoping she could find some relief. She was a doctor herself, a dentist, so she remained skeptical that she would ever find permanent relief. At best, she thought, she could lessen the pain to some degree. To her surprise, her pain completely disappeared after only three months of practice.

Ilchi Lee is not telling you this story so you can be impressed with Brain Wave Vibraion; it is a very simple activity that requires little effort. Rather, he is telling you this story so you can be impressed with the marvel of the human body. He believes this woman was able to heal because the subconscious part of her brain, the brain stem, already knew what it needed to do to create wholeness in her body; she just needed to get out of its way, which is what Brain Wave Vibration allows. The body contains a wonderful intelligence that surpasses our current understanding of the human body. This is the intelligence of the brain stem, a part of the brain that orchestrates things so complex that our thinking brain can only begin to grasp them.

You are a being designed to perceive vibration. All of your senses are made to collect different kinds of information from the world around you through vibration. When you look at something, your eyes are receiving and processing the waves of light as they appear in the form of shape and color. When you hear, your ears funnel in the vibraions of sound, which your brain translates into meaningful interpretations of reality. When certain oscillations and combinations of sound are especially pleasing, you call it music; when the sound of words are moving, you call it poetry. When you touch something, you perceive the dance of molecules beneath your fingertips - some moving quick and hot, others slow and cold. When you run your fingers over the surface of an object, vibrations inform the peripheral nerves just below the surface of the skin, helping you make judgments about shape, size and texture. Even when you smell and taste, the experience is dependent on the vibratory interplay of molecules interacting with your own molecular makeup.

Brain Wave Vibration book is written by Ilchi Lee, and you can practice it in Dahn Yoga centers.

What we often do not realize, however, says Ilchi Lee, the creator of Brain Wave Vibration training, is that we are vibration-producing creatures as well. Of course we can sing and talk with our voices, which are ways of making sound vibrations. But there is another kind of vibration that cannot be so easily perceived with the five senses. It is an especially powerful form of vibration called thought. While we may not often perceive thought as being real in the same way that an object is real, it is in fact the most real and powerful thing in the universe.

Every achievement of humankind - from the prehistoric paintings on cave walls to rockets blasting into outer space - all began with a thought conceived in someone’s brain. We communicate these thoughts to the world by means of vibraion - through the words we speak, the ways we touch, and the actions we create. When these thoughts find accord with the thoughts of others, truly amazing things happen and even entire planets can be transformed - sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

There is one key player in all this vibratory communication. It is what is responsible for both receiving and producing the vibrations that shape the quality and content of our lives. It is the human brain.

Fortunately, says Ilchi Lee on his new book Brain Wave Vibration, people can learn to control their brain wave states for the improvement of mental and physical health. Eugene Peniston and Paul Kulkosky have shown that biofeedback, a method by which subjects are trained to control various biological functions, can be used to help people with alcoholism overcome their addiction. Through biofeedback, according to Ilchi Lee, these people were able to increase lower frequency alpha and theta brain waves, which are associated wtih a peaceful, meditative state of mind, while controlling higher frequency beta waves. This ability resulted in less depression and fewer cravings for alcohol among the subjects.

One of Ilchi Lee’s students, in fact, is a researcher in the area of biofeedback, specializing in measuring brain activity through EEF machines. He was very skeptical about the claimed benefits of Brain Wave Vibration created by Ilchi Lee, like many other scientists might be. But he gave it a try anyway because he was suffering from a number of ailments and wanted to find a quick stress-relief exercise that could fit his schedule. After a few weeks of practice, his focus improved, his headaches disappeared, and his shoulder pain subsided. He is now thoroughly convinced that brain waves can be influenced through movement of the body.

Your guess is as good as mine
But it’s really cool, anyway…

How many times a day do you search for something on the internet? Pretty often, I’d wager, unless you live in the middle of an ice field in Siberia. Next time you go reaching for Google, check out this site first. This site has a general philosophy that is similar to many improve-the-world groups, like Neal Donald Walsh, Dahn Yoga, Al Gore, Ilchi Lee, and others.

It’s been a little while… where were we when we left off? I don’t remember. I haven’t been to a Dahn Yoga class in a little while, but I was at a Dahn center the other day. There was a workshop followup session in progress, so I couldn’t go into the training room, but it was pleasant to just hang out and relax. How often you do get a chance to do that? (Relax, that is, no matter where you are.) I would wager a guess that it’s not often. This world of ours is moving faster and faster, and we don’t always manage ourselves well in the face of all this pressure to speed. Often the universe hands us the cosmic equivalent of a speeding ticket — perhaps a minor illness that forces us to stay at home for a week, or a missed train that forces us to wait an hour on a lonely train platform in the middle of beautiful countryside. I suggest being your own enforcer. The universe has enough work to do. Stop and smell those roses.

I was just reading back over my recent entries, and decided to name this post for what it’s not about (Dahn Mu Do and cats). So what is is actually going to be about?

(That turned out to be a difficult question. How do you answer that kind of question, really?)

I’ve decided that it’s about… you.

Yes, you.

I just learned a new stretch that really helped my hip joints. First put your feet a little wider than shoulders width, and lean down toward the ground. Now shift your weight to one leg, and push back into that hip joint. Feel it?

Have you ever wanted to be a cat? This sort of desire is more common in young children than in adults, but who doesn’t indulge in a little daydreaming now and then? Use your brain well, and you can manifest whatever you want, some say. 

This morning I sat in the thin sunshine, contemplating the new day. Morning feels so different from evening, and that’s not even considering the classic night vs. day comparison! What part of the day do you like best?