TIME magazine has called Tai Chi the “Perfect Exercise.” What’s the big deal, why is it so different from typical exercise and who can benefit from practicing tai chi?

Most of the estimated seven million Americans who practice the ancient art of tai chi do so to increase their health, not for self-defense.

Western medical research studies confirm what hundreds of millions of tai chi practitioners have experienced themselves: tai chi improves health, reduces stress, and mitigates the effects of aging. This summer I will be teaching a Wu Style Tai Chi Short Form Instructor Training in England but lets find out what the research says.

Tai Chi – Exercise for Your Health

Tai chi is often called the ‘elixir of life’ because it helps the body and mind to regain youthfulness and life-affirming vigor. These modern times of speed, stress and force call for an antidote, one that supports you and gives you the movement and exercise you need to be healthy and happy.

Common western exercise does the opposite, it revs you up, and leaves you feeling more stressed and drained, and can lead to injury.  Tai chi teaches you to ‘rev down’.

Conventional exercise is hyper-focused on superficial definitions of health, whereas the graceful movements of tai chi have within them a powerful self-healing practice improving you from the inside out.

People suffering from disabilities, arthritis, chronic pain, unsteady balance and impaired lung function that preclude strenuous exercise love tai chi’s gentle movements. According to the Mayo Clinic, tai chi is generally safe for people of all ages and fitness levels.

Tai chi is also perfect for people who are clinically obese or challenged by other physical impediments and do not want to feel embarrassed in exercise classes filled with fit and beautiful bodies.

Chi is Life-Force Energy

Tai chi is based on a 3,000-year-old system that works with the chi or life-force energy within your body.

When chi is flowing freely, in a balanced manner throughout the body, you will have good health. If your chi becomes blocked, stagnant or unbalanced in some manner, tension, discomfort and illness will follow.

This principle is the foundation of Chinese medicine, which includes acupuncture. Tai chi, like acupuncture, balances chi within your body. However, you can easily do it for yourself anytime you wish.

Western Health Studies Confirm Tai Chi Has Many Beneficial Health Effects

Researchers from Tufts Medical Center in Boston, MA, found 47 formal studies presenting the beneficial health effects of tai chi. Some studies showed that tai chi improved functioning in the heart, blood vessels and lungs among healthy people as well as those with heart conditions, including patients who have had coronary artery bypass surgery.

Other studies showed that tai chi helped reduce pain, stress, anxiety while improving memory, concentration and digestion. Still others demonstrated that tai chi helped seniors improve balance and functioning for normal daily activities.

Relief from Arthritis

“Oh, my aching joints,” is a common sigh among arthritis sufferers. By 2020, an estimated 60 million Americans will be afflicted by arthritis and more than 11 million disabled. But statistics do little to mitigate the large amount of suffering.

Two significant medical studies have been undertaken: one in the United States, one in Australia, showing that practicing tai chi provides relief from arthritis. These studies were widely publicized by the Arthritis Foundation of Australia, which now officially recommends tai chi as an effective alternative therapy.

Tai chi’s gentle movements support joint heath by increasing the range of motion and flexibility of joints, improving the flow of fluid inside joints and strengthening the muscles surrounding arthritic joints.

Help for Cancer Patients

Two studies help confirm what tai chi practitioners have already experienced: tai chi boosts their immune systems and helps them resist illness. And, if an illness like cancer does strike, tai chi helps mitigate the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation while calming fear and anxiety.

Interestingly, a study conducted by the University of California, Los Angeles found that people who practiced tai chi for 45 minutes a day experienced up to a 50 percent increase in their immune system memory T-cells, boosting immunity to many diseases, including cancer. The study also found that tai chi helped reduce the chronic stress and anxiety that accompanies cancer.

Tai Chi Lowers Blood Pressure

A Western clinical study, done by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD, showed that tai chi lowers blood pressure in seniors.

The study conclusively demonstrated that tai chi’s gentle movements were as effective in significantly lowering blood pressure as the higher intensity activity of aerobic exercise.

Tai Chi Improves Balance and Reduces Falls in the Elderly

A leading cause of death and disability in the elderly is falling down. Two studies initiated by the National Institute of Health (NIH) showed that tai chi improves balance, decreases the risk of falls and dramatically decreases the fear of falling.

In addition, seniors participating in the study improved their grip strength, had better range of motion and an easier time falling asleep.

Tai Chi Busts Stress

The least studied beneficial health effect of tai chi is its stress busting power. The ability to let go and relax in all ways-physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually, is at the philosophical center of all tai chi and other chi practices. Relaxation allows health and happiness to flourish; tension diminishes this possibility.

One formal study shows that the practice of tai chi produced less tension, depression, anger, fatigue, confusion and anxiety. Test subjects felt more vigorous, and in general, had less total mood disturbance.

