praise for journey toward enlightenment
Taoist Master Hyunmoon Kim’s Sundo: An Ancient Taoist Breathing Meditation — Journey toward Enlightenment (Poil Publishing, 2025) reads like the careful work of a teacher who refuses easy answers. Kim is both a lineage holder—sanctioned by the hermit Chung San—and a scholar who holds a Ph.D. (Psychology in Philosophy) from Saybrook University. That dual authority allows him to preserve the transmission’s integrity while translating practice into clear, teachable, evidence-informed steps.
The work is presented in two complementary volumes. The first situates Sundo within Taoist cosmology—outlining yin–yang, five-element theory, and the internal-alchemy frame that underpins practice—while the second turns decisively to method: progressive exercises, breathing forms, and the basic, mid, and advanced stages of Sundo practice. Dr. Kim’s instruction is exacting yet compassionate; he details what to do with body and breath and, equally important, why those actions support attention, emotion regulation, and sustained transformation. Safety-minded notes and clear explanations of movement principles recur throughout, making the book suitable for independent study without sacrificing responsible guidance.
Interleaved practitioner vignettes—concise, candid essays from students at varying levels—anchor the text in lived experience. These voices bridge theory and method, helping readers calibrate expectations from early effects through deeper psychological and somatic shifts. Notably, Kim refuses to mystify the tradition. He integrates developmental and transpersonal psychology to show, with persuasive logic, how breath, posture, and disciplined attention reshape cognition, mood, and interpersonal capacity. In doing so, he positions Sundo as a pragmatic resource for contemporary problems—fragmented identity, social isolation, stress-related illness, and erosion of purposeful practice—rather than as mere esoterica.
This is neither lightweight spiritualism nor arid scholarship; it is humane pedagogy. The book’s orderly progression, explicit safety cues, and dialogue between tradition and modern psychology make it useful for therapists, researchers, and committed practitioners alike. Rendering difficult classical terminology into accessible contemporary language is an added strength: instructors and recommenders can now point to concrete theoretical and practical reasons to try the practice.
As someone who has practiced and researched Sundo for nearly 25 years and who teaches human resource management and talent development at a U.S. business school, I can say this book has had a substantive impact on both my practice and my scholarship. In particular, the clear exposition of the principles behind the Tong Ki Beop (통기법) advanced stages, the practical cautions for safe practice, and the delineation of core changes and aims make it far easier to systematize training and to recommend the practice to others with confidence. Translating dense, classical phrasing into modern language also enables me—and other teachers—to present Sundo with solid theoretical and practical grounding.
Overall, this book honors its lineage while uniting modern reflection with practical guidance. For newcomers to Sundo, Dr. Kim’s clear, step-by-step instructions and explicit safety cues make a careful, reliable entry point; for experienced practitioners, the text deepens theoretical understanding and offers a useful framework for reviewing and refining one’s practice. Reading it naturally evokes the curiosity to “try it for myself,” yet always from a stance of precaution and seriousness rather than novelty. Generous in scope and measured in tone, the book will appeal beyond the Sundo community—to those engaged in meditation, yoga, or other mind–body practices, as well as to philosophers, psychologists, and educators—anyone seeking an authentic, well-grounded presentation of traditional practice adapted to contemporary needs. I confidently recommend it as a thoughtful, practicable guide to the core of authentic Sundo.
By Jeonghwan Choi, Ph.D, MBA, ME
Associate Professor
University of Maine, USA