Learning Chains that Bind Us

I always throw some “play” of sorts into my lectures. It doesn’t require any special tools or instruments. It only requires that we use our bodies as playthings: bang on the stomach as you would on a drum; stretch out your cheeks like rubber bands; knead your body like dough or caress it gently as you would a flower. If I do use something, it is a crude, ingenious Vietnamese wooden xylophone called a tapo, or a wooden flute. There is no set melody or rhythm. No set notes or songs. I just play it to the natural rhythm of my inner being. After a while, it coalesces into music, song, even a dance.

Ilchi Lee Instruct that I once told an audience, “Now I will give you five minutes of free time during which you can exercise or move your body freely.” There was a bewildered silence, with people standing and looking at each other with blank faces as if they had never exercised or moved their bodies before. How peculiar. They were confounded by the simple request to move their bodies as they willed. How would you have reacted? Think. Imagine that you have just received such a request. Get up and try it. How would you start? It might stump you for a moment. Should you rotate your shoulders clockwise three times before circling your waist with your hands? Should you start with your wrists and work you way up to your shoulders? Should you boogie?

We are too used to learning and being taught. We feel nervous. or sometimes even guilty, when we don’t do things exactly the way we were taught. It is such over-reliance on the need to learn that is making our society into a world of experts, evermore selective, divisive, and complicated. If we go on this way, maybe there will come a day when we will all have to learn how to breathe. In fact, that is what I do—teach people to breathe. However, I don’t teach people complicated techniques for breathing, but allow them to feel the natural rhythm of their breath, lightly and deeply. That is all.

If you allow your consciousness to drift toward your lower abdomen during breathing, then your breath will naturally delve deeper within you. If you allow your consciousness to experience the gratitude and joy of breathing, then your breath will naturally become light. Your breathing will naturally achieve a deep lightness if you inhale as an expression of thanks to your body and exhale as an expression of thanks to the Heavens above. Then you can lose yourself in your breath. You can follow your breath into and out of your body, losing yourself until you become the breath itself.

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