T'ai Chi Benefits Our Health One of the best known areas of Chinese culture and heritage, ranking perhaps only after the Great Wall and Chinese cooking, is that of the exercise systems known as T'ai Chi! This is an ancient collection of exercises woven into various styles of smooth and continuous flowing movements.
My own experience has been with two styles, the Yang style which I learned in its "Peking Short Form" and the Yang style Long Form, and the more distilled forms associated with the Chinese teacher Chung Liang Al Huang and the Living Tao Foundation.
Origins The roots of T'ai Chi lie in the martial arts, emerging mainly from the province of Henan in the mid-nineteenth century.
As it emerged it softened into the various relaxed, smooth, graceful, styles prevalent around the globe today.
It was soon noticed that T'ai Chi benefits the participant when practised regularly and to have specific health building and therapeutic values.
These seem to arise from particular factors: they enhance and improve natural movements which extend and relax the body; as the body is gently and consciously controlled and the mind freed from distractions so a quiet and peaceful mind-set arises; co-ordination of the movements leads to a better awareness of how we co-ordinate our movements in daily living; the participant breathes naturally throughout the exercise with only occasional use of abdominal breathing.
Benefits Found in the West The British expert in Tai Chi, Dr.
Stewart McFarlane, and his associates elicit several major areas in which these disciplines enhance health, including heart disease, diabetes, fibromyalgia, stress reduction, back pain, and insomnia.
These findings are based on research at a dozen or so university facilities mostly in North America and the Far East.
Benefits Found in the East These results accord with earlier findings published by the China Sport Editorial Board in 1980 in a medical assessment by Professor Qu Mianyu, (China Sports Series 1,"Simplified Taijiquan," Beijing 1980 63pp paperback, pp7ff.
) He found that such exercise helped to enhance many features of our daily health.
He observed that training the body and the mind together was good for certain nervous and mental ailments, increasing the efficiency of the cardiovascular, the respiratory, and metabolic systems along with the bone structure.
He also noted that regular elderly participants were helped with arthritis, and lowered their cholesterol levels.
This suggested that the aging process was being delayed.
The Professor regarded his findings, with suitable modesty, as preliminary and superficial However out of the explosion of T'ai Chi around the world in recent decades comes a general opinion that he is quite right.
My Conclusion Health services in much of the world, particularly in the West face the problems of both a stress filled business world and of an increasingly large elderly population.
Tai Chi would help to relief both areas greatly, as well as in others.
Note: I have used the commonest term "T'ai Chi.
" This is often spelled "T'ai Ji", or "Tai Ji" or Tai Chi.
The longer form "T'ai Chi Chuan" refers to the same discipline.
My own experience has been with two styles, the Yang style which I learned in its "Peking Short Form" and the Yang style Long Form, and the more distilled forms associated with the Chinese teacher Chung Liang Al Huang and the Living Tao Foundation.
Origins The roots of T'ai Chi lie in the martial arts, emerging mainly from the province of Henan in the mid-nineteenth century.
As it emerged it softened into the various relaxed, smooth, graceful, styles prevalent around the globe today.
It was soon noticed that T'ai Chi benefits the participant when practised regularly and to have specific health building and therapeutic values.
These seem to arise from particular factors: they enhance and improve natural movements which extend and relax the body; as the body is gently and consciously controlled and the mind freed from distractions so a quiet and peaceful mind-set arises; co-ordination of the movements leads to a better awareness of how we co-ordinate our movements in daily living; the participant breathes naturally throughout the exercise with only occasional use of abdominal breathing.
Benefits Found in the West The British expert in Tai Chi, Dr.
Stewart McFarlane, and his associates elicit several major areas in which these disciplines enhance health, including heart disease, diabetes, fibromyalgia, stress reduction, back pain, and insomnia.
These findings are based on research at a dozen or so university facilities mostly in North America and the Far East.
Benefits Found in the East These results accord with earlier findings published by the China Sport Editorial Board in 1980 in a medical assessment by Professor Qu Mianyu, (China Sports Series 1,"Simplified Taijiquan," Beijing 1980 63pp paperback, pp7ff.
) He found that such exercise helped to enhance many features of our daily health.
He observed that training the body and the mind together was good for certain nervous and mental ailments, increasing the efficiency of the cardiovascular, the respiratory, and metabolic systems along with the bone structure.
He also noted that regular elderly participants were helped with arthritis, and lowered their cholesterol levels.
This suggested that the aging process was being delayed.
The Professor regarded his findings, with suitable modesty, as preliminary and superficial However out of the explosion of T'ai Chi around the world in recent decades comes a general opinion that he is quite right.
My Conclusion Health services in much of the world, particularly in the West face the problems of both a stress filled business world and of an increasingly large elderly population.
Tai Chi would help to relief both areas greatly, as well as in others.
Note: I have used the commonest term "T'ai Chi.
" This is often spelled "T'ai Ji", or "Tai Ji" or Tai Chi.
The longer form "T'ai Chi Chuan" refers to the same discipline.