Dahn yoga
Added on May, 23 2008 at 2:59 PM by Sarah
For a movement arts independent study I am working on I have chosen a form of yoga that s totally new to me to focus my research on. This form of yoga is known as Dahn Yoga and it originated in Korea many years ago. It is a descendant of the classical Indian and Chinese practices of Tai Chi and Qigong. I came upon this practice just through researching different forms of mind body exercises and techniques meant to control the mind for spiritual and physical gains. I am an Iyengar Yoga practitioner myself and had never even known there was strictly Korean form of Yoga before. When I found out about Dahn Yoga i went online and bought their introductory practices DVD and have been working with that instead of doing my own practice to get a real feel for what it is doing. I think that if I tried to write about this form without ever practicing it I would have missed the point. I knew right away which elements that it pulled from traditional Indian Yoga, Tai Chi, and Qigong. What I didn't realize was how much more effective these practices became when they are used in concert for the same goal. Each of these various practices are unique and through their own particular movements cause different types of reactions and energetic changes in the body of the practicer. When I have been practicing them together I can feel the way various shifts interact with each other as I place one movements from Tai Chi next to a traditional Yoga movement. It is quite amazing because I have come from practicing all three separately to finding a practice that has managed to successfully merge all three in to something that almost increases the effectiveness of them all. I have gotten plenty of research data on the style and its effects and now I get to sit down to the fun, not really, task of writing all of my thoughts out. I think that I function much better in processing something when I write it out because I have that level of self-awareness, but I just really don't like sitting in a room writing for hours, when I could be outside practicing or riding my bike.