Tai Chi For Health (part 1 of 2)

Tai Chi health benefits are a bit of a mystery to most people in the Western world who have not been exposed to Tai Chi. Also,Tai Chi health benefits have been mysticised (sp) quite a bit as a result. Tai Chi health benefits include benefits to the mind, body and spirit.

Tai Chi health benefits for the mind are an easier concept for most people to grasp and are understood a little better in our culture due to our modern day emphasis on stress relief. As a result when most people think of Tai Chi health benefits they think of the stress relief as Tai Chi has been widely used in America as a stress reliever. All you have to do is watch the slow, smooth, calm and peaceful movements or sit in on a class and you begin to relax and forget your troubles.

A simple way to begin to understand Tai Chi health benefits is to think of the negative effects of stress and the positive benefits of relieving that stress. There are many studies available now that explain the negative physiological effects of stress in detail. In a nutshell they include but are not limited to a greater propensity to get sick and a shortened life span as well as a reduced quality of life. Also, stressed people generally tend to sleep less (upping the likelihood of getting sick due to a compromised immune system) and eat more.

So, Tai Chi benefits health quite directly by helping the individual to relax and unwind. This means that Tai Chi health benefits include better protection against getting sick, better sleep, a longer life and a better quality of life. On the surface this sounds like a bit of a stretch but the math is quite simple. One of the Tai Chi health benefits is lower blood pressure. I say this because I have had many older students come back from a regular Drs visit (annual check-up) and tell me that the Dr told them that their blood pressure had improved dramatically from prior visits. This in itself lowers the risk of heart attack and stroke.

Often people doing research on Tai Chi look for measurable data to find out the secret to Tai Chi health benefits and there is measurable data to be found. However, I think this Tai Chi health benefit is simple. Generally, higher stress means higher blood pressure and less stress means lower blood pressure. There can be other causes and factors to consider but stress is known as a high killer of people for a reason.

Some Tai Chi health benefits are a direct result / effect of improved skeletal alignment and posture. Back pain is one of the number one untreated and undiagnosed medical problems that most people suffer from. The back pain can be and sometimes is due to an injury but more often than not it is simply due to many years of bad or / and improper posture. In Tai Chi the back is aligned very straight and practice involves very correct posture from the beginning to the end of the set.

If you do not have very correct skeletal alignment you are not receiving much of the physical aspect of Tai Chi health benefits. Unfortunately, in recent years I have worked with many serious students of Tai Chi who come to me after hitting a dead-end in their current practice of the art and who are unable to attain the higher level skills of Tai Chi and are not receiving much of the better known Tai Chi health benefits. The first thing I usually find I have to teach them is correct structural and spinal alignment.

There are a number of reasons for this lack of Tai Chi health benefits and overall Tai Chi ability. One of them is that unfortunately many people will not diligently work their Tai Chi with an attention to proper alignment and often do not understand what they are trying to accomplish with proper alignment and body structure.

To be continued...

Sigung Richard Clear began teaching in 1985 and has over 30 years of continuous study in the arts. He openly teaches the "secrets" that the vast majority of Tai Chi masters only show behind closed doors to a very select few. Visit www.ClearsTaiChi.com for more on Combat Tai Chi and Tai Chi for health.