Ilchi Lee's Blog, page 23
January 26, 2022
How and Why You Should Wake Up Your Senses
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Waking up and developing our inner sense of energy can help us keep our original mind and consciousness.
We were all born with minds, and we will end our lives with them. That original mind will never betray us, not in any moment. It will always be with us, no matter how hard things get. That’s why mind, consciousness, and the brain are important.
But many people live having lost their brains. The brain is the mind and spirit. They are one. But many brains have been hijacked by the ego, desires, and a false sense of self. Their original, pure minds are being held prisoner.
That’s why we need to take back our brains. We have to take back our minds and spirits. Only then can we be someone with spirit. Only then can we be healthier and more peaceful. For health, happiness, and peace come from our brains.
A process for taking back our brains from stress, disease, and victimization lies in the five steps of what I call Brain Education. Every month in the first half of this year, I’ll introduce a new step on the path to self-mastery through mastering our brains.
To take back our brains, we first need to bring them home to our body. Instead of letting our focus wander outward to our environment or letting our thoughts ruminate on our worries and negative ideas, we give our attention to the sensations of the body.
That’s why when we practice the first step of Brain Education, Brain Sensitizing, the key phrase is, “Feel your body.”
We feel our movements, our heartbeats, our breaths, as well as our pain and tension. Moment by moment, rather than tuning our five senses to the outside world, we listen with our “inner ears” and see with our “inner eyes.” We become explorers of our inner realms, digging deeper and deeper for the treasure we were born with inside.
Through this practice, we also wake up and strengthen our sixth sense—our innate ability to feel our bodies’ life energy. The qi that flows through the meridian channels running along and through our bodies and that circles around in our seven chakras can all be felt in real time. We can always be aware of our own energy condition by developing our energy sense.
Through Brain Sensitizing practice, the connection between our bodies and minds grows and grows. It can become so strong that we can feel what’s going on inside us even while we’re going about our day.
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The First Step Toward HealthHaving this strong connection—making friends with our bodies this way—inherently helps us relax and destress. It allows the rest, digest, and repair functions of our bodies to go to work.
It also gives us information. The fascinating world of our selves tells us what makes us feel good or bad. We can learn what strengthens or weakens us. This information can lead to making better habits of thought and action.
Brain Sensitizing practices also strengthen and facilitate our energy flow so that our bodies and minds work better. They give us the power to change. They reveal our original minds, and they help our spirits become brighter.
Key Brain Sensitizing ExercisesThese exercises open energy channels (meridians), stretch and relax muscles and joints, deepen breathing, calm heartrate, slow down brain waves, and enhance energy sensitivity.
Body TappingTapping anywhere on your body with loose fists, cupped palms, or fingertips. Can be performed in a specified sequence or focused on one area of the body, such as the chest or abdomen.Meridian Exercise
Mindful stretching, rotation, and squeezing with coordinated breathing that opens the body’s meridian channels.Intestine Exercise/Belly Button Healing
Massaging the lower abdomen by moving the abdominal muscle in and out or by pressing the navel or other parts of the abdomen with your fingers or a tool.Brain Wave Vibration
Shaking and vibrating the body to discover your natural rhythm. Can target a specific area, such as the head and neck, or vibrate the entire body.Breathing
Breathing exercises in various postures to promote energy accumulation and circulation. Includes chest breathing and abdominal breathing.Feeling Energy Meditation
A meditation for sensing energy in and between the hands that helps quiet thoughts and emotions. Called Jigam in Korean, which means no thought.
Editor’s Note: You can take classes that bring you through the five steps of Brain Education at a local Body & Brain Yoga Tai Chi center. Find one in the United States at BodynBrain.com.
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January 19, 2022
Ilchi Lee’s Recipe for Unconditional Love
Love, the brightest light, the purest energy within.
Love heals.
Love, our true essence, is always waiting to be set free—free of our fears and sadness.
Only we can set ourselves free.
What sounds difficult is actually simple. All it takes is vibration.
Tap your body. Press into the painful points. Shake and stretch away your tension. And you’ll release yourself from your negative emotions and negative thinking.
Allow yourself to let them go. Forgive yourself for having them and for identifying with them.
Take in bright and happy sights and sounds. Put a smile on your face. Think of the dream you will create. You’ll integrate new energy into your body and brain.
