The Tai Chi’s effect on the organism

(Health preservation end regeneration)

The health preservative and regenerative properties of the Tai Chi are legendary. There are many proven story known widely, like the story of Yang Lu-Chan who is a recognized Tai Chi master.

Yang Lu-Chan had a sickly childhood and it hasn’t changed even when he became a young adult, more likely his state deteriorated by then. Among others he suffered of pulmonary disease, which has been endemic in China, and he has shown the early symptoms of scorbut because of the improper nutrition. One of his friends has brought Chen Changxing to his attention, who was a well known Tai Chi Chuan master. Yang began to learn from him and in a few years his symptoms disappeared and he felt completely healthy.

When however he stopped practicing, after a year he coughed blood again, and only the restart of the practice helped his condition.

“That’s when I understood that my life purpose (karma) is to practice Tai Chi Chuan adt to theach it to others.” he once said.

From that time on Yang Luchan practiced all trough his life, and lived in a great health. He died in 1872, 73 years old which was quite a beautiful age considering the life expectancy of an average Chinese people of that time.

How is the Tai Chi affecting us?

The Tai Chi is a complex method, which can be thought as a breathing therapy partially. The eastern breathing methods involve the conscious stimulation and relaxation of the neural-fibers and the muscles and the mind controlled breathing. The significance of this is, when the mind and a body is balanced it will be more resistant to the diseases, or rather if the person is already ill, the mental strength helps to heal. While practicing Tai Chi we not only exercise the body, we balancing our mind too, and we learn to evaluate the things which are happening to and around us more exactly and not to under or overrate them.

Breathing:

If we observe the connection between our breathing and our momentary state of mind we can see they are connected continually. If we watching an infant we can see before he began to cry his breathing frequency will rise, but when he well fed and content his breathing is calm and even. People who just become parents for the first time sometimes worried that their babies not breathing continuously. Of course most of the time this is just the surface.

Our stat of mind is effecting our breathing too naturally. Just think about the instinctive habit when in a pressing situation – for example before an exam – we take deep breaths to calm and collect ourselves. This is an instinctive reaction which is used by those whom practicing Tai Chi continually. At first the proper breathing must be monitored, later it will become fully automatic. If we breathing slowly, deeply and even, then our system will get enough oxygen and this will benefit our mind greatly.

Other significant property of the Tai Chi breathing that when practiced in the correct way it massage the internal organs, helping them to function perfectly. This is one of the reasons why practicing Tai Chi can improve the health of patients suffering from heart-, stomach-, digestion- diseases or diabetes and high blood pressure.
 

Circulation:

In the human body we can differentiate between three circulation. First is the blood which circulate in the blood vessels, the lymph circulation in the lymph nodes and the energy (Chi) circulation in the energy lines (meridians).

One of the fundamental things in the Tai Chi that the practitioner continuously moving his or her center of gravity from one leg to the other, periodically tensing and relaxing the muscles in the legs, pumping the blood and the lymph in the vessels and lymph nodes. The vessels are working like little hears, when the muscles relax they replete with blood, when they got compressed my the tensing muscles they push the blood forward. This periodical pressure change helps to keep the vessels clean and relives the heart while keeping their flexibility.

While practicing Tai Chi we transforming the energy inside, we assimilate energy form our surrounding, we speed the circulation up and harmonize the Yin and Yang energies. With this we take down the energy blocks in our system and revitalize the parts which are lacking energy.

Joints:

While practicing Tai Chi we almost constantly changing the strain on our legs and our joints. Because it’s happening slowly and gradually, the joints will strengthen considerably over time and helps the secretion of the joint fluid. This helps to prevent and treat injuries and joint diseases.

Because the essence of the Tai Chi are the effortless movements, it is relaxing the whole body, the spine helping to prevent and treat wide scale of spine problems.

Mind and state of mind:

Practicing Tai Chi demands high degree of concentration and because of this have a positive effect on the central nervous system. These days when stress takes an everyday part in our life causing a great number of diseases (high blood pressure, heart attack, etc.), acquiring Tai Chi can give an important help to fight and neutralize stress. While practicing we train the mind and the body simultaneously, and these exercises will stimulate some regions of the cerebral cortex and will inhibit others, helping the brain to relax and sooth the tension created by sicknesses and improving conditions based on stress. The body reacts to our frame of mind, but it works backward too, if we are edgy and tense our body will be same our muscles will cramp up, but if we learn to relax our body then our accumulated tension will decrease.

So which are the sicknesses when the Tai Chi help?

Heart and circulation diseases;

Diabetes;

Stomach and other digestive organ’s problems;

Respiratory conditions;

Joint diseases;

Gynecological problems;

Stress and physical and mental conditions caused by stress.

This enumeration is not complete because the effect of the Tai Chi is still researched in China and other parts of the word. The effects are real in more and more country – in Hungary too – Tai Chi is used in hospitals to complement the Western medicine. In China and other far eastern countries there are hospitals which are using only Tai Chi, Chi Kung, and breathing exercises to heal.