"Zen and Fit Centre, is what Dahn Hak is called in the United Kingdom"

March 2002
By a former participant

I received a leaflet about yoga classes at the 'Zen and Fit Centre," which is what Dahn Hak is called in the United Kingdom of Great Britain. I went to an initial consultation where I was given a massage that was really painful. Then they said my kidneys were "hard" as well as my liver and intestines and that my energy was blocked in my chest. I suffer from depression and really just wanted to do some exercise to lift my mood.

The Dahn Hak staff then gave me some green tea and said it would cost £140.00 for 10 exercise classes and a four hour seminar. I am a student and responded that this was a lot of money for me to pay and asked if there was some plan to pay as you go, rather than a lump sum, which is quite unusual for exercise classes. They said, "No." The pressure was on and they pressed me to sign a form. There was not enough time to read the form, but never-the-less I ended up paying the deposit.

I really enjoyed the classes. Everyone was so friendly, including the masters. My life began to revolve around the classes. One classmate mentioned to me that she felt the center was taking over her life. I felt the same, but wasn't worried, after all they were so nice and I felt really good.

Then we had our "Ready for Awakening" seminar for four hours one Saturday morning. It was fun and they mentioned several times something about "our real purpose." But I thought this was about peacefulness and happiness, like their brochure said.

Recently I took another seminar through the centre called "Initial Awakening," which cost £190.00 and lasted two days (Saturday and Sunday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM).

On the first day we did a few beginning exercises and then the seminar began. But this time I didn't feel comfortable with what they were telling us and instead would have preferred to just do more exercises. We had a break for lunch and were told that we must sleep for an hour and a half. This seemed wrong, since we had paid a lot of money for a seminar, not to sleep.

The day dragged on and no one seemed happy about the seminar. I wanted to just go home, but knew the masters would pressure me to stay. So I stayed and participated in the group "healing massage," even though I had no experience giving massages. We were told to massage each other, and they just kept saying "press harder."

I felt pretty crappy when I came home. Something was not right and I didn't really want to go back the next day. I decided to do some research on the Internet, but could not get into the Dahn Hak website. Later after reviewing critical information though about the organization I decided not to go back.