Posts Tagged: Virginia
14
Jun 10
The Butterfly Effect: Can Yoga Practice Help to Save the World
If a Dahn Yoga practitioner taps her dahnjon 500 times in Washington DC, does it trigger a decrease in global warming elsewhere on the planet? 
It might seem like a stretch to say so, but it isn’t impossible. The concept of the Butterfly Effect is that even a seemingly small action can cause a chain of events that results in consequences on a global scale. In this sense, we could reason that every mindful Dahn Yoga practitioner could effectively initiate positive change for the Earth. This is action that begins at an individual level and could potentially result in radical healing for our planet.
In harmony with the earth
Intestine exercises, breathing postures, and dahnjon tapping are internal exercises that directly improve the health condition of the internal organs and repair the ki and energy meridian systems. The result is immediate improvement in physical and mental health. Another result is that the physical body starts to develop sensitivity to the energy body.
With continued practice, people can become increasingly aware of energy everywhere: food, nature, other people, and the general atmosphere that surrounds us. This sensitivity often results in changes of habit.
For instance, when the energy of the stomach is weakened from an excess of heat in the head, the lack of balance in the body makes it crave excessive sugar and cold beverages, for example. When these urges are occurring in millions of people, it has a certain effect on the environment. If people with the same condition strengthen their stomach’s energy through internal exercises, they become more aware of the immediate discomfort that accompanies the consumption of cold drinks and excessive sugar. As it becomes healthier, the stomach begins to demand wholesome food; practitioners can thus experience natural and spontaneous changes in diet.
To continue this example, if the demand for refrigeration and sugar were sufficiently decreased, industries would have to respond accordingly, resulting in a positive change for the environment.
The energy body feels sensations before they settle into physical reality. Sensitizing ourselves to our energy body is like getting a glimpse into the future. It may take decades for the average person to feel the effect of too much sugar on the hips and knees. But with enhanced sensory awareness, people could feel it in their 20’s. It may take a tumor on the lungs to stop a person with severe nicotine addition to quit smoking, but intense lung-meridian pain twenty years prior may provide the same incentive to quit. If people can sense some ill effect from eating food processed with unnatural chemicals in a pollutive and inhumane environment, they will choose food produced in a more healthy fashion.
From an ideal to a need
It is consumers that drive the demand for products. The green movement is on the rise, but there is still a lot of room to demand more environmentally friendly products and policies. Perhaps, for the average consumer, the idea of environmentally sound choices may just be a noble ideal, but not a dire need. Dahn Yoga exercise could potentially motivate us to take actions that are more aligned with our ideals.
There is a growing number of people with an elevated consciousness who are aware of our place as stewards of the Earth and are working to create a world in which we behave accordingly. Thanks to these people and to sufficient scientific evidence, few could dismiss the idea of global warming without political consequence.
When we develop energy sensitivity, we don’t have to rely only on people whom we feel have extraordinary wisdom or higher consciousness. We will all act together in an instinctual movement for self-preservation.
Connecting with our mother
We cannot feel the subtle vibration of peace from the cosmos, or the earth, if we are numb. Unless we feel our direct connection with the Earth, we will see it only as a physical object that is separate from us, something to be used as a resource. We will feel no alarm as poorly planned urban environments threaten natural ones and our oceans and skies become polluted. We would hardly take notice until our own stomachs were hungry from lack of food, our livers bogged down with toxins from processing too many chemicals.
Author Genia Sullivan started practicing Dahn Yoga in 1999, and has been teaching since 2001. She has also worked leading Outdoor and Environmental Educational Programs with Youth. 
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10
Jun 10
Two Minute Tip from Dahn Yoga: For Tired & Heavy Legs
Do your legs get tired and heavy after a long day of walking or standing? Try this exercise for some quick relief.
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7
Jun 10
Reach Out! BMC graduates share their passion
BMC graduates are 'holding up the earth'! (at the Climate Rally this Spring)
Not everyone can find the time and/or money for yoga.
Did you know that graduates of the Brain Management Consultant course (BMC: the course that teaches people how to teach Dahn Yoga and Brain Wave Vibration) are reaching their arms (and legs!) all over this faced-paced city in an effort to bring Dahn Yoga to people who may need it?
Well, I wanted more people to know what these instructors are doing, and have been doing for years. It has inspired me and I hope it inspires others. On that note, I gathered this brief glimpse of where some of our Dahn Yoga angels are teaching in the VA/MD/and DC metro areas.
On-going classes are being taught at no cost at the:
- Washington Ballet (taught by Joanne Stellar)
- Kimball Elementary School (also Joanne Stellar!)
- Bethesda Wellness Community Center Cancer Support Group (taught by Caroline Grabner)
- Five Virginia Public Schools (coordinated by Jane Gorden)
And, coming this summer, at the:
- Foundation for Leadership in Youth @ American University (developed by Joanne Stellar and Rebecca Wheaton)
A few days ago Joanne shared pictures of one girl from Kimball elementary who would rarely participate and who is now one of the most flexible and curious yoga students! Caroline comments regularly that her greatest joy is teaching and sharing Dahn Yoga with others, especially at the Cancer Center.
In our Virginia Public school system Jane Gordon is helping to launch a six-week program of yoga classes that will serve five different schools! Jane is a teacher and has been enthusiastically offering Brain Education to her students and teachers throughout the year. This fall Jane will also be hosting an Earth Citizens Festival to spread the word about the Earth Citizen’s Movement and challenge her students to consider how we share this earth and how to take responsibility for it.
The most recent outreach development happened when Joanne and I had the pleasure of meeting with Iman Tyson, the son of a Dahn Yoga member and the director of FLY, Foundation for Leadership in Youth. Iman is passionate about creating more opportunities for kids to learn about fitness, and the power it will help them experience. We are passionate about it too, and will therefore teach classes to 25 young people this summer at American University. We plan to continue the partnership in the fall, building in yoga, drumming, laughing, dancing and qi-gong into the FLY after school program.
These few short words can’t convey the efforts and determination that went into creating each of these efforts, but I hope you get a feeling of the passion these determined women have in their hearts to make a difference in their communities.
We hope that long-term and consistent training will inspire other schools and groups to integrate more exercise and mind-body dialogue into their classroom and extra-curricular programs. If you have an idea, or some time to spare, please join us!
Rebecca Wheaton is a BMC graduate and instructor at the Bethesda Dahn Yoga Center.
