Mike & Beth in front of Roots to Wings Yoga and Healing Center

Last week in Part I ‘Pre-yoga Daze’, Mike

Houlihan shared the beginning of the journey that lead him and his wife to take over management of the highly successful ‘Roots to Wings’ Yoga Studio, a hybrid Hatha and Dahn Yoga studio, where over 130 graduated from the Shim Sung ‘Finding True Self’ Workshop in two years.  

At the end of part I, Mike had just started taking Yoga Classes at Roots to Wings.

Around the time that I was discovering yoga for the first time, Wendy Hall, owner and teacher at Roots to Wings Yoga and Healing Center was discovering Dahn Yoga for the first time.  She had recently taken the Shim Sung (Finding True Self) workshop offered by Dahn Yoga, and immediately felt the practice offered her the next step in her growth.  She set about practicing and taking private sessions with Chun Shim Park, a Dahn Yoga trainer, and was soon experimenting how to incorporate the ‘energy body’ practices she was learning into her Hatha Yoga classes.  She started having us do Sleeping Tiger for about 5 minutes at the end of some classes and gradually, I began to feel energy in my Dahn Jon.  I started practicing harder.  Wendy also encouraged others to take the Shim Sung workshop and Beth, my wife, travelled to Boston to participate.  She immediately started bugging me to go.  I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about, but was loving yoga and if I could dedicate two days to doing it that’d be fine.  With this mind, I eventually signed up.   Fortunately, by the time I had an opportunity to go, Shim Sung actually came to Roots to Wings, thanks to the hard work of Wendy and Chun Shim nim. (nim is a term of respect in Korean, often used at the end of a person’s name/title).

By the time Shim Sung rolled around, I was feeling pretty healthy.  I’d lost about 20 pounds, was calmer some of the time, and could see the benefits of regular yoga and energy practice.  However, I was still unprepared for Shim Sung.  I was unable to see the connection between my thoughts and my physical and spiritual bodies.  I didn’t appreciate the interconnection of the three bodies.  Shim Sung was like getting a new set of glasses to look at myself through.  I began to see more clearly who I was and how I’d been limiting myself.  I often tell people that I’d experienced the rapture of being alive on my wedding day and during the birth of our four children; a moment where time really stood still.  I experienced the rapture again in Shim Sung. However, the weekend also scared me, because I realized how sick my body really was.  At the end, I did not want it to be over.  I walked up to Chun Shim nim with a pleading look in my eyes, saying “Help!”  She compassionately pushed a couple of meridian points on me. ‘You need to heal’ she said.  Deep down inside, I knew she was right.  I needed more help. 

That was the beginning of the journey that brought me here, to this point in my life, ready to teach others in the same way that Wendy and Chun Shim nim taught me.  This journey has started, but hasn’t stopped yet.  I don’t have the words to describe how sincerely grateful I am to have had the opportunity to be guided by Chun Shim nim.  It has been the opportunity of many lifetimes.  She helped me save my life by helping me see in myself what is inside all of us and helped me develop the confidence to be who I truly am. 

Part III – Fruits of ‘Su Haeng’ Training, Family, and Future

Su Haeng means ‘training to recover your original spirit’.  Scores of private sessions and peak experiences later, across staffing multiple Shim Sungs, beyond many Dahn Yoga trainings- Master Healer School, Healing Chakra, Advanced Shim Sung, Tao Masters training, BMC School, and countless hours of practice with Wendy nim and Chun Shim nim, it comes down to this. In the last three and a half years:

• I am lighter, but not just physically.  I have gone from 212 to 172 pounds (even though I never thought I could weigh less than 185 at 6 feet tall), but my lightness is different than that.
• My mind is clearer almost all the time, extremely clear some of the time, and less clear very infrequently.
• I am not constrained by upper and lower back pain like I was since my mid 20s. 
• My perennial allergies have virtually disappeared. I used to wake up sneezing 30 plus times a night
• My musical tastes have changed completely from hard rock/heavy metal to yoga and healing music.  I’ve also started to teach myself to play guitar.
• I have begun to let go of attachments and have realized that I am not Mike the Chief Information Officer, Father, Husband, champion golfer, hockey player blah blah blah.  I am much more than that
• I am calmer and more present with my wife, children, friends and co-workers.  Getting hooked on emotions is more an exception than the norm. 
• I have changed the information I live my life by.  I don’t read the paper much.  I don’t watch the news.  I watch much less TV.  I spend my time with people who are healthy for me
• I have re-learned what to eat, how to eat it, and when.  I am more conscious of what I put in my body.  I have not taken a pill of any kind in almost 4 years (with the exception of 1 course of antibiotics when I had lyme disease after a tick bite).  I have not used alcohol in almost 3 years.  I have not had refined sugar in 8 months.  I don’t drink coffee and I don’t smoke.  I do enjoy an occasional pizza and I do eat meat although I do not crave meat like I used to.
• I understand that I am 100% responsible for everything that happens in my life and I accept full responsibility for that
• I understand that I will continue to repeat lessons until I learn them.  I am not in control
• I have realized that I am separate from nothing.  I trust CJKU.
• I can feel my Dahn Jon (lower energy center) even when I am not doing Yeon Don (still postures to accumulate energy).  Not always, but more of the time
• I have the confidence to heal myself and others
• I understand that to better heal myself and others I must teach, share, and practice
• I believe I can make a difference in the world.  I am making a difference in the world.  I am going to make a difference in the world because I am 100% responsible for doing so.

The teaching team at Roots to Wings, all trained in Dahn Yoga and Hatha Yoga

Wendy Hall, as the founder of Roots to Wings, created the amazing energy field that is here with her own love, compassion, will and determination to make a better world.  She brought Dahn Yoga to us and to Roots to Wings.  Roots to Wings is a very special place.  What has happened here is a testament that Hong ik (‘living in a way that widely benefits all’) is alive and well in America.  Wendy Hall’s, now Wendy Hall Sabumnim ‘s,(a dahn yoga master instructor)  success at incorporating Dahn Yoga principles with her already successful yoga and healing studio brought her an invite to manage CGI Holistic Fitness in Closter, NJ.   She pursued this for her growth and for her vision of world peace, and her absence required us to grow to fill her spot.

My main lesson from BMC (Brain Management Consultant) training was that believing something and living something are two different things.  To me the essence of Dahn Yoga is the practice of living consciously.  All the great wisdom traditions tell us this and we get it intellectually.  Dahn Yoga training has helped me feel this in the fiber of my being.  It’s real and tangible.  I also believe there are many maps that can we can use to practice living consciously, but as Joseph Campbell said it is best not to confuse the map with the territory, and if you find a map that works, stick with it. 

While it was a very difficult decision to leave the corporate world and become a’ full-time’ earth citizen by operating a yoga and healing center, it is something I know I must do to make the most of this chance, this lifetime.  I decided to dive in with both feet because I believe in’ Hong Ik’, living beneficially for all, and the power of transformation.  If I can change, anybody can.  I feel that a life based on healing and helping others is a life well lived and the best lesson we can give our children.  The rest is up to Chun Ji Ki Un (Cosmic Energy), and I think I am in good hands.

Mike Houlihan operates Roots to Wings Yoga and Healing Studio in Newburyport, MA, with his wife Beth.
For more information please visit  http://www.rootstowings.com.

Mike and Beth Houlihan and their children, twins Conner and Griffin, and older girls Ashley and Emma in the Summer of 2010

Mike and Beth Houlihan are yoga practitioners and parents of four young children. Recently, Mike left a successful career as a Chief Information Officer of a start-up company to take over management, with Beth, of “Roots to Wings”, a successful yoga studio in Newburyport, MA that combines the teachings of Dahn Yoga, Brain Education, and Hatha Yoga.

