As a Dahn Yoga teacher for the past two years to retired nuns at the Sisters of the Holy Family, the overflowing enthusiasm and love of Katherin Bledsoe of the Fremont, California Dahn Yoga Center makes it easy to see that she has only just begun her journey of service. “I really want to give back to the community, or, as one nun said, ‘Reach the unreachable!’” she told Dahn Yoga Life.

Her sentiment was echoed by others teaching Dahn Yoga classes for years at religious facilities. Emily Nathlich, a co-owner of the Woodinville, Washington Body + Brain Center and a teacher at St. John Vianney’s Catholic Church for the last two years, said, “It’s been a mutual opportunity to grow.” Marion Goddard from Bay Ridge, New York, has taught at Our Lady of Angels Catholic Church for five years and at St. John’s Episcopal Church for the last two years. Her classes at Lutheran Services, a healthcare facility offering residential and outpatient services, are filled with people on disability or suffering dementia.

While class participants feel the physical benefits of Dahn Yoga practice, especially greater mobility for senior participants, one trait is shared by groups from all over the country: their love of feeling energy. “Although the stretching is good, they love Jigam, feeling energy, receiving and sending LifeParticles, and meditation. They respond to the deeper principle part of class the most,” Emily said. Katherin agreed. “They feel energy well. They really like Jigam.” Marion added, “Energy dance and tai chi help them focus within and not speak.”

Each class also becomes a session of the soul. “Participants are happy to have time to connect deeply through the class. The number one thing they benefit from is their ability to connect to their divine spirit through the sense of energy,” Emily explained. “When you connect with them heart to heart, it all comes out easily,” said Katherin.

During the last ten minutes of class, the thirty or more nuns in her class wave good-bye to each other with a princess wave, say “I love you” in Korean to each other, and then hold hands and feel each other’s hearts. “There are no words to express it; it is like souls connecting during the class.” Katherin shares a hug with each person after class, which everyone tells her is not just a hug but a ‘hug from heaven.’

Katherin, Emily, Marion, and other Dahn Yoga outreach instructors around the country have shown us that, regardless of ethnicity or religion, when we open our hearts and feel our energy, we can connect with the inherent divinity within us all.

— Michela Mangiaracina