Taiji and Health

There is plenty of literature on the health benefits of taiji, for a review you can look here. Almost every taiji practitioner has their own stories, for example here is a link to testimonies of our students. The knowledge of taiji effects is based on ancient and modern tradition, personal experience of practitioners, common sense, and scientific studies. Rather than repeating a list of benefits here, we can instead suggest what aspects of taiji to focus on depending on each student’s priorities. While our taiji program offers a balanced set of practices including various qigong, meditations, breathing, solo and partner forms, sensitivity drills, weapons, it always can be individually adjusted depending on the student's goals and interests. What follows below is not a complete or definitive list but an example of how we think about our program and working with our students. While taiji may not be unique in helping with different aspects of health, the combination of features makes it a very promising system.

Body Alignment: Our lifestyles create multiple body alignment issues. I worked with University students who were in their early 20s and they described to me their body structural issues before I started to teach them some taiji methods. I do not remember having anything like that when I and my friends were the same age. My best guess is lack of regular physical activities and excessive phone use made their physical health worse. It is worth noting that physical posture and alignment are closely connected with mood and happiness. In case of severe discomfort, I have recommended students to make an appointment with a good physical therapist. My suggestion for alignment improvement would be working on standing meditation and basic qigong first. After that, more qigong can be added, emphasizing the ones that bend the spine and scapula backwards to counter the long hours of bad sitting posture (such as “repulse the monkey”) and also provide soft spiraling of the spine (like “white crane spreads wings” and “waving arms like clouds”). The long forms can be excellent in the longer run, but they take a significant time to learn with correct alignments and therefore are better for later development.
Depression and Anxiety: In the USA almost 15% of people take anti-anxiety and antidepressant medication. Many other people have underlying problems, but they handle it without medication and with varying degrees of success. Using a variety of qigongs and forms, we practice correct breathing. Breathing is a bridge between the conscious and unconscious. And we are able partly to consciously control breathing, which in turn influences the normally automated processes of the nervous system. Intensive martial taiji, which provides a physical workout and release of aggression, followed by breathing qigong and/or meditation often helps coping with anxiety and depression. In addition, long term taiji practice helps to create an “internal stability space” providing positive emotions and a development path that is less dependent on other people or current health conditions as compared, say, to ups and downs of personal relationships or career success.
Brain Fitness: According to scientific research, the brain starts to decline in the 30s and 40s (and possibly even earlier), with the rate of decline increasing with age. This decline is characterized by a change in brain structure and a slowing of processing speed. The popular ways of keeping the brain in better shape include crosswords, sudoku, and other mental exercises. Some research shows that the best results are achieved by exercising the brain through complex movements such as dance or taiji, which can be reframed as solving puzzles (playing Tetris?) with the whole body. Therefore, those students whose priority is brain performance can focus on learning the long forms as such a learning process includes memorizing the long stance sequences using both brain and body and then refining them to achieve smooth and balanced performance.
Inner circulation: Everybody knows that the heart moves blood in the body. Less common is the knowledge that there are other circulating fluids such as lymph fluid that do not have a pump to move them around. Lymph circulation collects excess fluid from body tissues along with waste products and abnormal cells and returns them to the bloodstream. There are methods to improve such passive circulation, among them yoga kapalabhati breathing, shamanic low humming, temperature contrast of sauna, or polar bear dives. In taiji, our students learn explosive “fa-jing” movements from various stances as a part of learning the foundational long form that are accompanied by sharp outbreaths and inner body waves that have a similar effect.
Balance: One reason taiji is so popular with senior people is related to balance training. However, like those who do partner dancing can tell you, many young people also have problems balancing as they move or spin, and having an unbalanced partner makes dancing very unhappy. Modern fitness also emphasizes balance in such styles as paddle yoga or balance boards. There is also a mental aspect of training balance which teaches you to live in the current moment because if one’s imagination is moving to the next stance prematurely the balance will be lost. Taiji incudes a variety of complex, slow movements while standing on one leg and often combined with turning as well as slow kicks. So, students who care about balance can start from emphasizing slow movements in one leg stances from the long form.
Strength: If taiji is done correctly using low stances it develops a lot of lower body strength. In some taiji styles, the practitioners who used extremely low stances had their legs looking like thick tree trunks. Keeping low stances along with doing slow kicks and fa-jing body mechanics for striking provides a good core muscle workout. The upper body does not get as much workout during normal taiji practice as taiji striking power is developed from the dan tien (core) and transferred through the tendons and muscles; the power of arm muscles is not used as much for striking. Those students who want to develop more upper body strength can focus on some kind of whole body workout such as heavy weapons while doing taiji forms, kettlebells practice, and certain forms of push hands.
Cardio Fitness: Normally cardio fitness is not associated with taiji. This is true if one is only practicing slow qigong and the foundational long form. Students who want to increase cardio fitness can learn martial partner forms and weapon forms to get a good workout. Among them, Small San Sau (SSS) is particularly good as an intensive cardio workout as it is based on explosive, fast movements utilizing leg and core muscles.

Based on my personal experience, taiji practice can be made to fit different levels of health, energy, and schedule. If I am feeling a bit lazy, I can still drag myself to my deck and do a simple qigong and then sometimes notice that after a few moves my energy goes up and I am ready for more extensive practice. Those people who are recovering from being sick also can start from modified exercise, such as a set of qigong created for wounded warriors that can be done in bed. I can practice taiji in my martial arts school, in a snowy forest, or in a hotel room while traveling. There is also a satisfaction (and probably a much needed dopamine release) from working on stances until they look and feel smooth and flowing. Taiji is a great system to consider for development. While it is almost impossible to learn alone, once learned it can be practiced without partners. Though having a friendly and supportive group is something that really helps keep practice going.