Friday, August 30, 2013

[News Article] Brain Education in El Salvador (English Translation)


Korean-Meditation Heals Students Made Outlaws by Civil War


The school in the video shown by Gloria Mueller (47) – principal of Joaquin Rodezno School in San Salvador, capital of El Salvador – resembled a reformatory with a riot progress. The walls of the school building were covered in vulgar graffiti drawn by gang-affiliated students. Lower-grade students tremble because of upper-grade students, who are insensitive to violence, and police are regularly dispatched to the school. Disheartened by students high on marijuana, teachers go through the motions of holding class as they try not to offend their students. The scenes were filmed two years before by publicly owned media in El Salvador.

As Brain Education programs were introduced to the school in 2012 with the support of the Korean Ministry of Education, however, the situation changed 180 degrees. Visiting Korea to announce the results of Korean educational aid, Principal Mueller said, "In El Salvador, the economy and public security have collapsed due to a long civil war, and, having lost their dreams, children are immersed in drugs or join gangs, but we have seen new hope thanks to help from Korea."

"Korea's Brain Education is changing the entire field of education in El Salvador, as well as Joaquin Rodezno students," said Principal Gloria Mueller, whom we met near Gwanghwamun in Seoul on August 21. Just one or two years ago, police would frequently arrest students doing drugs. Things started to change with the introduction of Brain Education.

The Brain Education program introduced to El Salvador was created by the Brain Education Multidisciplinary Research Center (Director Tae-min Ha) of the Global Cyber University, under the sponsorship of the Korean Ministry of Education. It is a new educational method centered on developing the character and learning ability of students. Beginning last year, Joaquin Rodezno students have received Brain Education classes once per week, which included 45 minutes of meditation, Dahnjon breathing, and energy exercises. Mueller, along with a Brain Education instructor from Korea, concentrated on empowering children to control their own emotions and recover a "can-do" feeling of confidence. "After doing 10 minutes of brain exercises, like stretching, the children share fun stories with a partner. They have a time in which they try to imagine themselves flying toward their dreams, and they train to heal themselves as they objectify and observe themselves through what is called 'metacognition.'"

Violence and drugs disappeared from Joaquin Rodezno after Brain Education was introduced. Once in last place nationwide with an average score of 3.2 (on a 10-point scale) on El Salvador's 2011 Assessment of Scholastic Achievement, the school this year was ranked number one with a score of 9.0. Even it's literature, science, and social sciences scores, which had been 3 to 4 points, rose to 7 to 8 points.

There was a great deal of resistance at first, Mueller says, since the program involved things like meditation and energy exercises, which are unfamiliar in Latin American culture. Now, teachers from all over El Salvador are coming to Joaquin Rodezno School to learn Korean Brain Education.

The El Salvadoran Ministry of Education was also greatly inspired. El Salvador's UN delegation hadn't expected that much even after learning of the results of Brain Education in Korea at the International Brain Education Seminar held at UN headquarters in 2010. On seeing the results of the programs at Joaquin Rodezno, the El Salvadoran Ministry of Education decided to expand the Korean Brain Education program to 177 schools nationwide. It is planned to later introduce the programs to all national schools (over 1800).

"A cocaine addict, Jose (not his real name, 17) had been kicked out of his own home. He had come to school only to get drugs. Through Brain Education, he has now kicked his drug habit and is preparing to transition to a higher grade school. Korea's Brain Education has positively transformed children who had once lost all hope in life."

[News Article] Brain Education in El Salvador


Here is the original article in Korean. I will also upload English translation of this article.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Depression: The Starting Point


The most serious mental health issue faced by today’s society is depression. The more developed a country is, the more serious its mental health issues are; in the case of the United States, approximately 18.8 million American adults, or about 9.5 percent of the population age 18 and older in a given year have a depressive disorder.
Many theories explain this epidemic of depression ranging from societal systems to chemical reactions to the polluted environment. Rather than using our energy to place blame, we must accept our starting point and find an honest, workable solution. To find the answer we must look inside of the brain. Neuroscientific research has shown that human happiness depends on the hormones in the brain. If you have suffered from depression, how you utilize your brain is important in generating the levels of happiness that will improve the experience of your life. The responsibility to improve the quality of your life and cure depression does not lie with the medical associations, the government, or the school systems—at this point, it is up to you. It is up to you to take back your brain!
In the 21st century, the brain is no longer under the exclusive domain of neuroscientists or medical professionals. Brain utilization has to become common sense that anyone with a brain needs to know. Anyone with a brain is capable of creating health, happiness, and peace on their own. There must come an era in which enlightenment becomes the norm and conscience becomes common sense.

Become a Brain-gineer
In order to restore mental health, you must utilize your brain with the skill of an engineer. If you become overwhelmed easily and tend to react negatively to the situations in your daily life, you must examine your brain and figure out how it works. You don’t need any special equipment to monitor your brain’s activity; all you have to do is pay attention to the thoughts and emotions that your brain produces. Like a computer, your brain has an operating system. I call this the BOS (Brain Operating System). You can think of your brain as the hardware, and your thoughts, beliefs, and preconceptions as the software running the experience of your daily life.

There are three principles of the BOS that will help you get started with effective brain management:

1. Wake up and get it together. 
What do I mean by waking up? Pay attention to how you move through the situations in your life. Discover what makes you unique and use those talents to improve your environment, wherever that may be. We are all different, and there is no right answer. You have something unique to offer the world. Find it and share it generously, leaving every situation a little better than you found it.

2. If you choose it, it will come true.
If you choose something that inspires you and put your efforts toward it, you will rediscover your strength, diligence, and creativity by working toward that purpose. It can be anything: a good cause, a grand dream, a vision that you have had for your life but haven’t worked toward achieving yet. Choose it, work toward it, learn from all of the ups and downs, and enjoy building your dream brick by brick. Don’t expect someone else to create your dream for you. It is up to you to make each brick, with love, and lay each brick intentionally. Before you know it, you will have created something tangible in the world that you can be proud of!

3. Generate good information to make a good brain. 
When you produce good information, positive information, you become a good person with a good brain. People will like to be around you, but more importantly, you will like to be around yourself!
You must choose to let go of the negative information inside of your brain. What’s especially important is to release disparaging information about yourself. When you release the negative information from your brain, your brain is recalibrated to its zero point and your perception is not skewed in any particular direction.
When your brain is in a state of zero, in which it has recovered its balance, the fresh positive information that you choose can be integrated into your brain through a new dream and vision. After you reinforce that positive information with hard work and just a little progress you will have the confidence to start living as the true master of your brain, and the owner of your life. You can recover mental health through using your brain to enhance your personal life, but it’s also important to use your expertise to establish systems and effort at societal and governmental levels to sustain and promote mental health for everyone.
Just as it’s natural for a person to have self-respect, it is also healthy for the citizens of a nation to take an interest in its collective health. A person’s identity comes from their sense of humanity, but it also comes from their identification with their family, community, and country. For the people of this nation to recover their spirit, for the people of this nation to take back their brain, they need to recover a sense of community within their country. If each person resolves to take care of themselves as well as those around them—if everyone recovers that sense of conscience, you can imagine how quickly the state of our world will change.`

Hellow! There!

Hello there! How have you been?
It’s been a while since the last blog. 

From now on, I would like to share some information that I found very helpful and that you should know regarding your physical and mental health. I hope these upcoming articles and testimonials help you achieve your complete wellness. Stay Tuned!



                                                                                                   - Healthy Body, Peaceful Mind and Happy Heart