Tai Chi - Five Ways to Wellbeing

Tai Chi for Health and the Five Ways to Wellbeing.

Research on Tai Chi and Qigong appears to demonstrate the potential benefits these slow, meditative movements can offer adults and older adults looking to remain active into later life. Participants in our classes and at our workshops regularly report, anecdotally and via our evaluation forms, the benefits they feel after joining one of our classes.

We have found these benefits tend to fall in three themes or groups:

1. Functional Benefits
Being more active, improved balance, better coordination and mobility, feeling stronger, deep sense of relaxation, reduced stress, enjoying higher quality of sleep.

2. Emotional Benefits
Feeling more connected, more confident, sense of authenticity, more resilient, feeling of mastery, a sense of calm, humility, grace and ease, a willingness to take on other activies, a sense of Mindfulness throughout the day.

3. Social Benefits
Becoming more engaged in with others, within their community, as a volunteer, or expressing an interest in assisting or even leading a class, and becoming an accredited instructor too.

Image by Michael Hren

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Dr. Peter M. Wayne, at Harvard Medical School, talks about the benefits of Tai Chi as being cohesive and integrative. In his book, The Harvard Medical School Guide to Tai Chi, Dr. Wayne describes Tai Chi as having a number of active ingredients beyond the common therapeutic factors normally associated with public health programmes:

'Perhaps what makes Tai Chi so special is that this holistic, multicomponent exercise affects us at physical, psychological, social and philosophical levels. Its multilevel effects are especially important for complex chronic diseases that involve many systems throughout the body…' P. 29

Wayne Peter M. PhD. with Fuerst Mark L. The Harvard Medical School Guide to Tai Chi. Boston: Shambala, Harvard Health Publications; 2013.

We think the active ingredients described by Dr. Wayne fit within the evidence based model for wellbeing by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) called the Five Ways to Wellbeing.

The Five Ways offers people a simple way to take an active role in their health and wellbeing. They include:

Five Ways to Wellbeing

Image source: https://www.mentalhealth.org.nz/home/ways-to-wellbeing/five-ways-to-wellbeing-downloads/

Within our classes and workshops we see the Five Ways to Wellbeing in the following ways:

1. Connect – Joining one of our classes can prove a big step for some people. Our relaxed and warm atmosphere encourages people to form new friendships and develop informal social networks of support. 

2. Be Active – Tai Chi fits perfectly as rewarding activity that people enjoy and keep doing. Participants like to know that good evidence supports the reported benefits. 

3. Take Notice – We introduce people to a key Tai Chi principle called Jing, meaning mental serenity or mindfulness. Fostering a sense of Jing helps people listen to their bodies, listen to others, and take notice of the world around them. 

4. Keep Learning – We use a progressive teaching approach in all our classes and workshops. We offer people just the right amount of challenge to foster a sense of growing mastery as they continue to learn and practise their movement skills. 

5. Give – Within our classes we see people connect with others to offer support both within the class and in ways outside of the classroom too.

Whatever reason you have for joining one of our Tai Chi classes we introduce you to the principles and benefits from your very first class. The Tai Chi for Health programmes and Qigong we teach have many depths for you to explore.

Bring an open mind, a willingness to practise a little at home, and you will soon feel the benefits too.

Please do share this blog post with friends, family, and colleagues if you think they may like to find out more about our evidence based Tai Chi and Qigong programmes.

What Is Tai Chi?

What comes to mind when you first think about T‘ai Chi? You may think of Chinese people rising early in the morning to take part in slow, meditative movements to ease themselves into the day. T‘ai chi, often written tai chi, as we know it today has come on a long journey from its origins. Despite a number of theories to tai chi's origins no one theory has yet managed to pin down this elusive art.

 Outdoor Tai Chi Practise in Beijing's Temple of Heaven.

Image by Craig Nagy, Vancouver, Canada. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
Written in full we ought to say T‘ai Chi Ch‘uan which loosely translated into English means Supreme Ultimate Boxing or Source Fist. This meaning offers us a clue to tai chi's origins within the self-defense and martial arts of China. We would more commonly describe those fighting arts as Kung-Fu in the west.

Nowadays we can best describe tai chi as an art and an exercise. It appears from a growing body of research that regular practise of tai chi offers people some important health benefits. In particular, improved balance, flexibility, fitness, strength, lowering blood pressure, general heart health, mental health and symptoms associated with stroke, fibromyalgia, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.

Tai chi emphasises the integration of mind with body. This integration marks tai chi as a unique form of exercise along with another associated exercise practice from China referred to as Qigong (chee gung), older still, known as Daoyin, meaning to guide and pull. To get a feel for this integration you practise tai chi movements, or forms, slowly as one smooth flowing movement with a deliberate focus on those movements.

Daoyin tu - chart for leading and guiding people in exercise.

This image from Wellcome Images, a website operated by Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom. Refer to Wellcome blog post (archive). Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

‘This is a reconstruction of a 'Guiding and Pulling Chart' excavated from the Mawangdui Tomb 3 (sealed in 168BC) in the former kingdom of Changsha. The original is in the Hunan Provincial Museum, Changsha, China.’

Tai chi truly represents a whole body form of exercise as you coordinate your hands and arms with the controlled transfer of your weight from one stance to another. In other words to perform tai chi well from start to finish you must engage all parts of the body. The hands, arms, legs and feet all move in circular and spiral patterns with turns of the torso via the waist, neck and head. 

A saying associated with the practise of tai chi – 

“ When the wind blows the whole tree moves

.

Regular practise of a tai chi form can strengthen and mobilize the joints and muscles, improve physical fitness and induce a deep sense of mental relaxation. The slow and low-impact nature of tai chi make it ideal for people recovering from illness or injury and those living with chronic health conditions.

Not that people who live with long term health conditions should only practise tai chi for health. In China, fit and healthy people practise tai chi to cultivate and sustain their health. Anyone can benefit from a little tai chi practise each day.

People performing Tai Chi Chuan at the Temple of Heaven Park in Beijing, China.

Image by © BrokenSphere / Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Our tai chi programmes differs from the traditional approach to learning tai chi where you had learn and perfect many complicated sequences of movements over many years. Some tai chi forms go on for well over a hundred moves with complex and difficult movements to perform. We encourage participants to enjoy the tai chi movements within a safe and pain free range of mobility. Participants can take a seat for some or even all of the session. A key message in our classes goes – If it hurts, stop doing it.

The Harvard Medical School's Osher Center for Integrative Medicine has found that people can enjoy all the health benefits of tai chi from very simple movement sequences derived from the traditional long form tai chi styles. For example the first part of our Tai Chi Foundations programme takes no longer than three to four minutes to complete.

So, there you go, a snap shot description of tai chi. Tai chi has much more to offer though. Through regular practise you begin to realise the depth of meaning within the principles that underpin tai chi. The movements truly do embody a cultural and philosophical way. 

If that has peaked your interest then please do get in touch. If you think someone you know, a member of your family or a close friend might benefit from tai chi please do share this page.

We look forward to seeing you.

Helen & Phil

Tai Chi For An Active Lifestyle

Tai Chi gets a recommendation from the UK's four Chief Medical Officers as an activity that offers tremendous benefits to adults.

Physical Activity for Adults

As a non-jarring exercise, tai chi can prove a super way to enjoying an active lifestyle, making friends and learning new skills.

You can view the accompanying factsheet for adults and for older adults to find out more interesting information on keeping active. You may also like to view a very useful longer form document called Start Active, Stay Active, for more detailed information.