Founder's Story - He Built an Empire but Nearly Worked Himself to Death | Ep 256 with LD Chen Head Coach of Oneness Institute of America and Europe

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

At 32, LD Chen was a successful CEO with over 1,000 employees—but also battling asthma, liver disease, chronic pain, anxiety, and a heart attack that nearly killed him. Nothing worked—until he discovered the ancient Taoist practice of Oneness. Now, LD is on a mission to bring this thousand-year-old healing tradition to one million people in the West. Key Discussion Points: The near-death moment that forced LD to rethink everything Why modern medicine and traditional mindfulness failed him The standing posture “genius design” that melts away stress and tension How Oneness dissolves anger and deepens compassion over time The science—and mystery—behind the practice’s power Why he refuses to dilute its authenticity for the Western market Takeaways: True transformation often comes from unexpected, ancient sources Healing the body can open doors to profound emotional and spiritual change Simplicity, presence, and consistency beat quick fixes every time Closing Thoughts:LD’s journey is proof that a thousand-year-old practice can be more relevant today than ever—especially in a world drowning in stress, distraction, and hustle culture. __________________________________________________________________________________ Get more leads and grow your business. Go to https://www.pipedrive.com/founders and get started with a 30 day free trial. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today's episode is sponsored by Pipe Drive, the number one CRM tool for small to medium businesses. I am excited to share more about them later in the episode. So, LD, I have to say one of the most fascinating topics that I like to talk to someone about is this mindfulness, but not just mindfulness, but ancient things that we still can use today. It could be thousands of years old, but it's still relevant. And I'm very curious from your perspectives, all of the things that you've been teaching, learning throughout the years, when it comes to mindfulness and how this can help humanity,

why is it so important that you want to talk about this? Why do we need it today? At 32, I was a successful CEO run a company with more than 1,000 employees, but I was suffering heart attack asthma back and liver. disease, anxiety but not leg numbness, next deafness, so more. In one night I collapsed and my wife, she has a medical degree. She said, LD, if you keep going, you will die very young. That was a wake-up call, actually.

So in the next over 10 years, I kept searching, find a solution, tried to, and I've with so many famous doctors, different medicine practice, exercise, so I mean, but nothing worked until one day I founded the book and yeah I mean it seems what you're saying is so simple it's like so in you know meditation it seems so simple but yet a lot of people get it wrong or they maybe they overcomplicate it what are you finding when it comes to oneness and the the substantial benefits that you've gotten from it what do people get wrong when they think about it and how can they implement One is actually it's from Chinese word like Datsun Li Chai. They share the same principle as meditation, non-doing, non-attaching, be present.

But the different, actually the practice is just very different. So meditation, more likely, you're sitting, close your eye and observe your breath. So wellness is standing, and the posture standing there is so genius. design. And they'll make every piece, every part of you, like your spine is losing and you smile, the neural cascade, just relax, hundreds of muscles, and all the spine, the super highway of the nervous system, just relax. And in this kind of effortous way, you're split up. And then your open eye, connect with nature, your ears open, listen. And if you practice outdoor, you can listen far away. And also,

the singing of the bird. So in this kind of effortist posture, you can completely 100% connect with nature and be one of the nature. And you don't find another posture can really do this kind of job. Like really, if you look at how we work every day, how we're sitting, how we sleep even. Only this posture can really free you and your mind and body can really relax completely. And then another genius is connect with nature. And when you look, the like it's like a 360 degree it just in this condition it's plus another kind of a relax and you can don't need your mind or your body to involve and it relax completely so in this kind of condition people just the neural super highway of the neural system are just free and clear

and also the chemical kind of neural sign, all the neurochemical just relax all the muscle. But it's one thing actually science cannot really explain how come there's so powerful energy and awareness can just build up. And there's one example. In 1980, there's one mother living in Georgia. And her son actually was being hit under the car and couldn't, like, release.

And herself, in her already 50, she lived up for several minutes waiting their neighbor to pull her son out. And later, she couldn't do that, repeat that again. Why, this is mother's love. So our people actually, we already observe this kind of energy inside of us. But our striving, every day the stress, attention just block the energy. So what one is, is a desire. designed so geniusly, just relax all like the block and make our power, our self, our being, and release.

And so this is kind of, I know most of like the practice, especially from the same route from the east, they try to do the same. But wellness has been applied especially for Kung Fu Master. They're standing longer hours and then they build up the powerful energy. This is, so one is a little bit different. The practice is very different. And then the energy plus awareness is so powerful. I think this is different for others.