Repeat and repeat until the love you feel inside yourself is undeniable and unshakable. Move your body with this feeling until it grows so big that it feels like it encompasses the entire earth and beyond. Gratitude and joy grow from it.
Keep your mind centered on this self and the dreams that make it bigger.
Meet people with the love you’ve met inside yourself, and it will be passed on. Help them make good vibrations so that they can feel the love that they are.
And support the earth with the power of your love.
*Editor’s Note: See examples of how loving yourself can heal you through the new film LOVE HEALS: Using the Ancient Wisdom of Energy to Journey Within, for which Ilchi Lee was the Executive Producer. The film is available online until January 30, 2022. Learn more at LoveHealsFilm.com.
January 12, 2022
10 Tips for Working Steadily Toward Your Goals
[Photo by nd3000 via Envato Elements]
Did you make any goals or resolutions for the new year?
I always make and recommend having long-term and short-term goals. But making goals and staying on track require different strategies and skills.
Here are a few tips for sticking to your goals and achieving long-term success.Make a clear plan.Break down your ultimate goal into smaller goals that have a due date and outline the steps you will take to achieve them.
Enjoy the present while keeping an eye toward the future.
If your mind is too consumed by your vision of the future, you won’t be able to focus on your present problems and challenges. Focus instead on the smaller goals you created one at a time.Check your progress.
As you take action toward your smaller goals, regularly check how effective your actions have been and make adjustments based on the evidence you find.Take joy in your small successes.
Give yourself encouragement along the way to motivate you to keep going. Before you know it, each step you take will add up to one beautiful journey.Check your ego.
We all have a part of ourselves that desires safety, security, and recognition. This part may not be so ready and willing to do the hard things we need to accomplish to achieve something outside of our comfort zone. But giving into these basic survival desires keeps us from growing. Watching and noticing when they come up in our minds can help us make the opposite choice.Make time for reflection.
Set aside time in your day in which you can quietly think about your behaviors and choices and evaluate whether they support what you really want to create. Writing your reflections in a journal can help this process because it forces you to articulate your thoughts clearly.Refresh your emotions before bed.
We may go through various ups and downs and face many stressors throughout our day. Taking time before bed to wash these away with mind-body exercises can help us sleep more peacefully and wake up with more hope for the new day.Think of your limitations as soft, plastic structures.
Rather than thick, solid walls, our limitations are almost as malleable as plastic. They can slow us down and even stop us for a while, but they can be infinitely pushed and stretched out until they are barely visible. How can we stretch our limitations? By being very honest and realistic about what they are, and trying to reach just a bit beyond them whenever we face them.Keep finding a way.
If one way of doing something doesn’t work for you, keep looking for other ways until you find something that resonates with your own brain. Demand that your brain think outside the box to find new, more effective solutions, and use it to form new, more effective priorities. Find a model.
Look for someone who has already achieved the goal you’re aiming for, if one exists. Use their experience and mindset as a jumping point for your own mini-goals and action steps.
As you move toward your goal, remember that success comes with perseverance and maintaining the energy and mindset that allow it to come into our lives. Through our diligent hard work, we continually refine our characters. This journey, in a way, is more important than achieving the goal itself.
* Editor’s Note: Learn more from Ilchi Lee’s book, Principles of Brain Management: A Practical Approach to Making the Most of Your Brain.
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January 5, 2022
This Is My Wish for Us All This Year
[Photo by monkeybusiness via Envato Elements]
Let’s choose to get bright together in 2022.
The new year has arrived. Right now, humankind is standing at a crossroads. We can easily veer toward rising or falling together. As the coronavirus pandemic, extreme weather patterns, and other disasters around the world have highlighted, the future of individuals, countries, and the earth are no longer separate. They’ve exposed the weaknesses of the current systems, which do not allow all of humanity and the earth to thrive.
Yet in the midst of insecurity and change, people have retreated further into their comfortable boxes. We cling to ideologies like conservative and liberal or capitalism and communism. We fight over the labels our egoic selves have dressed us up in and over whose pain is worse. But this kind of compartmentation and separation can only lead to opposition and conflict. It can’t solve the issues we all face.
I’d like to suggest that we do the opposite, then, not only for the sake of humanity’s future, but for the sake of our individual futures as well.
The ability to see the truth clearly with an enlightened consciousness comes when we step outside our boxes and refrain from confining our minds to one time and place.