Tai Chi to Feel Truly Alive

After my 20+ years training in energy arts in the Orient and teaching tai chi, qigong (chi gung) and meditation to tens of thousands of Westerners, I know first-hand that these are important and powerful health practices.

Tai chi helps people take control and responsibility for their health so that life is a joy to live and not a burden to carry into old age.

Tai chi has helped heal my own body and calms down my mind from the stresses of daily living. Tai chi disposes me to look for ways to positively engage with life.

Most importantly, tai chi has given me the ability to realize the great human potential in myself and to have genuine compassion for others. It has the ability to do the same for you. Now how ‘bout some practice?!

Click here to learn more about the Wu Style Short Form Instructor Training in July of 2011.

Bruce

Bruce Frantzis teaching tai chi on the Beach

Tai Chi is considered a low impact exercise, but there are many other low impact exercises such as aerobics, many forms of dancing and walking. So what exactly is the advantage of practicing tai chi over other low impact exercises?

What is the difference between normal, low impact exercises and tai chi? Is tai chi that much better?

Tai Chi – The King of Low Impact Exercises

There are a lot of articles about the benefits of tai chi,but in this post I want consider the main differences of tai chi compared to other low impact exercises. You have a choice on what you can practice so it is helpful to know how it is working and why you may want to practice tai chi rather than do something like take a walk.

Lets look at how tai chi compares:

Tai Chi Brings You Back Into Your Body

The first thing is that with normal, low impact exercises they’re often still very physical. Most low impact exercise have a tendency to work your muscles. Unlike tai chi they also tend to be done faster. The nature of movements in tai chi require the practitioner to operate in slow motion, and slow motion has a tendency to loosen up the body in the way that normal, low impact exercises don’t.

An adjunct to this is because of the degree of attention and concentration required to do tai chi, you must drop your mind into your body. This is not necessary the case with other low impact exercises such as walking where you can walk and at the same time daydream being completely in your head.

Tai chi is a exercise that helps bring you back in your body – something that is needed in our fast paced western world where many people are disconnected from their body.

Tai Chi Gets Your Joints Moving

A second important point is that while you are doing the movements of Tai Chi, the constant shifting weight back and forth between the legs, the constant change in the position, the incredibly wide range of arm movements get every joint in the body to fully articulate.  Most low impact, aerobic exercises do not do that. That’s a special focus of tai chi.

Tai Chi Increases Circulation

A important third point is the way in which Tai Chi movements are done with very even slow motion rhythm. This boosts circulation in a way that goes deep to work with the small, tiny, blood vessels inside the body that most slow, low impact aerobics will do.

Tai Chi Develops Balance

Above and beyond this, doing Tai Chi has a way of developing balance (both inner and outer) because of the way you shift your weight from your forward leg to your back leg and all sorts of different positions and pick one foot off the floor constantly. It develops balance better than the vast majority of low impact exercises do.

For athletes developing better balance and body awareness result in higher performance. On the other spectrum, for seniors and those who are aging, any fall or bone break beyond the initial pain and medical costs, will seriously decrease the mobility and possibly result in chronic pain and a lower quality of life.

Developing better balance is a big thing that can not be overlooked and Tai Chi does it just about as good a job at this than anything I have encountered.

Tai Chi Principles are Unique

Tai chi simply does not follow the same physical principals that normal, low impact exercises do. Tai chi has its own unique principles that are significantly different from the way the western mind thinks about exercise.

I think it’s the slow motion nature of it, I think it’s the circular motion of it and  I think it’s the nature of the way that it makes the body move in such a wide variety of positions and postures and articulations of your arms and your legs.

It is a combination of all these things together that make the benefits of tai chi so compelling and useful.

Is Great the Enemy of Your Good?

Lastly one of the statements that I have made is that Tai Chi has great benefits for people even when it is practiced poorly. After seeing many people do tai chi all I can say is that in general doing it even poorly is better than not doing it.

Now the great thing about tai chi is that just by doing it, no matter how bad or good you get results. This is an important point because I live in America and there is a great desire her to do things only if you can be great – but this reasoning just does not hold for tai chi. My mantra when I encounter this attitude is “Don’t let the great be the enemy of the good.”

So rather than only do it if you can do it perfectly, just do it and understand you are working toward great. You most likely will not reach greatness after taking a week course for a few months or even by attending an intensive seminar. Realistically it takes years and many hours of regular practice to bring any movement form to its full potential. This is also the carrot or the greatness that makes tai chi so appealing, because there is always another level to climb and always ways to deepen your practice.

I hope this post has been useful for you, I hope it encourages you to practice or learn tai chi. Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment below…I read all comments although often just respond to a few…