A letter to CNN #14: MOTHER OF A DAHN YOGA INSTRUCTOR SUPPORTS DAHN YOGA

Dear Janelle,

My name is Martha McKinley and my daughter Mary C. McKinley has been involved with Dahn Yoga for seven years and now works in the corporate headquarters. She first started going to one of their centers in Phoenix because of a running injury. My daughter is a very intelligent person who had a very normal upbringing. In grade school she showed great leadership qualities and was not a follower by any means. In fact her teachers always commented on her intelligence and her leadership in class. She was so well liked that whenever I had birthday parties for her almost everyone in her class would show up.

In mid school she was in gymnastics and competed in many gymnastic meets and almost always placed, many of the girls looked up to her even though they were older than her.

In high school she was in the precision dance drill team that won State champions 4 years in a row and kept her A average, even though she had a very busy social life.

She went on to New Mexico State University to study accounting, her passion since she was a child. She always was sure about what she wanted to do and was very determined to accomplish it. She was awarded a scholarship from the Rotary club here in Las Cruces, NM and later was on the Dean’s list and she earned a scholarship for her last semester. She belonged to a business fraternity and also worked different jobs in order to pay for her other semesters. We only had to pay for her books.

Because of her own determination she decided to interview for Arthur Andersen when they were recruiting at the university, Arthur Andersen was a prestigious accounting firm that only recruited the best. They were impressed with her and they hired her and she worked with them for 4 years in Phoenix before they dissolved because of corporate misdeeds. Through that experience she became very enlightened about business and it’s corruption. She was no longer naive about the world and its business practices but she was able to study at this time and was encouraged to take her CPA, of which she almost completed the first time and only had to take one part over again before she passed the whole test. As I already told you she is very intelligent.

She then started a new job with a company that gave her so much stress that she confided in me that she was ready to come home and take a break. I was thrilled of course, who doesn’t want their children near them but I knew that this was not going to relieve whatever was making her to become stressed. So I told her to do something for somebody else and that would give her new energy and a better insight into herself. She decided to do a marathon to raise money for a leukemia victim.

During this time she injured her right thigh and her trainer recommended Dahn Yoga. She started training there and she would come home and tell me about it and show me some of the techniques, such as an intestinal exercise. I thought at the time when she told me the principles that they sounded like they made sense to me. She seemed very happy and very relaxed and had a new attitude about work. At the same time I was discovering spirituality, reading such books by authors such as… William Dyer, Deepak Chopra, etc. So alot of what she was describing that she would learn at the center seemed very good information that I would have wanted to share with her but she was learning more than just information she was actually incorporating it into her body by doing these training. During my dad’s funeral is when I noticed her great strength and a wonderful peacefulness in her.

She then quit her job and after some training she was working in one of the centers and living with other center workers, mostly Koreans and some Americans as well. She reassured me this was her choice and although I had doubts, I always spoke with her and went to visit her often and I was always welcomed by the other Koreans and never saw that she had lost any personality traits or behaved in an uncharacteristic manner. She was just always very healthy and still had her leadership quality of wanting to do things her way. So I thought to myself, she is still “my Mary.” She would come for visits and attend family functions and interact normally with her sisters. She would still wear street clothes and wear makeup. She was just more compassionate about people and their feelings and seemed to be more understanding about herself and her role in the world.

I started going to some of the training myself at Mago Garden even travelling from as far as Hawaii to attend them and I found that I was always treated with great respect by everybody there. I would here stories that people thought that the reason you would go to training is because you were brainwashed at the center. But I never belonged to a center and would sign up for them only because I felt that alot of the training was healing my body. When I would go to the training I would meet ladies that had been going to centers for years and they looked remarkable and I could see the difference from my own body and theirs that the daily training was really working for them.

I am living proof that although I have some problems with growing old such as stiff joints, I do not have to use any medications and when I practice faithfully and actually do my bowing which is so wonderful as an overall tonic for my body and to awaken my sluggish brain. I have never witnessed during any of the training and I have taken about 7 training at Mago and one time I was there for about 5 weeks consecutively this last March that I was brainwashed in any way to do anything. I was given great, healthy food and was treated very kindly by everyone on staff.

In fact, when I did go home it was a great disappointment to me that I didn’t have a center that I could go to get more encouragement to continue practicing because I found that you need that kind of connection because human nature dictates that unless you have that kind of motivation you will not follow up on your training.

That was and has been my greatest disappointment about Dahn Yoga, that there isn’t a center in every city that I have lived. My husband says that because of this CNN broadcast, maybe more people will be curious about Dahn Yoga and read the many wonderful books that ILchee Lee has written and they will start practicing some of the techniques. Sometimes even negative information can be useful. And that thought doesn’t come from a “brainwashed” brain because my husband has never been to one of the training but he just knows how much it has helped me and feels that my daughter is just working for a corporation just like any other corporation except that it is promoting peace and healing as its product.

We feel good about that and most of all we trust our intelligent daughter when she says that this is what they are doing. But don’t take my word for it, if you are lucky enough to live near a Dahn Center, try it for just a week and you will be amazed by how it changes your life for the better.

Sincerely,
Martha E. McKinley