Ilchi Lee

On September 12, 2018, Ilchi Lee received the award, José Simeón Cañas Slave Liberator Order, by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of El Salvador as the president of IBREA Foundation, a non-governmental organization in special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) that Ilchi Lee founded. The award was for the culture of peace Lee's Brain Education program brought to El Salvador's public schools. Brain Education has been taught in Salvadoran schools since 2011, beginning with a pilot project in Distrito Italia, an area on the northern outskirts of the capital of San Salvador. Brain Education is a five-step mind-body method that includes brain exercises, meditation, and mindfulness training. At the time of the award, 2,357 educators in El Salvador had been certified to teach Brain Education, and the Ministry of Education and the Teacher Welfare Institute continue to support the program.

Korean religions scholar Donald Baker regards Dahn World as one of the more noteworthy among more than 200 new religions in S. Korea that share a 'Korea-centric' view that Korea has become 'the spiritual center of the world' – with Dahn World asserting that Seung Heun Lee is a spiritual leader leading humanity toward an 'enlightenment revolution'.

This case was finally dismissed entirely on April 1, 2013 by court order.

The Court dismissed ten plaintiffs in 2012. The other seventeen plaintiffs withdrew them and settled the case by mutual release. No money was paid to any of the plaintiffs by any defendants in this case. On the other hand, a Judgment was entered against seven of the dismissed plaintiffs awarding defendants $11,072.07 in litigation costs.

Jessica Harrelson filed emotional distress claims against Lee in both the Barba et al. v. Lee et al. case and another case filed in the State of Massachusetts. On January 31, 2012, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts dismissed Harrelson's case, finding that "Lee filed a motion ...... providing the court with a number of exhibits that tended to disprove, or at the very least, shed serious doubt, on Harrelson's substantive claims." On April 6, 2012, Harrelson was also dismissed in the Barba et al. v. Lee et al. case for failure to prosecute.

In 2011, Lee wrote The Call of Sedona: Journey of the Heart and it is published by BEST Life Media. It has been listed as a New York Times Best Seller. It was on the Washington Post Best Seller, USA Today Best Seller, LA Times Best Seller, and the IndieBound Best Seller lists. This book made the author the first Korean author to rank on the four major bestseller lists in the United States.

One of the mental and physical health enhancement techniques that Ilchi Lee created, Brain Wave Vibration (head-shaking), was used as a kind of moving meditation in a research study published in the international journal, Neuroscience Letters, in July 2010. Using two psychological questionnaires, this study suggested that regular practitioners of Brain Wave Vibration were less stressed and experienced more positive emotions and fewer psychosomatic symptoms. As well, regular Brain Wave Vibration practitioners had more dopamine in their blood than the healthy control group. The Ministry of Science and Technology of South Korea funded the research. Researchers from several departments of Seoul National University and the university hospital collaborated for the research along with the Korea Institute of Brain Science, of which Ilchi Lee is president.

On January 8, 2009, Lee held a seminar at the United Nations on "The Role of Brain Education in Global Mental Health," as the president of IBREA. Coincided with the seminar, New York City declared this day "IBREA Brain Education Day," recognizing Brain Education's contribution to education, health and well-being of New York citizens.

In 2005, a wrongful death lawsuit was filed against Lee and other defendants over the death of Julia Siverls, a Body & Brain center member, during a training hike. On November 13, 2006, the Court dismissed all claims against Lee, finding that "There is no evidence that Dr. Siverls-Dunham's death, or even her presence in Arizona, arose out of a transaction of business by Lee."

