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Physiological Benefits of Tai Chi
1. BASIC 9 BENEFITS
- promotes overall health, relaxation and longevity
- gives the body the movement it needs
- provides better support
- massages internal organs
- stretches everything inside you lengthwise, down to the smallest muscles and ligaments
- laterally twists soft tissues and gives you access to areas of your body which may normally be difficult to reach
- causes all fluids to circulate evenly through the body
- increases qi flow
- increases breathing capacity
- establishes and stabilizes highly efficient biomechanical alignments of the body
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2. SLOW MOTION
- allows you to consciously and deliberately access how your mind, body and energy work
- slows down your neurological speed, enabling you to train your awareness to notice subtle changes and become conscious of deeper levels
- gives your body and brain the necessary time for these new patterns to stabilize within you allowing your various bodily systems – your internal organs, muscles, fluids and nerves – to function better
3. CIRCULAR MOVEMENTS
- constantly rotate and twist every body part in a wide variety of ways with slow, consistent gentle motions
- continually pull on and structurally release tension from all the spots where your soft tissues (muscles, tendons, and ligaments) insert into or connect externally to your bones, joints and spine
- pulls and releases also happen internally, allowing more movement inside and between your internal organs and related structures deep within your abdominal cavity
- The 70% Rule for practice and recovery
- Maintain a comfort zone
- Do not lock in the nerve and emotional memory of the trauma yet more into the nervous system
- This can help to cause traumatized tissues to heal and revert to a normal pre-injury state in the same or most likely a shorter time than would otherwise be the case
- specific benefits:
Journal of Psychosomatic Research
Practice of taiji increases heart rate, increases noradrenaline (neurhormone/neurotransmitter produced in the adrenal gland just above the kidney for most of the so-called sympathetic nervous system) excretion in urine, and decreases salivary cortisol (stress hormone) concentration. This resuts in less tension, depression, anger, fatigue, confusion and state-anxiety, more vigor and in general less total mood disturbance.
Additional Reading
Specific Benefits:
- improve muscle use
- tone and make muscles more functional and easier to use
- subtle pressures link all the deepest internal soft tissues inside our body
- increase the range of motion in the joints
- twists, turns and circular movements of the arms and legs provide full articulation to all your joints.
- prevents muscle pains and arthritis, improves coordination and increases blood circulation, especially within the finer and smaller blood vessels
- provide a good leg workout
- most tai chi movements are done in a slight crouch and require shifting weight back and forth slowly from one leg to the other
- challenges leg muscles, increases balance, works the lungs, pumps a lot of blood through the body
- increases circulation, flexibility, strength and balance
- critical to overall blood circulation
- improves body support
- by training the major ligaments
- ligaments also keep internal organs from impinging on each other
- by toning muscles
- by implementing better biomechanical alignments – this also gives bones and internal organs support
- stretching the body
- gently letting go of tension in your muscles
- relaxing the muscles in combination with slow-motion movement gradually stretches large and smaller muscles
- using gravity to naturally and non-forcefully pull the muscles and fasciae – sheet of connective tissue covering or binding together body structures - of the body apart
- waist-turning movements stretch all the muscles of the hips, especially those around the hip sockets, the underside of the pelvis and buttocks, which either hold up or move the spine
- continuous weight shifts between front and back leg stretch all muscles of the legs, feet and lower back
- reducing pain in the back, neck and shoulders
- by loosening up all the muscles of the upper body
- emphasis on flowing relaxation
- Tai chi unbinds the connective tissues of the neck and shoulders through a combination of energy work and a sophisticated method of opening up the soft tissues around the shoulder blades and within the armpits
- continuous motion of the shoulder blades also increases blood flow and flexibility to your ribs and upper back
- movements make your back exceedingly strong and help maintain the elasticity of the deep ligaments and fasciae (a firm fascia that ensheathes and binds together muscles and other internal structures) that hold up your entire body and spine
- improved spinal support helps to relieve the causes of spinal subluxatons (partial dislocation where your vertebrae become misaligned)
- waist-turning actions and deep diaphragmatic breathing soften and relax the hip and pelvic muscles, increasing blood flow to them
- this allows the continuous downward pull of gravity to naturally open the hip sockets and release internal pressure on the sacrum (the base of the spine)
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