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The ability to see the truth clearly with an enlightened consciousness comes when we step outside our boxes and refrain from confining our minds to one time and place. Then we can realize the interrelatedness of all things and discover new solutions for problems both big and small.
That’s why I hope we can all choose to “get bright.” As I’ve talked about before, getting bright means making our bodies healthy and becoming emotionally mature. Yet at the same time, it’s becoming aware of and growing the pure bright energy inside us. This is the bright energy of our individual selves in our hearts (our true selves or our souls) as well as the bright energy in our brains that’s a piece of the divine energy of the universe.
When these energies meet and get brighter and stronger, how we see the world will change completely. We’ll understand what’s good for both me and you and cooperate with one another so that what we do is mutually beneficial. We’ll be able to recognize and respect the bright light in each other and help each other keep it strong.
Knowing this light, we can develop new systems that support it—sustainable systems working together harmoniously that protect all life. I call this level of cooperation Earth Management, and I call people who engage in it Earth Citizens.
I hope this year, 2022, we can all get bright and live the life of an Earth Citizen and create a new culture for all.
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January 3, 2022
[Video] Ilchi Lee’s Extra Insights on Chakras
In this clip from Ilchi Lee’s workshop, he goes through the seven chakras, the energy centers of the body, and shares little important tidbits about how they work and interact.
Why are the first and second chakras so important?
Why are certain chakras related to certain colors?
How are the chakras related to our everyday actions?
Learn more in this video.
December 30, 2021
[Video] Ilchi Lee Talks about Profound Fundamentals of Qi Energy
In the GwangMyung Arrow Special Training (Awaken Your Inner Light) workshops I’ve given over the past year, I’ve been emphasizing the importance of taking care of the energy flowing through our body (qi), especially of making it bright. In the process, I’ve introduced a few fundamental energy concepts. I’d like to share some of them with you through these videos.
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December 29, 2021
Ilchi Lee’s 2021 Reflections and 2022 Hopes and Goals
[Meditating on the steps of the platform at Earth Rock in the Earth Village.]
Both the year we’ve left and the year we’re entering are filled with wonderful people, plants, and animals.
As the new year has approached, I’ve been looking back on 2021. What stands out about the past year are all of the wonderful beings who I’ve had the opportunity to help and who have helped me. These are a few of them:
For more than a year, I’ve offered Gwangmyung Arrow Special Training online to people around the world. In this workshop, I helped people use light, sound, and vibration in dynamic meditation to awaken and brighten their inner light. I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to interact with almost 10,000 people through it. They remain in my heart and mind as I think of them often and continue to send them good energy.[image error][Giving the GwangMyung Arrow Special Training online.]
There were several months I spent in the United States, traveling for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began. I reconnected with Sedona, Arizona, a place of majestic natural beauty and strong earth energy that fosters creativity and spiritual awakening. While I was there, in addition to meeting old friends, I was able to put together a team of people to create the Love Heals film that will premiere next month. It’s a documentary about taking back our power to heal ourselves and each other naturally.[image error][Love Heals movie poster]
I also met Aileen Xu, creator of Lavendaire, a YouTube channel and online business that aims to help people make their lives their masterpiece. I helped her and her boyfriend with their healing journey, and she featured my latest book, Water Up Fire Down: An Energy Principle for Creating Calmness, Clarity, and a Lifetime of Health , in one of her videos.[image error][With Lavendaire]
For a couple of months of my U.S. stay, I served as an adviser for the managers and staff of Mago Café, a wellness café in Uptown Sedona that was being revived and is being rebranded as the Sedona Wellness Café. People inspired by the cafe’s Brain Education-based natural healing services, healthy drinks, and wellness products are now planning to open franchises in other parts of the country. They café aims to empower customers to make self-care and development an integral part of their lives.
[Enjoying organic kombucha tea at Mago Café.]
I discovered the excitement of engaging with thousands of people in real time with YouTube Lives. Through Brain Education TV (English) and Ilchi Lee’s Brain TV (Korean), I did live Q&As about once a month in the later part of the year.
[Behind the scenes at an early YouTube Live with Brain Education TV]
Several animals were born on the New Zealand Earth Farm this year, growing our family. Like Daebak Chunson the goose and Lucky the pig last year, one baby animal needed extra help. The piglet Bishiri was too small and shaky to nurse properly on his own, so we had to bottle feed him ourselves until he got stronger. I was so happy and moved that this weak baby could thrive; it just took the power of sincerity and love. I was reminded that every life is precious and that even healthy people can become weak or feeble. But we can all flourish if we don’t give up on each other and offer each other a helping hand.
