Dahn Yoga DC Blog

Sarah Orr Yun and her husband are both Dahn Yoga Instructors and together they run a franchise studio in Aurora, Colorado.  Naturally, after the birth of her first child, Sarah decided to offer a class for pregnant woman, based on her experience of using Dahn Yoga exercises for her own pregnancy.   Here is a two minute tip she shared, with one of the students from her class acting as a model.

Do you ever feel tight hip joints or sciatic pain? Earlene from Colorado is back by popular demand with a Two Minute Tip to show you a stretch you can try to get some relief.

Ba Ha is the head trainer at the Rockville Dahn Yoga Center

Recently I read an article about two women in Kingswood, Texas who were Dahn Yoga members for 5 years when they suddenly faced the closing of their local center due to tough economic times.   When faced with the possibility, they realized how deeply they had grown to appreciate and love the practice.  With nothing but faith in themselves and chunjikiun (universal energy), they took a huge plunge and decided to turn the center

Kim Root, owner of 2 Dahn Yoga Franchise Studios

into a franchise and run it as co-owners.  You can read more about it at http://www.dahnyoga.com/what_is_new.

We have several equally inspiring stories of our own here in the Greater DC Metro Area.  Meet Kim Root, Ba Ha, and Cindy Forry.  Kim is the owner of TWO Dahn Yoga franchises, one in Beltsville, MD, and the other in Falls Church, VA.  She became one of the first franchisee owners in the US when she bought the Beltsville Center over four years ago.  The Beltsville Center is the oldest Dahn Yoga Studio in the DC Metro Area.  She enjoyed the experience so much that she jumped at the chance to own a second studio when Falls Church opened up for purchase.  She is inspired by the stories of how Dahn Yoga spread in Korea, and dreams of multiplying this number even more. 

Cindy Forry

 Ba Ha and Cindy run the Rockville, MD center.   Ba Ha started teaching Dahn Yoga from her house.  She comes from a long line of energy healers and doctors from her ethnic Chinese family, and has degrees in biology and medical technology.  She is combining her instrinsic healing abilities with new-found business acumen to run the Rockville Center.   Cindy was inspired to help others find their own keys to health after a career in the health insurance industry, and is working as an assistant to Ba.  She is also a certified Dahn Yoga franchisee owner.

These women took a challenge and turned it into a (successful!) healing opportunity not only for themselves, but for their whole communities.  You can read more about them, and the centers they run, at their center’s websites. 

http://www.dahnyoga.com/studio/staff/Falls-church

http://www.dahnyoga.com/studio/staff/rockville

http://www.dahnyoga.com/beltsville/

I recently got the chance to experience finding my true self…for the second time! I worked as staff for the August Shim Sung training. Taking Shim Sung: Finding True Self is one of the most important and profound workshops developed by Ilci Lee. Shim Sung is by most accounts a once in a lifetime opportunity. You are given the chance to peel off your “layers” of a lifetime of piling up emotions, preconceptions, and habits in order to find your truest nature or core. Shim Sung is not something to know intellectually, but to experience deeply with your mind, body, and spirit.

Shim Sung is held over a weekend, so it requires you to carve out a bit of time just devoted to yourself. I had thought of helping with Shim Sung a long time and was finally able to coordinate my work and personal schedule. But as we learn in Dahn yoga, if you choose it, it will happen. Having completed Shim Sung 2 years ago, I know the deep experience and insights I gained. My desire has been to help others find health, happiness and peace, and to help them find their true selves. I wanted other people to experience the awakening that I had.

I was assigned as “inside staff,” which was a surprise gift. I was part of a devoted staff who worked tirelessly to provide support, encouragement, love, and a safe environment for the members. As staff, I had and felt a sense of responsibility to help protect and encourage members as layers of their “false selves” were peeled away. And peeling away layers can be a challenging and scary process for people as they confront their egos. It can be difficult as we face things that are new, scary, or challenge our sense how we should be.

