Lee, Seung-Heun

Seung-Heun Lee, a Korean qigong master, was raised in South Korea in the years after the Korean War. He attended Seoul Public Health College and later studied physical education at Danguk University. Following his graduation he went to work as a researcher in a clinical laboratory. His observation of patients who returned on multiple occasions for treatment served as a catalyst for his own quest to discover the underlying causes of health and disease. He began to meditate and practice disciplines that led to his personal experience of the universal energy, known in Korea as ki (also known as qi or chi). He also came to understand that illness was caused by the blockage of the natural flow of this vital energy.

Having experienced the ki, Lee later discovered that there was a millennia-old Korean discipline to possess health and well being through the cultivation of ki. It was called Dahn Hak, but was largely neglected in the contemporary context. He worked with the Dahn Hak system and modernized and perfected it. Then, in 1985, he opened the first Dahn Hak center in Seoul and began to train masters who could spread the teachings through the peninsula. Over the next decade he trained more than 500 masters and opened several hundred centers.

In 1994 Lee moved to the United States to bring Dahn Hak to the West. He opened the first center in Glendale, California, a Los Angeles suburb. Over the next five years he opened the first of the Canadian centers in Toronto, Ontario, and extended the work to Great Britain and South America. Soon after the opening of the first center in Seoul, he began to write about Dahn Hak, the various volumes becoming the textbooks for the movement. As the movement spreads, these are being translated into English, the first volume being the basic introduction to practice, Dahnhak: The Way to Perfect Health (1999). In 1997, he opened a retreat center in Sedona, Arizona, which currently serves as the international headquarters of the movement. Dahn Hak has an extensive Internet presence, including http://www.dahncenter.com/.

Sources:

Lee, Seung-Hwun. Brain Respiration. Seoul: Han Mun Hwa Publishers, 1998.

——. Dahnhak: The Way to Perfect Health. Seoul: Dahn Publications, 1999.

——. The Way to Light Up Your Divinity. Seoul: Dahn Publications, 1999.