But this sort of defeatist attitude did not settle well with me. After all, it is in complete contradiction to everything I have taught my students over the past twenty-six years. “My body is not me, but mine,” I tell them to tell themselves. Somehow, though, I had let my body start to call the shots. I had never told my body, “Okay, you are old now. It’s time to start walking like an old man.” Yet, somehow it happened anyway. Basically, it happened because I let it happen. It was time to put myself in the driver’s seat once again.

With this realization, I resolved not only to heal my body from the accident, but to reform the habits I had developed. I began paving close attention to the angles and posture of my body as I walked. I decided that I was one to decide how and when to grow old, and it didn’t have to happen in the ways people normally assume.

Ilchi Lee closely observed how my body felt in different positions as I carefully made one step at a time. I was like a baby learning to walk. I also observed how people around me walked. I noticed that the young and the old usually have distinct ways of walking. When I asked students to make slight changes in the way they walked, their bodies’ alignment improved dramatically. By tilting forward slightly and pressing on the ball of the foot, practitioners were able to correct problems in the knee, hip joint, and pelvis.

So, I decided the best way to start feeling young again was to start walking youthfully. I was forced to resume a full lecture tour schedule shortly after the accident. The pain in my spine was still quite intense, but I made a concerted effort to apply the walking and posture principles I had developed. Applying what I had learned through the years, I deliberately shifted my posture to accommodate better energy flow. After about five months, this wav of walking became a habit in my life.