I was given an amazing gift by being able to participate in the exercises and unexpectedly be someone’s partner. I really believe the universe gives you what you need, and I think she and I both gained a lot in our experience together. I got to look at layers that have been built up since my first Shim Sung! I got to look at my own preconceptions of my limits, my habits, and my preconceptions and how that is holding me back from what I really want in my life. My experience was deepened because I knew the benefits of giving 100%. When I didn’t give 100% it affected not just me, but the whole group. It wasn’t just me growing, but all of us—staff and members—were all connected.

Staffing Shim Sung was deeply rewarding and a healing process for me. It served as a reminder to be diligent in protecting my true self and to give 100%. When I can identify what I want, and fully direct my intentions toward that goal, then I can achieve anything. The doubts and worries don’t come from my true nature. So I can choose what voice to listen to. My inner true self voice is pure and unwavering. But that newly found true self needs training and encouragement and growth. So, Shim Sung is a beginning, but not an ending. So take the opportunity to experience Shim Sung. I look forward to helping more people experience Shim Sung and for me to continue to learn and grow.

Betsy Sievers is an advanced practitioner and part time instructor at the Gaithersburg Dahn Yoga Center

Danielle & Renee Gaudette

Being around Dahn Yoga Centers for the past 10 years, I know that there are so many amazing stories to be told. Interesting stories about real people changing their lives and doing courageous things. I love this blog for that reason- it gives the stories a place to be told. They are not necessarily stories that the Washington Post would be interested in, but they need to be told none-the-less.

I felt that way about the story of Danielle Gaudette, the regional manager of the Dahn Yoga Centers in Massachusetts and her sister, Renee, both of whom work in Arlington, MA. I was planning to write the story for the local blog up there, but than found an amazing on-line local site called yourarlington.com, which allows people from Arlington to create an on-line newspaper for Arlington. How great! I wish every small town had a source like that. Thanks goes out to Bob Sprague, the editor. The story is posted there instead.

Do you know of any sites like this in the DC metro area? Lets find them and get the stories happening in your center out there!

Click here to visit yourarlington.com and read about them. I hope you visit and support this great local resource. Enjoy!

Don’t miss the next post, coming up Monday, a short clip that will guide you through a soothing tea meditation.

~Genia Sullivan, contributor, dahnyogadcmetro.com

Caroline Grabner from the Dahn Yoga Center in Bethesda, MD  shares her story with Dahn TV about overcoming cancer, then helping others through the journey as a volunteer instructor.

In ‘Off the Mat’, Dahn TV covers stories of Dahn Yoga practitioners pursuing training out of the classroom. This first episode takes a trip to Korea, with folks from all over the country, including two of our own members from the DC area.

Mike & Beth in front of Roots to Wings Yoga and Healing Center

At the end of part I, Mike had just started taking Yoga Classes at Roots to Wings.

Around the time that I was discovering yoga for the first time, Wendy Hall, owner and teacher at Roots to Wings Yoga and Healing Center was discovering Dahn Yoga for the first time. She had recently taken the Shim Sung (Finding True Self) workshop offered by Dahn Yoga, and immediately felt the practice offered her the next step in her growth. She set about practicing and taking private sessions with Chun Shim Park, a Dahn Yoga trainer, and was soon experimenting how to incorporate the ‘energy body’ practices she was learning into her Hatha Yoga classes. She started having us do Sleeping Tiger for about 5 minutes at the end of some classes and gradually, I began to feel energy in my Dahn Jon. I started practicing harder. Wendy also encouraged others to take the Shim Sung workshop and Beth, my wife, travelled to Boston to participate. She immediately started bugging me to go. I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about, but was loving yoga and if I could dedicate two days to doing it that’d be fine. With this mind, I eventually signed up. Fortunately, by the time I had an opportunity to go, Shim Sung actually came to Roots to Wings, thanks to the hard work of Wendy and Chun Shim nim. (nim is a term of respect in Korean, often used at the end of a person’s name/title).