Roots to Wings Yoga and Healing Center was the first Hatha Yoga studio in the US to host Dahn Yoga’s Shim Sung Workshop in January of 2008. Since then, approximately eight Shim Sung workshops have been held with more than 150 people participating. Of these 150, approximately 20 people have taken Dahn Yoga’s Brain Management Consultant and other advanced trainings. Mike participated in the first Shim Sung at Roots to Wings, and is a BMC graduate. I was at that Shim Sung, and have witnessed the incredible journey that Mike and Beth have been on. I asked Mike to share his story for the Dahn Yoga Blog readers. Enjoy part 1 below!

~Genia Sullivan, editor, www.dahnyogama.com
During the last year, my wife Beth and I have drastically changed our lives to follow a calling to live and grow as Earth Citizens through taking over management of Roots to Wings Yoga and Healing Center, founded by Wendy Hall. Together with two of our classmates who also graduated from Dahn Yoga’s Brain Management Consultant Course, we teach all the classes and take care of all management affairs. We host and staff three Shim Sung trainings each year, and keep up with our own training as well. We have four children ages 5, 5, 7, and 9 who practice yoga, soccer, and hockey. How do we do it all, you might ask?

To be honest, it is not easy. We’ve given up a lot of things we used to do like weekends away, having friends over for dinner, my own hockey and prime-time golf. We focus on doing the most important things really well. For example, we just got back from 7 nights on the beach in Maine living in a tent with all the kids. Taking over the helm at Roots to Wings has created some strain in our family, but we are a happier and healthier family for it. Practice helps. We are taking a leap of faith in ‘Chun Ji Ki Un’ that if we put our full energy into something we love to do the rest will be taken care of. Why? I look inside myself and see the results. I know how I have changed and how I have grown. I have experienced what can happen when we have the courage to let go, while also understanding it is a life-long process.

If not me, who? If not now, when?  This is our story, told from my perspective.

Part I – Pre-Yoga Daze

Author Mike and his two older children in 2007

Somewhere in my early 40s, what I now understand as past memories, preconceptions, and worries about the future began to catch up with me. I generally considered myself to be relatively healthy and successful. I’d gone to college, grad school, had a great job, a house, two kids, and no financial worries. I played golf and hockey, skied, biked, rollerbladed and I was really good at drinking beer. My whole life, I had a nagging feeling that something was missing, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I longed for the simplicity of a sunny day with a sweatshirt on and work boots that I remembered from my early childhood, but couldn’t find it in any of my successes; having grown up without a dad, I was insecure and deep inside thought I wasn’t good enough. No matter how much I had or how low my golf score was it wasn’t good enough and I always had this nagging belief that something bad would happen to me at the most inopportune time to prevent me from achieving ultimate success.

My job required significant travel and I began to feel torn about not being around for my wife and two young girls. Living on airplanes and away from my family was profitable, but not fulfilling. I was dying. Around that time I also began to get more concerned about my health. I was always self conscious about my looks, but this was more than just an inner tube around my waist. I would get dizzy, headaches, heart palpitations, and get a fat tongue and mess-up my words from time to time. With each ache and pain I had, I’d run to the doctor to make sure I did not have cancer or a heart problem. The things I did to make me feel better created more stress. I was truly a misguided seeker, as Deepak Chopra would say.

My minister at my local church had been nagging me for a couple of years to meet with her, but I had always managed to escape doing it. I kind of knew where I needed to go; but I figured there’d be time for that down the road. I used to ask myself the question “What happens to people who know but don’t listen, don’t act?” Of course I was foolish enough to think I knew, but scared enough to know there was something out there that I still couldn’t put my finger on.

Author Mike Houlihan in his 'Pre-Yoga Daze'

Even before she asked to meet with me, I was immediately struck by Minister Nancy. Her blazing blue eyes seemed to look right through me as if she could see who I knew I really was. I felt she could also see my potential, and I was inspired by her sermons. I eventually gave in, and began meeting with her on a regular basis, and these meetings really were the start of the spiritual journey I began. She helped me experience that as we share deep truths about ourselves, we begin to access a part of ourselves that exists outside of space and time, and we begin to see things as they really are. It would take me a long time to learn that failure to see things as they really are is what causes suffering, and I am still learning that it is me who is doing it. While these practices were mostly temporal, they were tangible and I was starting to develop a stronger belief in my own personal transformation.

