Ilchi Lee

At Sedona Mago Retreat Center’s 10th Anniversary Festival, May 25, 2008, around 300 people listened to its founder Ilchi Lee speak on “Brain Education for Successful Aging”

Signing books for audience members

A 15-year resident of Sedona, Lee is founder and president of the International Brain Education Association and the Korea Institute of Brain Science (a NGO granted consultative status with the United Nations). The most recent of his 30 books is In Full Bloom: A Brain Education Guide for Successful Aging, coauthored with Dr. Jessie Jones.

In his 90-minute lecture, Lee explained in words, slides, videos and exercises how the brain can remain fit well beyond middle age in order to regain and retain physical health, mental functioning, and inner peace.

Explaining his ideas about aging

Lee described how to shift one’s brain state from negative to positive, giving a personal anecdote as an example. When his luggage, with $5,000 in cash inside, was stolen at an airport, he reframed the situation and decided he had given a “donation” to a stranger. This process – changing information to change the brain, and ultimately to change one’s destiny – is also the key to aging well. Using the brain effectively helps overcome negative emotions, which can undermine both physical and mental health.

Central to Lee’s Brain Education methodology is making the choice between previously formed negative habits, and use of the brain in positive ways. In particular, the Brain Wave Vibration exercise can help transform negative brain waves into pure, normalized and positive brain waves.

Attendees waited to meet Lee

Lee pointed out that although neuroscience is a difficult field to understand, Brain Education itself is easy, even for people at 80 or 90 years of age. He regards Brain Education as giving hope to yourself and others, through positive information and pure brain waves. The brain can be regulated this way by effectively combining music, message and action. These can positively affect the brain’s three layers: neocortex for thinking, limbic system for emotions, and brainstem for living. Doing things to benefit the brainstem is the key to improving your brain functioning and thus your life quality, especially in the last third of your life.

Lee became convinced that Sedona was the right place in the United States from which to share Brain Education with Americans when he interpreted the word Sedona according to its three syllables in Korean characters, which mean, “Where new enlightenment will be born.”

Lee recommended that we tap the top of our head with fingertips 100 times, morning and night. This physical stimulation of the brain can help prevent deterioration in mental capacity and awaken a wider sense of self.

Lee explained that his hope for humanity in these troubled times is the better use of our brains. This can lead to a new way of thinking and acting, which he calls Earth Management. The start of this path is realizing that the gateway at the top of our head (our brain) is the basis of our hope for growing ourselves and improving the world.

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