By the time Shim Sung rolled around, I was feeling pretty healthy. I’d lost about 20 pounds, was calmer some of the time, and could see the benefits of regular yoga and energy practice. However, I was still unprepared for Shim Sung. I was unable to see the connection between my thoughts and my physical and spiritual bodies. I didn’t appreciate the interconnection of the three bodies. Shim Sung was like getting a new set of glasses to look at myself through. I began to see more clearly who I was and how I’d been limiting myself. I often tell people that I’d experienced the rapture of being alive on my wedding day and during the birth of our four children; a moment where time really stood still. I experienced the rapture again in Shim Sung. However, the weekend also scared me, because I realized how sick my body really was. At the end, I did not want it to be over. I walked up to Chun Shim nim with a pleading look in my eyes, saying “Help!” She compassionately pushed a couple of meridian points on me. ‘You need to heal’ she said. Deep down inside, I knew she was right. I needed more help.

That was the beginning of the journey that brought me here, to this point in my life, ready to teach others in the same way that Wendy and Chun Shim nim taught me. This journey has started, but hasn’t stopped yet. I don’t have the words to describe how sincerely grateful I am to have had the opportunity to be guided by Chun Shim nim. It has been the opportunity of many lifetimes. She helped me save my life by helping me see in myself what is inside all of us and helped me develop the confidence to be who I truly am.

Part III – Fruits of ‘Su Haeng’ Training, Family, and Future

Su Haeng means ‘training to recover your original spirit’. Scores of private sessions and peak experiences later, across staffing multiple Shim Sungs, beyond many Dahn Yoga trainings- Master Healer School, Healing Chakra, Advanced Shim Sung, Tao Masters training, BMC School, and countless hours of practice with Wendy nim and Chun Shim nim, it comes down to this. In the last three and a half years:

• I am lighter, but not just physically. I have gone from 212 to 172 pounds (even though I never thought I could weigh less than 185 at 6 feet tall), but my lightness is different than that.
• My mind is clearer almost all the time, extremely clear some of the time, and less clear very infrequently.
• I am not constrained by upper and lower back pain like I was since my mid 20s.
• My perennial allergies have virtually disappeared. I used to wake up sneezing 30 plus times a night
• My musical tastes have changed completely from hard rock/heavy metal to yoga and healing music. I’ve also started to teach myself to play guitar.
• I have begun to let go of attachments and have realized that I am not Mike the Chief Information Officer, Father, Husband, champion golfer, hockey player blah blah blah. I am much more than that
• I am calmer and more present with my wife, children, friends and co-workers. Getting hooked on emotions is more an exception than the norm.
• I have changed the information I live my life by. I don’t read the paper much. I don’t watch the news. I watch much less TV. I spend my time with people who are healthy for me
• I have re-learned what to eat, how to eat it, and when. I am more conscious of what I put in my body. I have not taken a pill of any kind in almost 4 years (with the exception of 1 course of antibiotics when I had lyme disease after a tick bite). I have not used alcohol in almost 3 years. I have not had refined sugar in 8 months. I don’t drink coffee and I don’t smoke. I do enjoy an occasional pizza and I do eat meat although I do not crave meat like I used to.
• I understand that I am 100% responsible for everything that happens in my life and I accept full responsibility for that
• I understand that I will continue to repeat lessons until I learn them. I am not in control
• I have realized that I am separate from nothing. I trust CJKU.
• I can feel my Dahn Jon (lower energy center) even when I am not doing Yeon Don (still postures to accumulate energy). Not always, but more of the time
• I have the confidence to heal myself and others
• I understand that to better heal myself and others I must teach, share, and practice
• I believe I can make a difference in the world. I am making a difference in the world. I am going to make a difference in the world because I am 100% responsible for doing so.

