Ilchi Lee's Blog, page 42

Feeling Depressed? Try Belly Button Healing

The social isolation, uncertainty, and economic strain put on us by the coronavirus pandemic has left many people more anxious and stressed, and depression is on the rise. The coping mechanisms many people typically use, such as going to the gym or meeting with friends, are often unavailable. While reaching out to healthcare professionals is helpful, our own daily habits and self-care are also important.

I often like to remind people that any kind of imbalance or illness we experience, whether mental, physical, or emotional, corresponds to imbalances in our body’s energy flow. Making sure all of our energy points are open and that energy flows freely throughout our body is as important as making sure our blood is flowing well.

Emotions are energy and also need to flow. If we get stuck in our emotions, especially negative emotions, our energy also becomes stuck. Then the systems of our body responsible for rest and repair don’t work as well. We may have trouble sleeping or eating, or experience stomach or intestinal issues. The idea that “things will get better” or “everything will be OK” may seem like wishful thinking, and hope may seem far away.

Emotions cannot be changed with emotions. It’s also difficult to change them by changing our thinking alone. Even when you understand that an emotion is irrational or does not match the current situation, and especially if it does match, that emotion can be too strong to respond to rational thought. Physiological phenomena, as well as our subconscious processes, also make up our emotions and need to be addressed.

All of these can change if we change our energy. Being filled with bright, warm, flowing energy brings us a body full of vitality, a heart full of love and hope, and a mind full of optimism. Since our minds alone are not always strong enough to overcome our emotions, we need to use our solid physical body. Just as running releases mood-enhancing endorphins and dancing and smiling can make us feel happier, we can use moving meditations to beat the blues.

While taking a walk in nature could do wonders to improve our mood, we may not always have the means to get outdoors or make it a daily habit. And, if we’re feeling lethargic, discouraged, and sad, we may not always have the energy or motivation to fight against it. Techniques such as Belly Button Healing, however, can be done on your own in the comfort and security of your own bed whenever you want.

What Is Belly Button Healing?

Belly Button Healing involves rhythmically stimulating your navel through your clothing while focusing on the physical sensations this creates in your abdomen. You can use your fingers or a sturdy tool to do this. It can be done standing, sitting, or lying down, but doing it in a relaxed way is best. The pressing itself helps to relax your body, your mind, and your breath.

But Belly Button Healing is not just a relaxing massage for your abdomen. The belly button is a powerful energy point on the body that lies over an important energy center. Stimulating the navel opens many energy channels at once and allows more energy to go into the energy center. The center of energy in our lower abdomen is associated with our physical vitality and keeping it full of strong, clear energy helps to ground and center us along with making us feel more energized. Making this energy center strong and full also helps stuck energy flow out of the energy centers in the chest and head and keeps them open as well.

The belly button also lies over our digestive tract and its associated enteric nervous system, with the vagus nerve bringing messages to and from it and the brain. Some psychiatric or other brain disorders, such as depression, have related digestive symptoms, such as irritable bowel syndrome. The gut makes ninety percent of the serotonin in your body and about fifty percent of the dopamine. Serotonin in particular is out of balance in depression and some anti-depressant medicines correct this. The mix of microbes in the gut are also thought to affect our mood. Belly Button Healing may help improve gut health by relaxing and warming the intestines, pushing food and waste through them more efficiently, and circulating more of the blood there. Keeping your gut healthy is one thing we can do to improve our overall health.

How to Do Belly Button Healing

I show you one way to do Belly Button Healing in this video. You can follow along with me, but it’s important to listen to your body at the same time. If you experience too much pain or discomfort from pressing on your navel, you can do it more gently, or you can press around the navel on other parts of your abdomen at first instead. Once you get used to the sensations, you can also press in and out more rapidly, finding your own comfortable rhythm.

Doing a practice like Belly Button Healing is a way to clean out the energy that builds up every day. Clearing your energy for about five minutes in the morning to help you start your day and about five minutes before bed to remove negative energy from the day and help you sleep better are simple ways to alleviate symptoms of depression. They help you take back power over your life and your health and are easy enough to do even when you’re not feeling well. Belly Button Healing can help you remember that you are not your emotions or your depression. I hope you use it to bring yourself the health and happiness you deserve in any situation.

Put Your Worries Down in Flowing Water

I’ve discovered many beautiful rivers and streams as I’ve explored the nature of New Zealand. I would like to send you the flowing energy of this pure New Zealand stream. Put all of your worries down in it, and let them drift away.

If you let go of the negative habits and emotions in your heart, they will just wash away, because everything is created by the mind.

