You might say that Jangsaeng Walking began as a “Lucky Break” I (Ilchi Lee) was horseback riding one day when the horse came to an abrupt stop, and I was catapulted off, sustaining serious injuries for which doctors prescribed a full month of bed rest.

Having always been extraordinarily active and healty, as well as having helped people heal their bodies for nearly thirty years, I was determined to get started healing my own. While I respected the doctor’s opinion and recommendation of bed rest, I began hatching a plan to get my body moving again the moment the doctor left the room. Though any movement was excruciatingly painful, I began by simply breathing deeply and making small movements. Within one day of the accident, I was able to take a few standing steps.

Over the next few months, as I worked to bring life back into my injured body, the Jangsaeng Walking method came to life as well.

Forced to slow down because of my injury, I was able to observe my body in different ways than I had before. As I walked, I noticed that my posture and body angles had changed over the years, from that of a confident, young man, walking upright, to that of an “old man,” upper body leaning backwards, head back, and body weight in my heels.

When I complained of these changes in my body to others, they simply replied, “Of course. You’re getting old.”

But this sort of defeatist attitude did not settle well with me. After all, it is in complete contradiction to everything I have taught my students over the past twenty-six years. “My body is not me, but mine,” I tell them to tell themselves. Somehow, though, I had let my body start to call the shorts. I had never told my body, “Okay, you are old now. It’s time to start walking like an old man.” Yet, somehow it happened anyway. Basically, it happened because I let it happen. It was time to put myself in the driver’s seat once again.

With this realization, I resolved not only to heal my body from the accident, but to reform the habits I had developed. I began paying close attention to the angles and posture of my body as I walked. I decided that I was one to decide how and when to grow old, and it didn’t have to happen in the ways people normally assume.

“In Full Bloom” by Ilchi Lee & Jessie Jones, PHD