The teaching team at Roots to Wings, all trained in Dahn Yoga and Hatha Yoga

Wendy Hall, as the founder of Roots to Wings, created the amazing energy field that is here with her own love, compassion, will and determination to make a better world. She brought Dahn Yoga to us and to Roots to Wings. Roots to Wings is a very special place. What has happened here is a testament that Hong ik (‘living in a way that widely benefits all’) is alive and well in America. Wendy Hall’s, now Wendy Hall Sabumnim ‘s,(a dahn yoga master instructor) success at incorporating Dahn Yoga principles with her already successful yoga and healing studio brought her an invite to manage CGI Holistic Fitness in Closter, NJ. She pursued this for her growth and for her vision of world peace, and her absence required us to grow to fill her spot.

My main lesson from BMC (Brain Management Consultant) training was that believing something and living something are two different things. To me the essence of Dahn Yoga is the practice of living consciously. All the great wisdom traditions tell us this and we get it intellectually. Dahn Yoga training has helped me feel this in the fiber of my being. It’s real and tangible. I also believe there are many maps that can we can use to practice living consciously, but as Joseph Campbell said it is best not to confuse the map with the territory, and if you find a map that works, stick with it.

While it was a very difficult decision to leave the corporate world and become a’ full-time’ earth citizen by operating a yoga and healing center, it is something I know I must do to make the most of this chance, this lifetime. I decided to dive in with both feet because I believe in’ Hong Ik’, living beneficially for all, and the power of transformation. If I can change, anybody can. I feel that a life based on healing and helping others is a life well lived and the best lesson we can give our children. The rest is up to Chun Ji Ki Un (Cosmic Energy), and I think I am in good hands.

Mike Houlihan operates Roots to Wings Yoga and Healing Studio in Newburyport, MA, with his wife Beth.
For more information please visit http://www.rootstowings.com.

Mike and Beth Houlihan and their children, twins Connor and Griffin, and older girls Ashley and Emma

Mike and Beth Houlihan are yoga practitioners and parents of four young children. Recently, Mike left a successful career as a Chief Information Officer of a start-up company to take over management, with Beth, of “Roots to Wings”, a successful yoga studio in Newburyport, MA that combines the teachings of Dahn Yoga, Brain Education, and Hatha Yoga.

Roots to Wings Yoga and Healing Center was the first Hatha Yoga studio in the US to host Dahn Yoga’s Shim Sung Workshop in January of 2008. Since then, approximately eight Shim Sung workshops have been held with more than 150 people participating. Of these 150, approximately 20 people have taken Dahn Yoga’s Brain Management Consultant and other advanced trainings. Mike participated in the first Shim Sung at Roots to Wings, and is a BMC graduate. I was at that Shim Sung, and have witnessed the incredible journey

that Mike and Beth have been on. I asked Mike to share his story for the Dahn Yoga Blog readers. Enjoy part 1 below!

~Genia Sullivan, editor, www.dahnyogadcmetro.com

During the last year, my wife Beth and I have drastically changed our lives to follow a calling to live and grow as Earth Citizens through taking over management of Roots to Wings Yoga and Healing Center, founded by Wendy Hall. Together with two of our classmates who also graduated from Dahn Yoga’s Brain Management Consultant Course, we teach all the classes and take care of all management affairs. We host and staff three Shim Sung trainings each year, and keep up with our own training as well. We have four children ages 5, 5, 7, and 9 who practice yoga, soccer, and hockey. How do we do it all, you might ask?

To be honest, it is not easy. We’ve given up a lot of things we used to do like weekends away, having friends over for dinner, my own hockey and prime-time golf. We focus on doing the most important things really well. For example, we just got back from 7 nights on the beach in Maine living in a tent with all the kids. Taking over the helm at Roots to Wings has created some strain in our family, but we are a happier and healthier family for it. Practice helps. We are taking a leap of faith in ‘Chun Ji Ki Un’ that if we put our full energy into something we love to do the rest will be taken care of. Why? I look inside myself and see the results. I know how I have changed and how I have grown. I have experienced what can happen when we have the courage to let go, while also understanding it is a life-long process.

If not me, who? If not now, when?  This is our story, told from my perspective.