If you use flowing water to release what you have, then there’s no difficulty. Put some object down in stagnant water, though, and it stays in place.

It is you who can choose between stagnant energy and flowing energy. Everything is up to you. It’s a limitation to think that you don’t have a choice, that the habits and emotions you have now are who you are.

Everything will be resolved if you choose flowing energy. Trying hard to force something, to pull it out, can make things difficult for you. If you make good use of the laws of nature, if you make good use of energy, you can accomplish things that would not have been possible even with years of effort.

Human life is about living in harmony with the laws of nature, realizing humanity’s true value, and contributing somehow to the world, until our time comes to return to nature like a river reaches the ocean.

Chest Exercises for Breathing Deeply

We all know how important it is to breathe deeply. Taking deep, easy breaths from the abdomen can calm our mind and emotions and help circulate more oxygen throughout our body. But, often, our upper body is too tense for us to do this easily or comfortably. I’d like to introduce you to a few exercises you can use whenever your breathing feels tight or shallow.

You can find many of these exercises and more in my book, Meridian Exercise for Self-Healing.

Chest Tapping

The easiest way to loosen your chest is by tapping it. Chest Tapping can be done in any posture and you don’t need to be flexible or physically fit to do it. If you cannot tap your chest yourself, someone else can do it for you.

Use your palms or cupped hands to tap freely over your chest and the sides of your torso.
Keep your mouth slightly open as you tap and exhale through your mouth. Rather than deliberately forcing your breath out, breathe naturally.
Make loose fists and use the sides where your thumbs are to tap your chest more strongly.
Then use your fingers tips to tap concentrate your tapping on your sternum in the center of your chest. Continue to exhale through your mouth.
The longer you tap, the more open your chest will become. Try five minutes to start and increase the amount of time you do it if your chest still feels tight.

Clasped Hands Stretch and Bend

(p. 80)



This stretch loosens more than the chest. By involving the back, shoulders, and arms, it helps to align the upper body properly to enhance the function of the respiratory system.

Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart.
Interlock your fingers in front of your lower abdomen.
Inhale and stretch your arms above your head with your palms facing up. Imagine your whole body gently reaching for the sky while you focus on your lower abdomen and toes.
Unlock your fingers. Slowly and gently bend your upper body and your head backward as much as possible.
Exhale slowly through your mouth while you bring your extended arms around back and down toward your waist, stretching your chest open as much as you can.
Interlock your fingers at your lower abdomen again. Inhale and bend your upper body forward from your hips. Reach toward the floor as far as you cam, trying to touch it with your palms.
Exhale and return to Step 1. Repeat the sequence three times.

Chest Opening

(p. 306)

Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart.
Make fists and raise your arms, bringing your elbows in front of your face at ninety-degree angles.
Inhale. Open your arms to the sides as far as you can.
Feel your chest expand. Hold for several seconds.
Exhale and return to the original posture.
Repeat 10 times in slow motion.

Moving a Jar

(p. 47)

Stand with your legs wide apart, knees bent and feet parallel, spine straight.
Raise your arms to chest level, bending them at the elbows and allowing your index fingers and thumbs to touch, forming a triangle with your palms down. Move your hands away from you slightly, so your arms form a circle. Imagine you are holding a jar in between your fingers.
Inhale and, concentrating on your spine, move your arms and upper torso to the left, holding the jar in front of your chest, allowing your head and eyes to follow.
Pause when you’ve turned as far as you can.
Exhale while returning to the center.
Repeat Step 2 to the right.
Exhale while returning to the center.
Repeat twice.

You can do any of these exercises on their own or combine them as needed. The way to determine which exercises are best for you involves the important skill of “feeling your body.” Try each one while staying focused on how you feel and see which ones make you feel the best. Trust your body, and you’ll find what you need.

Combining chest exercises with tapping or pressing around the abdomen, especially on the Joongwan and navel acupressure points, will help you breathe even deeper. Relaxing the area below the diaphragm in this way lets the diaphragm move further into the abdomen, pulling more air further into the lungs. You can learn more about these techniques, Get Bright Breathing and Belly Button Healing respectively, from older blog posts.

[Video] Stay Healthy by Tapping Your Belly Button for 5 Minutes

Many of you are probably spending most of your time at home these days due to the quarantine. We need to exercise and manage our health now more than at any other time. That is why I’ve prepared this video about an easy, indoor friendly exercise for you all. I hope you enjoy this video and stay healthy!

[Video] All Change Begins with Choice

Do you want to change? How do you make that change and where do you start?

