As autumn deepens, there is someone who one day suddenly ventured deep into the Songnisan mountains, built a mud house and created a meditation playground. After sensing a moment when her own direction became clear amid the many paths of life, she followed it into the mountains. Sound healer and meditation teacher Lee Kyung-mi is the person behind it. On 10 October, as the autumn colours spread through Songnisan National Park, a special evening bringing art and meditation together will unfold at the mud house she built.
Travelling light: the road Lee Kyung-mi has taken
Lee Kyung-mi calls herself ‘travelling light’. In her 20s, drawn by a sense of frustration without knowing what she was looking for, she travelled around many places at home and abroad. Then, through a chance encounter with gypsies in Australia, she discovered the peace of a life attuned to nature, full of vital energy, and its purity. That meeting changed her life. After giving birth to her son in 2016, she brought her life in Indonesia to an end and returned to Boeun, North Chungcheong province, where her parents lived. This year marks her 10th year of rural life. In nature, she has continued her everyday practice, learning through experience the joy of meditating and of living in harmony with the flow of the universe.
Lee Kyung-mi is a sound healer, a healing community dance teacher and a meditation teacher with the Korean Association of Meditation Teachers. This year, she is preparing to open the place where she has practised for the past decade as the Firefly Mud House Meditation Playground. In this space, known as Sarangbang or Dajeongdabang, she is organising and sharing the experiences and practices she has gathered through her life there, shaping them into programmes such as ‘Time to treat myself’ and ‘A day when no one takes care of anyone else’ for mothers. Sarangbang Sound Healing Concert 〈Sound, an invitation beyond〉 is the first stage she will present this autumn on that journey.
Music heard through the body: Shin Eun-kyung’s storytelling piano
Shin Eun-kyung, who will perform that day, is the pianist behind the storytelling piano concert series 〈Telling Stories Through Sound〉, which she has presented since 2018. The concerts set aside the pressure of needing to know classical music to enjoy it, using short stories between the pieces to encourage audiences to receive the music through their bodily senses rather than simply understand it. In an earlier interview with Healing News, Shin said she wanted to explore with audiences how we should look at and accept our own bodies through music learned and remembered physically. The ‘Body’ programme being performed that day also appeared at JCC Arts Centre in February and The Sharp Gallery in May. Leaving behind the city concert hall, it will be reborn through piano melodies at a mud house on the slopes of Songnisan.
Sound and movement filled together
The concert runs from 3pm to 6pm, across two stages. Part one, ‘A time for meeting and resonance’, begins with poetry reading followed by singing-bowl playing to awaken body and mind, before Shin Eun-kyung takes to the piano. Part two, ‘A time for harmony and celebration’, opens with binari, a prayer for everyone’s peace. A binari team including Lee Hwan-soo, who studied Korean traditional music education at the Graduate School of Education in Jinju and served as chairman of the Daejeon branch of the Korean Traditional Music Association, will perform. Dohmyeong Shin Myeong-seop, who studied theology before encountering the teachings of Ramana Maharshi and the Pure Land Association and now continues a vocal offering at Daewon Jeongsa, will soothe hearts with song. The programme also includes movement meditation and dance to bring the day to a close. The sound of burning firewood, mountain birdsong and the crimson sunset will fill the spaces in between.
Sarangbang: a place where you need do nothing
Lee Kyung-mi’s Sarangbang is also open in everyday life. The experience begins with sharing a warm cup of tea in the thatched pavilion, continues with releasing tension in body and mind to the resonance of singing bowls in the heated-floor room, and ends with writing a few lines alongside the sunset to record the feelings of the day. It is different from time spent escaping into a smartphone or simply enduring and letting the hours pass. Here, visitors are not the people preparing and taking care of everything; they become the owners of time they can fully enjoy. Those who wish can stay overnight in the mud house just as they are.
Event details
Sarangbang Sound Healing Concert 〈Sound, an invitation beyond〉 will take place from 3pm to 6pm on Saturday 10 October at Doljip and its garden on the slopes of Songnisan, 111 Nuchong 3-gil, Boeun-eup, Boeun-gun, North Chungcheong province. Places are limited to the first 30 applicants, and the participation fee is 30,000 won. Applications are accepted by phone and text message (Lee Kyung-mi: 010-3337-2397). The event is being held with the Korean Community Dance Association, Choi Bo-gyeol’s Dance School and Healing News. Time to treat yourself awaits at the Sarangbang mud house on the slopes of Songnisan.