I'm always fascinated by what the body can do when you allow and you clear the body and you get it to be able to do the things it needs to do. It's always incredible what it can do on its own, like you said, from the healing and everything. But we are in this hustle culture, you know, right? You had a thousand employees, right? We're this hustle culture. We're always trying to achieve high success so we can buy things and so we can do things. Yet we don't realize the amount of stress and pressure and the impacts that this is having on us.

So you're talking about, you know, spirit and love and compassion. I know you've mentioned these before. But how does someone begin in this journey because we are in this hustle. One of the biggest game changers I've seen for founders isn't another pitch deck, another tool, or even another investor. It's how you manage sales. And I'll be real, when we first started, we were getting leads, we were getting business, but the pipeline was so messy. Leads were falling through the cracks. We weren't following up.

We were losing tons of revenue and money and everything was all over the place. It was chaos. That's when we started using Pipe Drive, today's sponsor, and the number one CRM for small and medium businesses. But the thing I love most, pipe drive AI, it actually helps you work smarter, not harder. It gives you real-time deal recommendations, writes your emails with one-click prompts, and even summarizes entire email threads in seconds. For us, that met no more guessing, who to follow up with, or what we said last week. We focused on closing great clients and more deals.

If you're a founder or creator trying to scale your sales, you need this. Over 100,000 companies are already using it, and you can try it right now. Go to pipedrive.com slash founders for a 30-day free trial. No credit card, no commitment. Just head to pipe drive.com slash founders and see why I trust it every day to grow my business. So if we look at all the students in China for the institute, and they always have some incentive.

So maybe no one comes to a I want to life transformation now. So like my teacher, he, Grandmaster, he tried to find really best kung fu. For me, I tried to find the healing. So the big group of the student, they're from looking for healing, they suffer from a long time for chronic disease or mental health issue. And people, some, they are looking for, for example, the pro athlete, they try to find to enter the zone.

And exactly, they try to reset. and also the A-list actor, they try to ground themselves on the off stage. So this has been getting more and more popular. So right now, especially people living in this modern world, there's so many kind of life self-help, like a method. But those are more like a toolbox. So for example, if you feel anger, you can do this. If you feel your bad relation or you distress, use this tour.

One is different. One is more like a foundation. When you practice more and more, you're getting, so my teacher, my sensory grandma, so you mentioned, human is like muddy water. So when you practice, before practice, it's like so muddy. And when you practice more and then the water can be clearer and clearer and clearer. So when you practice more and more,

the foundation is getting stronger and stronger and stronger. At the beginning, maybe you still need some tool from one tool box. But when you practice more and more, this foundation is getting stronger and stronger and enough. That time, your anger just dissolve automatically, and your compassion just generate automatically. So this kind of, once you kind of practice more, it's like you're already standing in some foundation, and the anger, the noise, or stress will have very less, very less impact on you. You've talked about spherical awareness, and I'm interested. about what does this mean,

but what really happens within our mind and body when we do this? Modern people is so stress and attention inside. So for example, when we're training a student from the beginning, so the posture is much easier to teaching them. So but when we, after teaching them posture, they start to practice. You can see someone is still concerned,

my, this part is not relaxed, that part is not relaxed. and also this kind of like a 360 degree relax is kind of your eye watch but don't see and your ear listen but don't hear it's more like make you really calm and relax I actually did some comparison because recently I has so many things to do so but if I my mind drift away to compare with I keep this kind of 360 degree awareness, you can feel sudden different. And also, if you can feel like a smile and the relax. And also you can suddenly feel the breath is just dumb.

So there's so many small hidden, like a switch button in our body. And when you do that, you can feel. So personally, you can feel. or something changed immediately. But the long journey to find a life transformation is just step by step by step. And people can definitely follow the guidance like me, actually just step by step, didn't like set something like a really goal. And the people because of stress all the way,

so what do we do is kind of help you enjoy the practice. Instead of like I try to do something or force you do something, Once you enjoy that, for example, at the first month, you have to build up some richer, like some routine. But after that, every time you practice, you so enjoy like be one with nature. You don't want to stop. So in this kind of condition, you can be very natural to be practiced wellness. And also, when I start to try to introduce this to the West, I feel a little bit of stress. And I didn't want this let down.