The answer is simple. Every change starts with your choice, continues with your choice, and ends with your choice.

I share this message with you in my new video as part of a series of videos of inspirational message. I hope these messages give you encouragement to get bright and stay strong.

You Don’t Need to Be Lonely When You’re Alone

[Source: @crystalmariesing via Twenty20]

Whether we enjoy being alone or live for being social, extended periods by ourselves can have lingering effects. We may feel disconnected from the world and even ourselves. Our personal world can shrink and the outer world can seem unreal.

At these times, although it may seem counterintuitive, I suggest turning within. Even when we’re alone, our focus can be outside ourselves. Whether or not people are around us, when we don’t have a strong inner connection, we can feel lonely or adrift. Though, when we look from the outside, our inner world may seem smaller than the outer one, the deeper inside that our awareness lingers, the more vast and connected we may feel.

Try this simple meditation to help your heart feel full, wide, and connected:

Use your fingertips to tap around your chest, especially right in the center. As you tap, bring your awareness to the vibrations the tapping makes. Focusing on your feeling will help you bring your attention inside. Let your shoulders relax.
Then add the vibration of your voice to the vibration of your tapping. With each exhale, make a chest-opening “Ah” sound while keeping your attention on the sound. Do this several times as you feel yourself gradually relaxing more and more.
Next rub and clap your palms together to bring heat and blood to them.
With your back straight and shoulders relaxed, face your palms toward each other at chest height about two inches apart.
Gently close your eyes and focus on the feelings in your hands. You may feel heat on your palms, a tingling in your fingertips, an itching or crawling sensation between your fingers. That is the feeling of energy.
Now spread your palms a little farther apart, breathing in, and then bring them close together again, breathing out. Repeat this motion, immersing yourself in the feelings in your hands. After some time, in addition to the sensation of energy in your hands, you may have a sense of opening and expansion in your chest.
Turning your palms toward your chest, repeat the motion of bringing both palms toward and away from your chest without touching it.
Focus on the feelings in the center of your chest. Speak what you are feeling aloud and listen to the words you say. Express and accept what you have inside.
Then rest both hands on your heart and give yourself any messages you want, including gratitude, love, forgiveness, or sorrow. Give your heart energy and attention.
Spend a couple of minutes simply feeling the breath that helps you stay alive. Through the act of feeling, you can always connect to yourself. You will never really be alone.

 

[Video] Everything I’ve Wanted to Say About the Brain

I’ve given many talks over the last 40 years of my career, but when I recently reviewed this one, it dawned on me: it sums up everything I’ve wanted to say.

So I’d like to share the video of this talk with you, hoping you’ll indulge me and watch it. It’s in Korean, but you can turn on subtitles by clicking on the gear symbol, then clicking on “Subtitles/CC,” and choosing a language.

Why do I think this talk is important? I go into detail in the video, but I’d like to give you some insight into our relationship to information. if you look back over history, you can see that the more we discover about something unknown, the more it goes from mystical to common sense. Studying a natural phenomenon lets us be able to use it. For example, electricity went from being a lightning god in the sky to be feared to a power even children use every day without thinking about it. Once harnessed, electricity transformed modern civilization.

The last great mystery for humankind to uncover is the brain. There’s much left to learn about it, but in the process of studying it, we develop ways of utilizing it. Scientists aren’t the only ones able to study the brain, however. Each of us can examine the workings of our brain in our own lives and adjust our behavior to help it operate better. Then we can better manage our health, our relationships, and our work. I devised Brain Education as a tool to help us do that.

Just as electricity made today’s material marvels possible, studying the brain can bring about a new transformation of civilization. One aspect of the brain is its ability to connect with the divine; it has a natural capacity for spirituality. That capacity lets us connect with all life, access wisdom beyond our years, and create more than we thought possible. Like our brain’s other faculties, its spiritual nature can be used. Once we are able to access it more fully and apply it in our daily lives, I believe we can usher in a new spiritual civilization.

I invite everyone to explore their brain and bring out its latent potential so we can create a healthy, happy, and peaceful world together.

Change Tragedy into Blessing

[Source: Galyna_Andrushko via Envato Elements]

Nothing about our lives is guaranteed. Everything is uncertain. So it’s only natural to feel that life is a tragedy.

Because of that uncertainty, people pray, searching for peace and stability. What’s more important than prayer, though, is choice.

The opportunity to make choices arrives every day, every moment. In deciding for ourselves what choices we will make, it’s better not to hold back. Instead, we can make them with boldness and confidence.

