Within our body and brain are the tools we need to create balance, clarity, and a more authentic life.
Many of us have learned how to take care of everything. We know how to meet deadlines, support others, and manage responsibilities. But when it comes to our energy, our breath, and the condition of our mind, we often rely on habit rather than awareness. Over time, this creates a sense of imbalance that we may not immediately recognize, but we feel it in our fatigue, our tension, and our restlessness.
There comes a time when we no longer want to live on autopilot. Something within us asks for a deeper sense of connection and meaning. We begin to look more closely at what we are doing and how we are living. From there, a natural question arises: Is there another way?
While looking for answers, we may receive advice, guidance, and support from others, but the direction of our lives is something only we can truly feel and decide. When we begin to trust that inner sense, we take the first step toward living with greater clarity and balance.
Part of that search can lead us back to ourselves and our own innate processes and strengths. We have our own technology, what I call a Human Technology, that we can use anytime. Rather than relying on institutions and machines for the skills needed to create a healthy, happy, and fulfilled life, we can rely on the skills built into our bodies and brains. Using this technology can lead to greater self-mastery and authentic living.
It can also help us recover our power for self-reliance. While the proliferation of increasingly complex artificial technologies has made life more convenient, it’s also made society more specialized and systematized. There is so much information and division, it’s easier for us to rely on experts to navigate it. But this reliance on experts can take us away from ourselves, and we may end up adjusting our lives to suit the systems rather than have the systems truly serve people’s needs.
In the end, however, there is no greater expert on our own lives than ourselves. We can get help from people with more experience and help others in turn, but ultimately, each of us is the specialist of our own lives. We have the capacity to find our own answers and solutions and to design our own future. Human Technology is about having the knowledge and skills to do it.
The knowledge I’m referring to is having a basic understanding of energy principles and of how the “software” of our brain works. It’s getting a sense of our natural healing power, wisdom, and creativity. The skills are the exercises and meditations that change our energy and let us use our brains to their full potential.
Some of the Tools of Human Technology
1. Meridian Exercise
Stretching, tapping, postures, and repetitive movements combined with focus and intentional breathing enhance energy flow through the body’s energy channels, or meridians, and energy points. This stimulates and energizes the body and breath, leading to a deeper meditation experience.
Try one posture Ilchi Lee developed to balance your whole body ►
2. Brain Wave Vibration
Shaking and other rhythmic movements slow down brain waves and release muscle, joint, and abdominal tension. This technique is a meditation that powerfully purifies energy.
Learn how to do it here ►
3. Acupressure/Moxibustion
Stimulating specific energy points on the body encourages and balances energy flow. Acupressure involves pressing and rubbing with fingers or a tool. Moxibustion is the practice of burning small, tightly rolled dried cones of mugwort on the energy points. These techniques affect the balance of fire (moxibustion) and water (acupressure) elements in the body. Although these treatments, and acupuncture, can become complex when studied professionally, simple stimulation of major points can be useful for treating minor conditions or preventing the development of disease.
Here are common acupressure points you can stimulate in your daily life ►
4. Breathing Meditation
Breathwork can be as simple as breathing intentionally at least once a day: watching and focusing on our breathing, following its natural rhythms, and allowing it to deepen automatically. The lower abdomen rises for the inhale and falls for the exhale.
Try this breathing exercise for relaxation ►
5. Bowing Meditation
A moving meditation that involves prostration of the whole body. Bowing meditation is a cycle of surrendering and accepting ourselves, and then refilling ourselves with pure energy. It grounds us while making it easier to feel our hearts and be clear-headed. It also strengthens and warms the entire body. Bowing meditation is also a good meridian exercise that generates Water Up, Fire Down energy circulation.
Learn how to do Bowing Meditation ►
6. Energy Sensing Meditation
In this meditation, we feel the sensations of subtle life energy, particularly on our hands. The simplest exercise involves moving the palms toward and away from each other in the same rhythm as our breath. This practice trains our mind to feel energy, which is the first step toward our mind using it with intention in our lives.
Follow this video to practice Energy Sensing Meditation ►
Using these tools to heal our bodies, strengthen our self-reliance, and make changes in our lives requires becoming deeply connected with ourselves. They have limited use unless we become more deeply aware of our body, energy, and true being. I suggest these steps for activating our Human Technology.
How to Apply Human Technology
1. Become sensitive to signals from the body and brain.
When we are sensitive and responsive to the signs and rhythms of our body, we are more deeply connected to the rich, wonderful texture of all life experience. Signals from the body—a butterfly in the stomach, a tingling in the toes, or even pain or discomfort—can take on meaning related to creative urges or spiritual growth. These sensations may even alert us to the state of our relationship with the earth itself. This kind of meaningfulness of our body sensations is difficult or impossible if our sensory abilities have been dulled by apathy or medication dependence. All Human Technology tools include focusing on the feelings in the body. They will help train our minds to be aware of the body even when we’re not doing the exercises.
2. Regularly clear our energy, thoughts, and emotions until we achieve a no-self (muah) state.
Life begins with emptying ourselves—we cry out and exhale when we are born. The rhythm of life begins when we have emptied ourselves and then allow that empty space to be filled. In a state of emptiness, we are free of the confines of our past and our ego; we’ve gone beyond the selves we knew. Then, our destination and how to get there become clear, and infinite possibilities become open to us. Energy Sensing Meditation, especially after doing exercises that stir up energy and then Breathing Meditation, helps us enter a no-self state.
3. Discover what our body needs and our heart wants.
When our energy is clear and our mind deeply calm, we can more easily hear what’s in our hearts. We can ask ourselves, “Who am I? Why am I here? What do I need to do?” We can ask any other questions as well, but these questions form the basis of all the answers we need for a meaningful life full of vitality.
4. Change our energy to meet those needs and desires.
The answers we receive from our hearts may give us specific things to do for ourselves or other people in our lives. Acting on these messages right away will help generate a vortex of energy to bring what our hearts want to life. Some of these actions can involve adjusting our own energy so that it aligns with or resonates with those outcomes. We may need to remove energy blocks or simply make our energy brighter and stronger. We may have to make Water Up, Fire Down energy flow in our bodies if we don’t have it. This kind of energy flow will sustain our bodies and minds, helping us feel free and happy.
We are each, as individuals, uniquely responsible for our choices. We may not be able to create or control all of the events that impact our lives, but we can create and control our responses to everything we experience. Knowing this does not mean that everyone is proactively creating their own life experience; in fact, too often the opposite is true. I believe this is because many of us do not understand or use the principles and skills that would allow us to resolve our most basic life issues successfully. I believe this is an unintended and unrealized consequence of our overdependence on outside sources.
Through these tools, which are the basic exercises of my Brain Education and Body & Brain methods, I hope we can own our health and our lives. I hope they let us experience the natural power we all have inside.
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