Author Mike Houlihan and daughters Emma and Ashley in 2007

Part I – Pre-Yoga Daze
Somewhere in my early 40s, what I now understand as past memories, preconceptions, and worries about the future began to catch up with me. I generally considered myself to be relatively healthy and successful. I’d gone to college, grad school, had a great job, a house, two kids, and no financial worries. I played golf and hockey, skied, biked, rollerbladed and I was really good at drinking beer. My whole life, I had a nagging feeling that something was missing, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I longed for the simplicity of a sunny day with a sweatshirt on and work boots that I remembered from my early childhood, but couldn’t find it in any of my successes; having grown up without a dad, I was insecure and deep inside thought I wasn’t good enough. No matter how much I had or how low my golf score was it wasn’t good enough and I always had this nagging belief that something bad would happen to me at the most inopportune time to prevent me from achieving ultimate success.

My job required significant travel and I began to feel torn about not being around for my wife and two young girls. Living on airplanes and away from my family was profitable, but not fulfilling. I was dying. Around that time I also began to get more concerned about my health. I was always self conscious about my looks, but this was more than just an inner tube around my waist. I would get dizzy, headaches, heart palpitations, and get a fat tongue and mess-up my words from time to time. With each ache and pain I had, I’d run to the doctor to make sure I did not have cancer or a heart problem. The things I did to make me feel better created more stress. I was truly a misguided seeker, as Deepak Chopra would say.

My minister at my local church had been nagging me for a couple of years to meet with her, but I had always managed to escape doing it. I kind of knew where I needed to go; but I figured there’d be time for that down the road. I used to ask myself the question “What happens to people who know but don’t listen, don’t act?” Of course I was foolish enough to think I knew, but scared enough to know there was something out there that I still couldn’t put my finger on.

Even before she asked to meet with me, I was immediately struck by Minister Nancy. Her blazing blue eyes seemed to look right through me as if she could see who I knew I really was. I felt she could also see my potential, and I was inspired by her sermons. I eventually gave in, and began meeting with her on a regular basis, and these meetings really were the start of the spiritual journey I began. She helped me experience that as we share deep truths about ourselves, we begin to access a part of ourselves that exists outside of space and time, and we begin to see things as they really are. It would take me a long time to learn that failure to see things as they really are is what causes suffering, and I am still learning that it is me who is doing it. While these practices were mostly temporal, they were tangible and I was starting to develop a stronger belief in my own personal transformation.

In the Pre-Yoga Daze

I became quite enamored with having peak spiritual experiences that were different and safer than other highs I’d sought through the course of my life. The problem was that I had not made any fundamental changes to how I was living my life. I still had a nagging feeling that I was running out of time and that something bad was going to happen. I still did not feel great physically, didn’t like the way I looked and was bored with how I was living my life. My wife Beth had started yoga at Roots to Wings Yoga Studio, a local Hatha Yoga Studio in our town, shortly after our twin boys were born. I began to notice she was calmer, stronger, and more focused; different somehow, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I was getting tired of gingerly walking down stairs after hockey games, nursing groin pulls, and going from one ache and pain to the next so I figured I’d give yoga a try.

Within five minutes of my first class I said to myself “Yes, Home!” There was just something about lying on that mat and gasping for air that had a quieting effect on me. I didn’t have much respect for yoga when I first went, and didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. I figured I’d take classes for a couple of weeks and would be in perfect shape again. I was so wrong about that it makes me shake my head even as I write this. Yoga tore me limb from limb for about the first six months of practice. I found it excruciating, but I loved it.

Come back on Monday for Part II: ‘Yoga Daze; Mike’s transformation through Shim Sung and decision to become a full time practitioner and yoga studio owner

Mike Houlihan operates Roots to Wings Yoga and Healing Studio in Newburyport, MA, with his wife Beth.
For more information please visit http://www.rootstowings.com.

This week’s Two Minute Tip address is the first part of two short videos that will guide you how to release tension in your upper body joints. If you have wrist pain, from sports or computer work, try this exercise for relief.