What should I choose? What would be a good choice? The value of enlightenment is found in making good choices, both large and small. A good choice isn’t good for me alone. It can be good for me because it’s good for others, too.

Maintaining that choice is the power of enlightenment. Even if your choices actually bring you pain, if joy and confidence in them are in your heart, then, ultimately, they are good choices.

What’s important is that we have “divinity and creativity,” aspects of our brain that allow us to choose both happiness and unhappiness.

Enlightenment is not a certain state. It’s a choice made moment by moment.

Will you be the creator of your life, or will you live like bits of straw, swept away and tossed about on the stormy sea of life?

It’s entirely up to you.

Life is rooted in tragedy, but when the divinity and creativity within us are expressed, that tragedy is changed into a blessing by our choices.

Changing the tragedy of life into a blessing, that is the power of enlightenment, a life of enlightenment.

This Is Our Chance

It seems as if the Earth is taking a deep breath right now. The water and air have become cleaner; animals are roaming in places once filled with human beings. Mother Nature is cleansing herself to start fresh.

During this time of reduced activity and isolation, I’ve been taking a deep breath as well, meditating and exercising to refresh my body, mind, and spirit. I’m cleansing myself to start fresh.

These activities fortify my physical power, heart power, and brain power—the abilities I need to participate in the changes currently taking place. Looking around, I see the existing systems throughout the world shifting due to society’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Weaknesses are being exposed in the face of this new big threat. We’re gaining new insight into ourselves and society, and we have new motivation and will to do something about it. I’m feeling that a new value is coming down to this world.

In what way do you want society to change? What new systems do you want in place? On what values do you want to base these systems?

I have long been a proponent of the values of nature—of living in harmony with the natural world and with the everlasting divine nature that exists within us all. These are what I call absolute values. They are values without which we would not exist. How could human beings exist without clean air or water or without the Earth itself? And what meaning would our bodies have if we didn’t have a soul or spirit?

I would sum up these values in the Korean word Hongik. Literally translating to “widely benefitting,” being Hongik means having a conscience and moral character. “Conscience” is the ultimate human value. It encompasses love, compassion, and consideration for others. This compass points to living conscientiously and seeking the common good over pursuing only our own interests.

When we look deep inside ourselves with breathing and meditation, we find a sense that others and myself, and nature and myself, are interconnected. This sense comes from our soul and divinity, the source of our conscience.

Having this sense lets us apply the Hongik value of our conscience to our lives. When enough people do this, Hongik can become common sense and be applied to economics, justice, and government for the elevation of life and society. This mindset is the way to help society evolve now. Shaping society with the value of Hongik would open up a new era, a spiritual civilization in which all people are conscientious. In such a world, everyone receives love and respect. They live abundantly yet sustainably without straining the Earth.

Working together with people around the world to create such a society is what I call Earth Management. This work is not only for politicians and other leaders; it’s open to anyone. In a democratic society, especially one in crisis, all of us can have a hand in shaping the future. Each of our everyday words and actions can alter the world in which we live.

Through the values we manifest in each moment, we can all be stars in the drama of this world, a source of brightness and hope. This is our chance. We can be the leaders of the changes happening around us, or we can sit on the sidelines. The best moment has come. It’s time to love ourselves passionately and create a strong foundation of health and happiness, hopes and dreams, while everything is rapidly changing.

Relieve Stress with Sound

[Source: Rawpixel via Envato Elements]

One of the best ways to relieve stress and worry is through sound and voice energy meditation. The vibrations in your throat, especially if you focus on them, release energy that is stuck in your body, especially in the energy channel that runs down the center of the front of your body.
How to Do Sound and Voice Energy Meditation

When doing sound and voice energy meditation, don’t worry about how you sound. Just vocalize freely. It’s important to enjoy it!
Start with making an “Oh” sound. Feel a sense of “opening” from your throat down the front of your body.
Then continue with “Ah.” You can add the sound, “Ree,” and then “Rang.” Make these sounds freely. You can change the tone, volume, and speed of your voice. Sing freely without being controlled by melody or rhythm. This is the key point.
Let your singing morph into making your own sounds. Let any sound come out of your mouth without inhibition or judgment. If you free yourself, your chakras will also open, especially your third (solar plexus), fourth (chest/heart), fifth (throat), and sixth (third eye) chakras.
As your voice becomes more and more free, you can move your body freely with your voice as well. Your body may feel lighter and your thoughts may become more positive.
Finish with being still and breathing naturally.

How does making these sounds feel? What changes do you notice? I hope this meditation can free you from some of the stress in your day.