Tai Chi Health Benefits
Tai chi is fantastically good for you. It is a holistic system, meaning that it benefits the mind and spirit as well as the physical body. Regular practice trains your powers of concentration, improves your mental awareness, and teaches you how to control stress.
The physical exercises combined with good breathing techniques help to improve your posture, flexibility, and balance.They also relax the muscles and nervous system, which in turn aids the functioning of the internal organs: practitioners claim that tai chi improves the digestion, lowers the blood pressure, and boosts the immune system.
Many of the benefits proceed from the slow, measured rhythm of tai chi. It is impossible to do tai chi in a frantic manner, and so it is impossible to remain stressed while you do it.
So many of the afflictions that plague Western society are due to the fact that we find it impossible to slow down and relax our minds and bodies. Tai chi is an orchestrated slowness, and that is its main strength. Simply watching a skilled practitioner doing tai chi can feel calming, and performing the movements brings a new sense of quietness to the mind and body.
As with acupuncture, nobody knows quite how tai chi works. Chi, the vital energy that all of us draw our strength from, is not detectable or quantifiable. We know that tai chi works because the people who do it attest to its benefits, some of which have now been backed up by scientific research. One US study found that tai chi improved breathing technique; another showed that it lowered blood pressure.
Of course, the benefits of tai chi come only if you do it regularly–all teachers stress the importance of establishing a daily practice. Getting into the habit of doing tai chi brings its own pleasure: it lets you earmark a short period each day in your body and mind—something that few of us remember to do in our daily lives.
After a tai chi practice, you do not feel tired as you do after practicing other forms of exercise. Instead, you feel refreshed and alert.This is because tai chi builds and conserves energy in the body instead of expending it.
Many practitioners use tai chi as their only form of exercise. But although tai chi benefits the entire body, it does not work the heart and lungs in quite the same way as aerobic exercise. For this reason, it is ideally combined with regular brisk exercise, such as walking.