I became quite enamored with having peak spiritual experiences that were different and safer than other highs I’d sought through the course of my life. The problem was that I had not made any fundamental changes to how I was living my life. I still had a nagging feeling that I was running out of time and that something bad was going to happen. I still did not feel great physically, didn’t like the way I looked and was bored with how I was living my life. My wife Beth had started yoga at Roots to Wings Yoga Studio, a local Hatha Yoga Studio in our town, shortly after our twin boys were born. I began to notice she was calmer, stronger, and more focused; different somehow, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I was getting tired of gingerly walking down stairs after hockey games, nursing groin pulls, and going from one ache and pain to the next so I figured I’d give yoga a try.

Within five minutes of my first class I said to myself “Yes, Home!” There was just something about lying on that mat and gasping for air that had a quieting effect on me. I didn’t have much respect for yoga when I first went, and didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. I figured I’d take classes for a couple of weeks and would be in perfect shape again. I was so wrong about that it makes me shake my head even as I write this. Yoga tore me limb from limb for about the first six months of practice. I found it excruciating, but I loved it.

Come back on Monday for Part II: ‘Yoga Daze; Mike’s transformation through Shim Sung and decision to become a full time practitioner and yoga studio owner

Mike Houlihan operates Roots to Wings Yoga and Healing Studio in Newburyport, MA, with his wife Beth.
For more information please visit  http://www.rootstowings.com.

Unity on the River, Amesbury, MA

Barbara Parton of the Amesbury, MA area has dreamed of bringing the Shim Sung , or, ‘Finding True Self’ workshop to her church community ever since she first participated in the workshop in August of 2005.  On June 17 & 18, 2010, her dream was finally realized at the Unity on the River Spiritual Center of Celebration when six people participated in the first Shim Sung workshop held at the church.

The Unity movement is a “New Thought” movement in which God is everywhere present, especially inside of each of us, and fondly referred to as “the presence.” This concept resonated with Barbara immediately when she came to Unity in 1999.  It was when she took the Shim Sung workshop six years later, however, that she actually could “feel” this presence and “know” that it was so.  For her, it brought together the concept with the bodily sensation, and she knew she wanted to bring this experience to others in her community.

The link has now been made, with 6 participants whom experienced this connection with their “true self” at the workshop held last month.  It

Group photo at the end of the weekend

was an combined effort of three holistic yoga and healing centers in Northern Massachusetts.   The Dahn Yoga Center in Andover, MA, provided the trainer, workshop know how, volunteer staff, and materials.  The Roots to Wings Yoga and Healing Center in Byfield, MA, provided more volunteer staff, and advertising help.  The Body Prosperity Center, Barbara’s studio,  in Amesbury, MA, provided all logistical planning, and organization of the event.   Barbara shared, ‘A new outreach triangle is born!   Together we are reaching out to help others reach in and discover their true selves.”  She plans to organize more True Self workshops offered at the church, with the help of the newly formed trio of partners.

Volunteer Staff came from Dahn Yoga, Roots to Wings Yoga, and the Body Prosperity Centers, all in Northern MA

The Mission of Unity on the River is to  “….Celebrate the Presence and Awaken Humanity to it’s Divinity.”  The True Self workshop is this mission in action. Please watch for further news on when the next one will be held, hopefully in October of 2010.

Barbara Parton is the owner of the Body Prosperity Center, a Holistic Fitness Center located in the Unity Church plaza in Amesbury, MA. For     more information about this center activities and programs please visit: www.bodyprosperitycenter.com

I have been a Dahn Yoga member for 4 years now and am involved in several classes that are being taught at no cost in the Greater Boston area. Some of these classes

have been running for 7-10 years.  When I realized that the average member at the center has no idea about these classes are happening, I decided to share about them. They have been such a special experience.  Here is a brief glimpse.

