Dahn Yoga in California

As a continuation of my last post, here are simple Dahn Yoga neck exercises for strengthening and releasing tension from your neck. Be sure to concentrate on your neck as you do the exercises.

1. Place your hands on your waist. Move your head very slowly in a large circular motion, touching your chin to your chest as it moves forward. Repeat this 5 times. Breathe naturally and make a circle in the other direction.

2. Relax your neck muscles completely and lower your chin to your chest. Clasp your hands behind your neck and relax your arms. Inhale, and using your arms, pull your chin to your chest. Hold for 5 seconds. Exhale and return. Repeat this exercise 5 times.

3. With your head facing forward, inhale and try to touch your ear to your right shoulder. Hold for 5 seconds. Exhale and return. Repeat on the left side. Repeat this motion 7 or 8 times. Move your head very slowly, with the rest of your body relaxed.

The brain is the seat of our humanity. The first spark of brainwave activity
marks the beginning of each human life; the final cessation of that activity
marks that life’s end. Every experience, emotion, and memory reaches us
through the brain’s mediation. It is the source of all our art, science, and
culture. Powered by untold trillions of neural connections, we hug our children,
learn to hit a baseball, write first novels, pray to our gods, and reach
out to help our fellows in need. In practical terms, we are our brains.
Consequently, it can be disturbing to reach middle age or beyond and hear what the popular media has to say about the things that are in store for our brains as we grow older. Our culture is filled with images of aged individuals whose minds are foggy, confused, and useless.

When we think of old age and the brain, we think of words such as dementia, Alzheimer’s disease,
and Parkinson’s disease. Even if our thoughts are not concerned with such doom and gloom, conventional wisdom still tells us that finding a vigorous, creative, energetic, improving brain in an aging body is as rare as finding buried treasure at the bottom of the ocean.
None of us like to think about losing our memory or our ability to think and reason as we age. Yet that is precisely what most of us believe will happen no matter what we do. So we passively accept the notion of
becoming forgetful and assume it’s inevitable. We fret over memory lapses in our fifties and sixties and worry that we are experiencing an early onset of Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia. We tell uneasy jokes about seniors who have lost their identities and laugh while we pray that we won’t be the butt of someone else’s joke when we’re ninety. Well, perhaps it’s high time for some myth-busting about the aging brain.

In Full Bloom -by Ilchi Lee -

The soul is pure. Since it is pure, it is simple.

It knows that it wants and it is always ready to do anything to get it.

Once you have asked your soul and received the answer through your heart, then it is time to discuss how to go about getting it with your brain.

Your brain is monitor that displays the movement of the life current and records its path.

Your brain is part of your basic equipment to help you on your journey, much like a notebook computer you take on business trip.

Always remember to “surprise your brain” Easy, familiar tasks do not offer the best stimulation for your brain or that of your child.

Tasks that are awkward at first are in fact the once that create more new connections in your brain.

So always be persistent in the mastery of these activities, and deliberately seek out new challenges for your brain.

What would you really like to do with your brain  that you’ve never than before.

Find out those things and be confident that your brain can master them, even if it does not come easily to you.

Develop the habits of brain-centered lifestyle for your family, always looking for new experiences and new challenges for your brain and that of your child.

This is the simple and fun way to build brains to last a lifetime.