"Finding Your True Self" Yoga Workshop

Everyone knows that although losing weight is hard, keeping it off is even harder. According to the Dhan Yoga folks, to keep weight off, you must work with your mind.

"'Mindset' plays a key (although often unconscious) role in gaining, losing and keep excess weight off," believes Ilchi Lee, president of the University of Brain Education in South Korea. He explains, "Usually heavy thoughts and emotional baggage account for why people put on the pounds. While trying to slim down through exercise and diet, both old and new emotions arise to challenge or even defeat their best efforts."

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To effectively turn a mindset that supports gaining and retaining weight into one that supports shedding pounds and keeping them off, Lee points to Dahn Yoga's powerful workshop called "Finding Your True Self" (also known by its Korean name, "Shim Sung"). He states, "This self-discovery workshop makes it clear to people with weight issues that the ego-based mindset leads to fat and poor health, while getting in touch with your 'true self' is the way to become thin and fit."

Karen, who came to a Dahn Yoga Center in New York -- one of 126 centers in the U.S. -- with health and weight problems, attributed her breakthrough to the Finding Your True Self workshop. She shares, "Last year I was unhappy, physically weak and obese. For too long, I had been putting barriers around myself to keep the world at a distance. My excess weight had weakened my body and undermined my well-being. Because of my large size, I injured my knees and shoulders.

"Over a six-month period, through the exercise classes and with support from my Dahn instructors and fellow members, I experienced a wonderful transformation! In the Finding Your True Self workshop, I discovered buried deep within me this positive, powerful person who I always was. I'm so happy and grateful that I have discovered her! All this has given me the means to change myself. I gained a strong, fit body, and shed 70 pounds. I now have more energy, emotional strength and peace of mind."

Regarding cases like Karen's, Lee notes that, "Weight and health matters are always intertwined with mindset -- they are the cause and effect of each other. To break this vicious cycle, ideally combine exercise classes, dieting, group support and a self-discovery experience or workshop. The stronger these four factors, the better the weight-and-health results."

Lee founded Dahn Yoga to provide people with the tools to regain and maintain their body-mind fitness, combining ancient Korean health practices and modern brain education. He states, "This brain- and energy-based training works well to manage weight and health." While most participants in the Finding Your True Self workshop also attend classes at the Dahn Yoga Centers, it is also appropriate for those who have no prior experience with Dahn Yoga.

During Finding Your True Self, people begin to discover who they really are inside, which can empower them to stay on the weight-loss path. Beyond the ego's weight games is a person's "true self." As Lee describes it, "In the True Self workshop, you learn to access and amplify your inner resources -- such as confidence, willpower, strength, wisdom, freedom, love, joy and peace -- to help you develop a new 'sense of self' that no longer needs to be encased in a large body."

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For people desiring to manage their weight and health, Dahn Yoga programs for exercising and dieting are available. But Lee affirms that exercise and diet will succeed only if people develop a proper weight-loss mindset that involves moving through two stages:

First, releasing the negative thoughts and emotions that led to amassing the weight. Being overweight provides unconscious psychological "benefits." Lee observes, "Excess weight may compensate for an internal deficit of love, represent a way to appear more powerful to others (when actually feeling the opposite), or protect against a fear of intimacy."

Second, reaching a positive state of mind and higher self-esteem to maintain the discipline needed for exercising and dieting. As Lee expressed it, "People with weight issues tend to have a 'victim's mindset.' Functioning from the 'true self' can change their behavior to a 'master-of-my-life mindset,' thus increasing their prospects of becoming thin and fit and staying that way."

While losing weight, people may experience an inner conflict between two opposing emotional messages: Good feelings from making progress toward their weight-loss goals, and anxiety from losing the psychological benefits of the excess weight. Lee emphasizes, "When taking steps to lose weight, you have to choose the emerging 'thin you' every day."

For more information about Dahn Yoga and the Finding Your True Self workshop, visit http://www.dahnyoga.com or phone 1-877-HSP-YOGA.

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