[Bishiri the piglet being fed a bottle with milk and water.]
The hwangchil trees we planted in the Earth Village have been growing steadily. Their many medicinal properties offer a source of sustainable, natural healing we can share with many people in the future. Hwangchil can help people enhance their immunity and healing ability.
[Hwangchil tree sprouts]
Each person, animal, and plant I met this past year let my heart expand.
The current global situation seems chaotic right now, but it also seems hopeful. I always hold onto hope because I know that if I work hard and pray hard enough, the universe will respond to my sincerity and earnestness. Cosmic energy will propel me forward, sweeping in new opportunities for growth.
Every day lately, I’ve been meditating by a special rock in the Earth Village near Kerikeri, New Zealand that I’ve named Earth Rock. I feel the energy of Mother Earth strongly here, and I can feel the heart of nature and of the universe. I’m touched by how much the universe desires peace on earth; it’s pressing and urgent.
I go so deep into meditation here that I hardly notice time passing. In that space and time, I’m filled with the brightest energy, which I resend out to light up the world.
In deep meditation in nature, I’m filled with the brightest energy, which I resend out to light up the world.
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Prayers come to me spontaneously then. They are prayers for peace and for each person to realize and embrace their spiritual nature so that, through them, that peace can be achieved.
In the coming year, through launching the Love Heals film, releasing upcoming books, meeting more people through the Gwangmyung Arrow Special Training, and preparing the Earth Village to receive guests when the pandemic is finally over, I will empower each person to become brilliantly bright inside and out and to live as Earth Citizens who live in harmony with each other and the earth.
I really enjoy doing this look back and look ahead exercise every year. It helps me keep life in perspective. I hope you’ve had many blessings in 2021 and will create many in the coming year.
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December 22, 2021
How to Shine as Bright as a Star
You have light inside that you can make shine out as bright as a star.
No matter what we may think of our lives right now, we are all stars. You are a star.
Our genetic make-up resulted from one sperm beating out millions of others to combine with one egg. We managed to pass through nine months in our mother’s womb and managed to live through childhood. Just this accomplishment can be considered amazing.
But we are even more amazing. Within each of us resides a peace of the Creator—a bright light, a pure energy that comes from the Source of limitless potential. Along with this energy, we have access to the limitless consciousness of the Creator. It’s through this pure, bright spark inside us and this divine wisdom that we have the power to co-create our lives and our world.
With this star inside us, we need not be spectators, victims, or people who sit on the sidelines. We can take small and large actions to make our world brighter, starting with ourselves.
Our star quality may seem small and dim right now, but it can shine brighter if we remove the shadows around it and give it more juice. Those shadows consist of our attachment to our ego, material possessions, and even our pain and trauma. They grow stronger when our awareness, our conscious mind, becomes immersed in them, believing that they are all that is and forgetting the light that is always shining beneath the shadows.
When we immerse ourselves deeply in energy, our mind becomes calm and peaceful. In this state, there is no fear of losing something, no fuss over not being able to dominate others, no desire for recognition. The shadows have drifted away, leaving only our self, who is infinitely bright, peaceful, and seems to be able to do anything.
We can see the precious, holy, and beautiful beings that we are when we look at ourselves through energy.
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We can see the precious, holy, and beautiful beings that we are when we look at ourselves through energy. However, this existence may feel unfamiliar to our brains when they are trapped in our ideas. So, we may not think that this existence is who we are, and we continue to doubt it.
To counteract this doubt, we can talk to our brains. We can keep affirming that this bright peaceful self we experience through energy is the true ‘I’ that we have forgotten.
And we need to surrender our ego to this bright self. Rather than being fake while trying to look big to others, try to be real, even if you feel small. Start by becoming a little more real and gradually grow into your true existence.
Our essence is pure gold that does not need to be plated.
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Easy and Simple Way to Feel EnergyAll of these actions mentioned above are possible when we feel energy in the moment. They can only exist in a moment. Each moment is forever, and forever exists within a moment.
In this lecture I gave for the release of my book, CONNECT: How to Find Clarity and Expand Your Consciousness with Pineal Gland Meditation, I led the audience through exercises to help them feel energy.
