You may have heard the word “Tao” before, but have you wondered what it really is? It may sound esoteric or like it’s the name of a religion, but Tao is something more fundamental that we interact with all the time. Tao, in essence, is life and the natural laws by which life operates.

It’s useful to know those laws, because when you do, you can abide by them. When you follow the laws of nature, your life can go more smoothly. Not following the laws of nature is like swimming against the current of a river—you have to fight harder and use more strength and energy to get where you want to go.

Living by these natural laws, on the other hand, smooths the way to discovering your own nature, independent of your past, preconceptions, sociocultural identity, or other aspects of your ego. And doing this opens the way for your innate creative abilities to come to fruition. These abilities are a natural capacity of the human brain, but they may be overridden by your own doubts and fears.

A Guide to the Tao

Change Your Energy founder Ilchi Lee’s book, Living Tao: Timeless Principles for Everyday Enlightenment provides an in-depth look at Tao. Rather than being a list of laws to memorize, it shows you, as the title suggests, how to live according to Tao. Ilchi Lee reveals how to understand and apply Tao to your life using the practices of a Korean Tao tradition called Sundo and the practices he’s developed over forty years of meditation and teaching self-development through body, mind, and energy.

Ilchi Lee emphasizes in this book that Tao is not a theory you can understand through intellectual knowledge. Tao needs to be felt and experienced. The exercises in Living Tao help you feel the Tao. Then by putting this feeling to work in your life, you are able to come to your own realizations and open your eyes to the Tao working in every aspect of not only your own life, but life in general.

A Journey of 12 Steps

Living Tao is organized into 12 lessons, which you can think of as stations on a journey to self-realization through the Tao. These stations make you reflect on your birth, death, and everything in between. While your journey through the book may not take long, the journey through these 12 stations can be repeated again and again as you go through your life journey, and the book is always available for guidance. As your understanding and experience grows, what you get out of Living Tao deepens and expands at the same time.

Take One Step at a Time

While Living Tao seems like a serious book for serious spiritual seekers, even those who feel they are too busy trying to make ends meet and take care of their family can use it to make their lives a little easier. As you take in each lesson, or even a little piece of a lesson, you get a little more insight into how to understand your irritable teenager, how to be more creative at work, and how to focus on what’s really important so that you have time for everything you need to do. You learn exercises to stay energized during the day and to get enough good sleep at night. And you learn how to resolve your own feelings of frustration or anger productively.

You can learn these important life skills because Tao is the basis of everything. Within the study of Tao are the fundamentals of living life, because Tao is life. When you live according to the laws of nature, because you, yourself, are nature, everything in life flows better for yourself and those around you. Living Tao helps you remove whatever is holding you back from being the fullest expression of your most vibrant self.

About the Author

Ilchi Lee is a New York Times bestselling author of over 40 books and an educator who helps people use the full potential of the brain. He developed Brain Education, a mind-body training method that helps each person create their own health, happiness, and peace, of which his Body & Brain Yoga and Tai Chi is a part. Ilchi Lee is also a dedicated advocate for a peaceful, sustainable world who founded the International Brain Education Association (IBREA), a non-profit with special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (UN ECOSOC). He also founded and presides over the Benjamin School for Character Education for high school students, the undergraduate Global Cyber University, and the graduate University of Brain Education. Change Your Energy was also originated by Ilchi Lee.

You can get your own copy of Living Tao here in the Change Your Energy Shop.