Ilchi Lee on Brain Education Method
By Phil on Jul. 20, 2008.
From Brain Wave Vibration by Ilchi Lee
In his book This is Your Brain on Music, neuroscientist and musician Daniel J. Levitin discusses the effect music has on the human brain. He notes that music is unique in its ability to stimulate all areas of the brain at once. He says, “Musical activity involves nearly every region of the brain that we know about, and nearly every neural subsystem.”
In Ilchi Lee’s five-step Brain Education method, the goal of the fourth step, Brain Integrating, is to unify the three layers of the brain — the primitive brain stem, the emotional limbic system, and the rational neocortex. Very often one part of the brain undermines another, as when rational thinking is overcome by emotion. The goal of Brain Integrating is to get the various parts of the brain working together harmoniously, rather than competing with each other. Since it activates diverse parts of the brain, music seems to be a good step in that direction, which may also explain the cognitive advantage that children who study music seem to have over their nonmusical peers.
When Ilchi Lee trains people in the Brain Wave Vibration method, he usually use samunori, the traditional drumming art of his native Korea. It has its roots in very ancient aspects of Korean culture, originating in the rituals of farmers who wished to ensure the success of their crops.
Ilchi Lee believes that this music, like a lot of other traditional musical forms, possesses a remarkable ability to affect the brain positively. It may be that rhythmic music has a great psychological effect because the first experiences we perceive with our brains are rhythmical.
Ilchi Lee sees the brain as similar, in some ways, to a computer. Granted the brain is far more complex and can be modified through self-directed intention, which is certainly not the case with computers. However, he says he think it isa useful analogy to think in terms of the brain possessing an operating system.
Every brain, like every computer, has an operating system through which it processes the programs it receives. If you have not been able to create your life as you really want, then perhaps you simply can’t run that program on your current brain operating system. To do so would be like trying to run a current computer program on a version of Windows from the 1980s.
Your operating system is the system of beliefs and preconceptions through which you interact with the world. Sometimes these beliefs are very helpful to us if they help us understand the world by helping us process the data that we constantly receive through our senses.
But sometimes our brain operating system is programmed in a way that does not suit our intentions for our life. For example, let’s say you really would love to learn how to draw, but you have a belief about yourself that says, “I am not talented. Anything I try to draw is embarrassing.” You can see how your intention, which is like a program you would like to run, is incompatible with your underlying belief about yourself, which is like your operating system.
The same is true for anything else that you with to manifest in your life. If you want more money, upgrade your underlying beliefs about money. If you want better relationships, reevaluate how your brain processes relationships. This is true for anything you can dream of having or achieving.
Category: Awakening, Brain Education