If you’re just learning how to feel energy, you can follow along:
You can also try this simple energy meditation that all Brain Education practitioners learn when they first start.
When you first practice energy meditation, you may not be able to go very deep. You may not even be able to feel energy. That’s ok. It may take practice. You can also do dynamic meditations such as Brain Wave Vibration first to calm your mind and get your energy flowing before practicing energy meditation.
If you keep practicing, your inner light will grow brighter and radiate out to the world like a brilliant star.
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December 21, 2021
[Video] Ilchi Lee’s Intuitive Acupressure for Self-Healing
Our brain and bodies are connected, but when we don’t pay attention to this connection, they don’t always communicate well.
Acupressure can help you tell your brain where imbalances are in your body so it can apply the body’s natural healing processes to restore health. The Brain Education Healing Point (BHP) Energy Healing technique I introduce in this video shows you a form of acupressure made with this purpose in mind.
To do it, you don’t need to memorize specific points or understand meridian channels (energy pathways). You can simply press along your head or along the base of the nail bed on your fingers and/or toes until you find pain points. These pain points indicate physical and/or energetic imbalances in the body. Pressing on them several times signals the brain to fix these imbalances.
At the same time, performing BHP Energy Healing can relax you and make you more aware of the state of your body and mind.
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December 16, 2021
How to Keep Your Energy Cup Full
[Photo by Rido81 via Envato Elements]
Patch up energy leaks for an abundance of energy to use and share.
We may not always realize it, but many of us have energy leaks. We give energy away without refilling it, and our condition and habits may not retain the energy we do try to refill. No matter how much we care about our lives or other people, if we can’t fill up our energy, we’ll feel dissatisfied and frustrated.
When I speak about energy, I’m not only referring to the energy stored in molecules used by our cells. I’m talking about the subtle qi energy studied in Asian medicine that is composed of all of the kinds of energy produced by the body and the kinds of energy that enter and exit the body.
Asian medicine has described the ways in which energy tends to flow and circulate in the body, both when in health and when not. It, as well as martial arts and various other practices, have developed ways to keep one’s energy flowing and to gather more energy into the body as well. When we have enough energy, not only is our body healthier and stronger, but our mood is happier and more balanced, and our mind is more creative and clearer.
In principle, energy concentrates wherever our mind does. When our mind focuses on our activities or the people around us, our energy, as well as energy from the environment, goes toward them. This phenomenon can be used to help us achieve our goals more effectively or to take care of others.
Taking time each day, even one minute every hour, to bring our attention inside us helps some of that energy go toward ourselves. We can simply do that with our mind, or if that’s too hard, do exercises such as push-ups, pull-ups, squats, running, or fast walking instead. Strenuous exercise forces us to pay attention to how our body feels.
These are some of the exercises I do to stay fit and bring my attention back to myself:
By having poor posture.
Energy flows through our body better when our spine is upright in its natural S-curve without strain or tension and when the left and right sides of our body are even, forming horizontal lines that are parallel to the ground. Conversely, if we have enough energy flow, our posture naturally becomes relaxed and aligned. Also, when our hips and tailbone are pulled inward and upward, they make a bucket that holds energy in an important energy center located there.
Try doing qigong and/or breathing exercises to relax your body while improving your posture, which also let you accumulate energy you may have lost.
This effective breathing exercise uses different precise postures:
Through “dark holes” in our magnetic field.
The energy flow in our body generates an electromagnetic field. Excessive worry, anxiety, and negativity from within and without weakens this field, causing more stress and emotional turmoil.
Practice Magnetic Meditation with handheld magnets to help repair the electromagnetic field while developing better focus and the ability to feel energy.
Here’s how to do it:
The techniques above not only close energy leaks; they also help bring energy into the body. How we use that energy gets determined by how we use our mind. Keeping our focus on what we really care about and want to accomplish will help us have enough energy for the people, places, and endeavors we wish to give it to. The practices for patching up energy leaks above can also help us develop our focus and discern what’s most important to us.
We always have enough energy to give—it’s abundant all around us. We just need to take measures to fill ourselves up first and make sure it’s going where we want it to go.
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Editor’s Note: To learn more about how to manage your energy, take classes at a Body & Brain Yoga Tai Chi center. Find one near you at BodynBrain.com.