The longest on-going class (started in 2000 by Danielle Gaudette, Boston Regional Director of Dahn Yoga Centers) takes place at the Sunrise Assisted Living Center in Arlington. Once a week, we hold a class in the community room with 10-12 residents attending. Several BMC graduates alternate weeks of teaching, and the staff frequently attend if their work schedule permits. The activities director tells us how much the residence look forward to our visit, and the volunteer instructors share the same.

The class at the community health center in Dorchester has also been ongoing for many years (since 2003?). It is geared towards people suffering with diabetes. I have been responsible for it for the past 3 years. Many are Cape Verde natives who don’t speak much English, and overtime we have learned to communicate without words.
I have grown to love these wonderful souls. The experience is much than doing stretching exercise and relaxation. I believe we have built a small community of trust and oneness of spirit. I have seen remarkable changes in several of the patients. The class has become a real part of their lives. They care about each other and have started taking responsibility for their health. Their moods have lifted and we have started teaching each other our native language. To hear an 80 year old Cape Verde woman count to 10 one day in English gave me great joy.

One of the members has even taken Shim Sung, has started taking classes at a Dahn Center and assists with class at the community center. My goal is to see more patients

Outreach Shim Sung at the Red Cross

attend Shim Sung and even to see some of the staff take the workshop.

An similar project has be initiated at a community health center in Jamaica Plain. The participants of this class are spanish speaking women suffering from depression.

The American Red Cross Blood Services hosts another outreach program. Class is offered 3 different times per week. Staff members attend from various departments. Recently the class has been formatted to allow staff to attend either a half hour of stretching and breathing or to stay and participate in the second half of relaxation and energy accumulation so more can participate.

As a result of this outreach, the first workplace Shim Sung in New England was held at Red Cross last February, with 10 people attending. The Red Cross supported the staff by paying a portion of the workshop cost and attendees who were nurses received continuing ed credits.

All of these outreach projects have offered a great opportunity for growth and a way to share with the community. The joy and satisfaction experienced is immeasurable. Seeing the smiling faces, sincere appreciation, and the relaxed mental and physical state of the staff and patients is a great reward.

Barbara Maffeo is a BMC graduate and instructor of Dahn Yoga.  She is a nurse and works for the Red Cross.

I was very inspired by this past weekend’s Shim Sung workshop. Actually, only 5 people completed the workshop, including my sister. But through the devotion of the staff, the sincerity of the participants, and the effectiveness of the program, all five of them really uncovered the natural love inside that is their true self. It strengthened my faith in the power and the value of the Shim Sung workshop. I really hope everyone can take it!

As always, I am very excited for the Shim Sung Workshop that will be held at the Jamaica Plain Center this weekend. I am especially excited about this one because my sister will be taking it. Recently I found an old sharing about Shim Sung from an Andover Center member. I don’t know if she’s still a member, but here is her sharing after Shim Sung:

Shim Sung

Shim Sung was the most powerful experience in my life. It shook my whole self. On the first day of the workshop I was able to completely release my heart blockage and could breathe freely. I felt a lot of energy and warmth, and I started to feel my soul.

Working with my partner was really helpful to learn how to communicate without talking. At the beginning I was thinking that the warmth and love I felt was just for this person, because I liked my partner so much. But at the end, I understood that I like everyone as much if I listen with my heart. I could feel a lot of love in return from everyone in the room. It was amazing.

I was able to understand who I am and what I want during the second day of training. I am just part of the universe and all the universe is in me. I found I wanted peace with myself, my family and the world. Also, I was able to start to understand how 100% of will is important in achieving your goals. I hardly used it until now. My eyes see differently now; I feel as if I am twenty again, with a lot of energy and hope.

I came home with more love for my family. The kids felt it and just wanted to be near me. I hope this workshop will change my life forever.