The South Korean Government conferred the Order of Civil Merit on Lee in 2002, honoring his dissemination of Korean traditional philosophy and culture throughout the world through his founding of the Institute for Traditional Korean Cultural Studies (국학원 Gukhakwon, also known as the Kukhak Institute), an educational non-profit organization devoted to the study and development of traditional Korean philosophy

In 2000, Ilchi Lee became a director of the Tao Fellowship, a non-profit religious charity and educational foundation, which purchased majestic property in Sedona, Arizona to house the Sedona Ilchi Meditation Center (SIMC). According to their Web site, the Tao Fellowship teaches and promotes Tao philosophy and provides training for a cultural movement for peace. The Sedona Ilchi Meditation Center is described as "the home from which the ideals of Tao Fellowship may flower and go forth to awaken the human consciousness," and as the location of 12 energy vortexes (Sedona is believed by many visitors and locals to contain healing energy vortexes.) Described by Dr. Woo as the "heart of the 'world mission' or 'global management,'" SIMC hosts 3,000 participants annually from around the world in a variety of programs based in Lee's Brain Education system, including youth camps, residential healing, retreat programs and advanced Dahn training programs such as Dahn Healer School. Eventually SIMC was renamed the Sedona Mago Retreat Center (SMRC) and celebrated its 10th Anniversary in May 2008."Mago" means "Mother Earth" in Korean.

Lee says that although the underlying philosophy has remained the same, he continues to "refine and improve" the methods. He recounts in one newspaper report that the techniques have evolved from breathing methods to meditation to its current emphasis on the brain. An early English-language book by Lee, Dahn Meditation, which was published in 1997, focuses primarily on Ki development through Lee's "practical and modern" version of traditional Korean Dahn Hak techniques and does not mention any exercises specific to brain development. The book describes stretching exercises ("do-in"), meditation for energy sensitivity ("ji gam"), energy dance ("dahn mu"), and energy building exercises ("haeng gong").

Through this and other affiliated NGOs and projects, such as 'Erecting 369 Tan-gun Statues in Schoolyards', which proved controversial in Korea in the late 1990s, Lee contributes to the revival of Korea's nationalist movement by mobilizing large numbers to revere Korea's legendary 2333 BCE divine founding father Tan'gun [or Dangun, Tan-gun, Dahngun], an indigenous tradition said to exist prior to the influence of foreign religions. Lee advances the belief that Tan'gun practiced a 15,000-year-old Korean value called 'Hongik Ingan Ewah Saegae' ('Widely benefit humanity, rightfully Harmonize the world') and that an ancient scripture exists, 'Chun Bu Kyung' [or Cheonbugyeong], that reveals that Heaven, Earth, and Human exist as One in each person. Lee maintains that this is the core Korean spirit that will prove key to Korean reunification as well as world peace, an ideal he contends to be attainable through his 'brain education' programs - resulting in a 'one world communal culture' of perfectly healthy and peaceful 'Power Brains' or 'New Humans'.

In his adolescence he turned to the martial art of Taekwondo to help calm his restless mind. He eventually earned a fourth-level black belt, and opened a successful martial arts studio. He took the first term of Taekwondo master education hosted by Kukkiwon in 1972. After he graduated from Dankook University in 1977 with a B.S. degree in clinical pathology and physical education, he opened a health clinic, which according to his own account did well. He soon married and settled down to raise a family.

Lee Seung-Heun (Korean: 이승헌 ; Hanja: 李承憲 ; born December 23, 1950), better known as Ilchi Lee, is a South Korean author and the founder of a variety of mind-body training methods, including Dahnhak (丹学), Body & Brain, Brain Respiration (old name), Brain Wave Vibration, Kookhak Qigong, and DahnMuDo, all falling under the umbrella name of Brain Education. Lee began teaching his methods in a park in the 1980s, and since that time the practice has developed into an international network of for-profit and non-profit entities.

Ilchi Lee was born in 1950 in Cheonan, South Korea. His father was a teacher, yet he reports having struggled in school due to his inability to focus and a preference for imaginative play. Later in life, he would identify himself as having overcome Attention Deficit Disorder through rigorous physical and mental training. He suggests in his books that these early experiences formed the foundation of the brain-based training techniques he would develop later in life.