21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
impressive techniques that actually work, April 21, 2004
This review is from: Brain Respiration: Making Your Brain Creative, Peaceful, and Productive (Paperback)
I bought this book together with the CD Instruction of the same title as an impulse purchase and found that it is a series of Qigong methods from a Korean perspective. It deals with methods for getting the body sorted out before one starts into Brain Respiration (dont be fooled by the title). It is a very effective method of training to sense Ki (Qi) and use it for circulation around the body. Further steps head towards a holistic Body/Mind/ Spirit approach devoid of the usual Chinese TCM/Qigong/Taiji terminology. Therefore making this great for Westerners. The Ki sensing exercises after the 1st week caused stress reduction and a mental calmness that I have not experienced in a long time. Because the feedback (feeling) is immediate only after 5 minutes of practise, it sure goes a long way to motivating oneself to do this every morning. Thoroughly recommend that the book and CD are purchased together and just try it for a month.
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24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Here we go again ..., August 29, 2004
This review is from: Brain Respiration: Making Your Brain Creative, Peaceful, and Productive (Paperback)
This book is fine. It presents very standard and elementary ki and chakra flushing/balancing exercises and meditations, all wrapped in lot of Korean vocabulary representing standard well-known Indian and Chinese internal energy theory. That is good, as basic practices are always the most important in any field of work.
The only thing that irks me about this book is that here we have yet another 'Dear Leader' or 'True Parent' type of person, a wonderful guy I'm sure, but taking the very well-known practices and theories of ancient India and China and re-branding and re-packaging them as though it were a big-deal breakthrough.
Again, his presentation, with the pseudo-scientific brain structure wrapping, and exotic Korean vocabulary (but all for standard Indian and Chinese concepts) will definitely appeal to some people, and that's great - whatever floats your boat! Different chakra and ki practices will work better for different individuals.
I just wish that some day some self-styled guru type would break down and actually acknowledge the source of their stuff is very well known and already available in a thousand different books and methods all over the place. It is fine to have a new brand, since we have Coke hey why not Pepsi too. In the end it is all sugared water!
Any standard practice of Yoga, nei gong, qi gong, tai ji, ki society (Tohei) aikido, as well as the many, many newly created "synthetic" energy cultivation systems (pranic healing's arhatic yoga etc.), will all work about as well (until you learn to stop seeking altogether and transcend them all, check out Ramana Maharishi for the word on that)
But all that said, this johnny come lately method is no worse than others. If it floats your boat, go for it and enjoy! My only beef with it is its total lack of any reference to the huge mountain of more or less identical methods and practices that abound everywhere.
Just remember Krishnamurthi's great words "Truth is a pathless land".
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15 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
doubtful.., September 30, 2004
This review is from: Brain Respiration: Making Your Brain Creative, Peaceful, and Productive (Paperback)
This book contains some helpful information about keeping good health and mind. But it is not proven safe. Actually, the ground theory of this book, Dahn-Hak(which is ancient yoga-like training method originated from Korea and China) is all about keeping strong dahn-jun(japanese:Hara). But brain respiration is very different. This B.R. focuses not on dahn-jun, but sang-dahn-jun, or brain. This is very dangerous approach. Before you can do B.R training, you got to have strong dahn-jun. It takes long long time to do B.R. Please reconsider buying this book, I don't recommend this book. I had been long time trainee of Dahn-yoga.
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