-Ilchi Lee

One morning I stopped into the new Boulder Dahn Center, where a gentle woman offered me a cup of tea. I sipped slowly―a tiny taste of peace, which encouraged me to return for a class.

It has been six months now and everyone seems to have gotten used to “Mom’s yoga.” They patiently watch me in strange poses on the living room floor, my son stepping over me to reach for his sneakers and my daughter whispering, “When you’re done, what’s for dinner?”

                       
But they were apprehensive when I considered spending four days at a Dahn Yoga retreat. “Mom, you’re not going to begin chanting are you?” asked my son. I was concerned about important things, such as―would they have coffee?

When I called to make my reservations, a woman answered the phone whose voice was as calming as my yoga teacher’s. My hope was to sound like that some day. In May I flew to Sedona, Arizona, in search of my own peaceful voice at Mago Garden.

Each day we learned new poses, in addition to breathing and healing techniques. I soon learned our teachers were not saying “retard” as we changed positions, but “return.” I had found “retard” comforting; it meant “go slow,” which I did.

Our teachers said our eyes tell our true story and soon we began looking into one another’s eyes instead of at nametags. We learned to chew our food 30 times and took bigger bites of banana to make it last longer. Our yoga practice was helping us to experience a universal energy that our teachers carried like trays of delicious fruits for us to sample.

Ilchi Lee

On my last night I awoke to a sensation of the ground shaking, so I decided to eat a rice cake. I fell back asleep and awoke a few hours later to the same trembling. And then I knew. The vibration, the energy, was within me. I sat up and did what the teachers told me. Focus and breathe. That was wiser than eating a rice cake.

When I first arrived I was homesick for my Colorado home. By the end, I found home trembling in my bed, but I was scared of nothing. I had found my own peaceful voice.

To my son’s relief, his mom didn’t return home chanting. But I did return home changed. I now drink brown rice tea instead of coffee.

Each day I find time to lie with my feet in the air and breathe. I place my yoga classes into my schedule like soft cushions fluffing up my life. It used to be that when I removed my headphones from my small pink iPod the music would stop. But now, my soul’s quiet melody continues infinitely. And to think it all began with a warm cup of tea one January morning.

For help or more information visit Dr. Ilchi Lee 's site.