So I talked with my teacher, Grandmaster, he said, remember wellness is everything. Just be wellness. This just make me relax, release. Yes, I'm doing wellness. And I introduce wellness. I do it in wellness. So just nothing is like a flow.

I studied a lot about Bruce Lee and the energy that he would use and, you know, be one, be one with the water. and just being able to leverage energy to create strength and power healing. I remember when he got injured and he healed himself and such. A lot of people struggle with meditation. I know a lot of people that are like, I want to meditate and they struggle with closing our eyes and shutting everything off can be very difficult because we're hooked, right? We're addicted to the phone and we're on it all the time and we can't disconnect.

this seems like an alternative, maybe not necessarily, we're comparing the two, but more of like, let's say myself, I struggle with meditation. Do you find that maybe oneness might be something easier for me if I'm already struggling with the other? So, Bruce Lee is my hero. Actually, I read many of his books. At the beginning, I thought he only just Kung Fu Master, but once I read his books, I understand he just embodied this kind of kind of be water my friend into every kind of his life, daily work, everything.

So what you mentioned, actually some of our students, they face some similar challenge. Actually, other practice, they help her to improve some part, but she feels like a paddle. So friend is, so the wellness is more like training your body. Instead, like, try to training some part, like mind or kind of other things. So training your body and enjoy is the thing, kind of enjoy, and let the body do the thing. It should be easier. But anyway, so for the wellness, it's simple. It's not a quick fix, but after you practice wellness, there is nothing you need to fix.

So for me, I have two kind of really suggest. One thing is kind of practice right. Second is commit. And practice right. So the student in China, we both provide online and in person. But the student report in-person training can just give them quick, very effective way. And I think right now the biggest problem, even there is so many practice. wellness is, I think, has been tested for so long, especially Comfort Master, they need the

reserve in several theory. And it's also based on Toys and Zen, but Confu Master combine and use its kind of, you have to see the result for the Confu Master. And one fight will decide you'll either die or survive for 100 years ago. So that's why Oneness is really time tested and also it's not a theory and if you practice right and if you commit then you will see the change well ld i'm i'm super inspired i mean i love what you're doing to help others and you're you know spreading this ability that helped you to other people to help them that's what i'm all about the impact i believe you have a book coming out can you share about the book and what else you have working on oh yeah so this is a book one is

the simple self-healing secret, you were never supposed to know. So actually, when I decided to introduce wellness to the West, my sense, great master, he very supportive, but he only gave me one sentence. Aldi, where this is so good, don't try to compromise to appear to the trend. And this is how I try to really bring the auto. authentic practice to the West. So right now, I know there's so many good practice from the East.

One thing is kind of very few people already know the authentic way. Second is kind of when they are being introduced to the West, they've been stripped away many authentic. So for me, I will make it to be the biggest movement, one of the biggest movement, to help people. still keep its authentic. Only the authentic way can really help people for life transformation and also the simplest way. Well, L.D. Chen, I'm super inspired. I can't wait. I hope everyone grabs this book, Oneness, because we are so stressed. It's really killing us in a sense, right? Like, we live longer, but I think we should be living much longer. However, we have so much damage, I'm sure coming from stress-related issues.

It's quite insane. I know I deal with it myself. So I hope that everyone checks out the book, LD, and I hope that we can do some oneness sessions together here in the near future. But thank you for joining us today and Founder's Story. Thank you, Daniel. So everyone can live longer, but most important, live meaningful life. Thank you very much.

One of the biggest game changers I've seen for Founders, isn't another pitch deck, another tool, or even another investor. It's how you manage sales. And I'll be real, when we first started, we were getting leads, we were getting business, but the pipeline was so messy. Leads were falling through the cracks. We weren't following up. We were losing tons of revenue and money and everything was all over the place.

It was chaos. That's when we started using Pipe Drive, today's sponsor, and the number one CRM for small and medium businesses. But the thing I love most, Pip Drive AI, it actually helps you work smarter, not harder. It gives you real-time deal recommendations, writes your emails with one-click prompts,

and even summarizes entire email threads in seconds. For us that met no more guessing who to follow up with or what we said last week. We focused on closing great clients and more deals. If you're a founder or creator trying to scale your sales, you need this. Over 100,000 companies are already using it, and you can try it right now.

Now, go to pipedrive.com slash founders for a 30-day free trial. No credit card, no commitment. Just head to pipe drive.com slash founders and see why I trust it every day to grow my business.