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Tai Chi Reported to Ease Fibromyalgia
August 20th, 2010 by sifujchttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/health/19taichi.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=gen
Mary Petersen, who has been suffering from Fibromyalgia, practicing tai chi on Nahant Beach, Mass., near her home.
The ancient Chinese practice of tai chi may be effective as a therapy for fibromyalgia, according to a study published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.
A clinical trial at Tufts Medical Center found that after 12 weeks of tai chi, patients with fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition, did significantly better in measurements of pain, fatigue, physical functioning, sleeplessness and depression than a comparable group given stretching exercises and wellness education. Tai chi patients were also more likely to sustain improvement three months later.
“It’s an impressive finding,” said Dr. Daniel Solomon, chief of clinical research in rheumatology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who was not involved in the research. “This was a well-done study. It was kind of amazing that the effects seem to carry over.”
Although the study was small, 66 patients, several experts considered it compelling because fibromyalgia is a complex and often-confusing condition, affecting five million Americans, mostly women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since its symptoms can be wide-ranging and can mimic other disorders, and its diagnosis depends largely on patients’ descriptions, not blood tests or biopsies, its cause and treatment have been the subject of debate.
“We thought it was notable that The New England Journal accepted this paper, that they would take fibromyalgia on as an issue, and also because tai chi is an alternative therapy that some people raise eyebrows about,” said Dr. Robert Shmerling, clinical chief of rheumatology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, co-author of an editorial about the study.
“Fibromyalgia is so common, and we have such a difficult time treating it effectively. It’s defined by what the patient tells you,” he added. “It’s hard for some patients’ families and their doctors to get their head around what it is and whether it’s real. So, that these results were so positive for something that’s very safe is an impressive accomplishment.”
Recent studies have suggested that tai chi, with its slow exercises, breathing and meditation, could benefit patients with other chronic conditions, including arthritis. But not all of these reports have been conclusive, and tai chi is hard to study because there are many styles and approaches.
The fibromyalgia study involved the yang style of tai chi, taught by a Boston tai chi master, Ramel Rones. Dr. Solomon and other experts cautioned that bigger studies with other masters and approaches were necessary.
Still, patients, who received twice-weekly tai chi classes and a DVD to practice with 20 minutes daily, showed weekly improvement on an established measurement, the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire, improving more than the stretching-and-education group in physicians’ assessments, sleep, walking and mental health. One-third stopped using medication, compared with one-sixth in the stretching group.
Dr. Chenchen Wang, a Tufts rheumatologist who led the study, said she attributed the results to the fact that “fibromyalgia is a very complex problem” and “tai chi has multiple components — physical, psychological, social and spiritual.”
The therapy impressed Mary Petersen, 59, a retired phone company employee from Lynn, Mass., who said that before participating in the 2008 study, “I couldn’t walk half a mile,” and it “hurt me so much just to put my hands over my head.” Sleeping was difficult, and she was overweight. “There was no joy to life,” she said. “I was an entire mess from head to foot.”
She had tried and rejected medication,physical therapy, swimming and other approaches. “I was used to being treated in a condescending manner because they couldn’t diagnose me: ‘She’s menopausal, she’s crazy.’ ”
Before the study, “I didn’t know tai chi from a sneeze,” said Ms. Petersen, who has diabetes and other conditions. “I was like, ‘Well, O.K., I’ll get to meet some people, it will get me out of the house.’ I didn’t believe any of it. I thought this is so minimal, it’s stupid.”
After a few weeks, she said she began to feel better, and after 12 weeks “the pain had diminished 90 percent.” She has continued tai chi, lost 50 pounds and can walk three to seven miles a day.
“You could not have convinced me that I would ever have done this or continued with this,” she said. “I wouldn’t say it’s a cure. I will say it’s an effective method of controlling pain.”
Dr. Shmerling said that though tai chi is inexpensive compared with other treatments, some patients would reject such an alternative therapy. And Dr. Gloria Yeh, a Beth Israel Deaconess internist and co-author of the editorial, said others “will say, ‘It’s too slow, I can’t do that.’ ”
But she said it offered a “gentler option” for patients deterred by other physical activities. “The mind-body connections set it apart from other exercises,” she said, adding that doctors are seeking “anything we can offer that will make patients say ‘I can really do this.’ ”
Happy birthday to us… happy birthday to us…
August 17th, 2010 by sifujc13 years ago this month, the man who is now Sifu Bear asked me to teach him this Tai Chi martial art that I had learned. We met every week on Saturday mornings in a park just above the apartment building I was living in, just after he had finished his work shift. Due to an earlier back injury, he was naturally nervous about the Yoga, but I helped him through it, and he has been a “Yogi” ever since.
As I taught him the arts of Taijiquan and Hatha Yoga, he taught me the hard-style martial arts he had learned and earned two black-belts in. Those first classes were the birthplace of what would be Dragon Studios. Over these 13 years, Sifu Bear and I have been rewarded with many wonderful students, and watched people transform and improve themselves.
So here’s to lucky 13!
Namasté
YOU can make the difference!
July 18th, 2010 by sifujcA wise and witty friend posted this, watch it first:
One of the many many things I love about this film is the pushing hands aspect to it. He tries so hard with the direct approach, and it was only when he relaxed and let go that he was able to reach her in a way he didn’t expect.
Like Gandhi said, “be the change you wish to see in this world.” Then you do your best to inspire others. Bill told me once that his teacher used to say,” if you can’t leave the house with a smile on your face, you’re messing up the world!” We’re all connected. Six degrees of separation between us, they say. You never know who you will help or hurt through your actions. When it comes to making people smile, you can spread joy around the globe by starting with just one person… yourself.
Namasté
Moving with intention: getting the most out of your Taijiquan practice
July 6th, 2010 by sifujc
Move with intention to improve your form
After we’ve spent weeks learning a skill or system, it’s in our nature to get a little lazy in the vigilance we held when we were first learning. Think about driving a car. When you first learned, you were overly attentive to everything on the road and everything you were doing. Yet when you finally got the hang of it, you likely fell into some more lazy habits. Yes, you discovered that you didn’t need to be as attentive, but according to national statistics, it’s likely you’ve done more than just decreased your level of attentiveness. Often we can drive for several minutes with our mind (and sometimes eyes) on anything but the road and other cars. Often when someone gets into an accident because of this, their level of attentiveness returns to the level they had as learners.
In Zen, this state of attentiveness is called Beginner’s Mind; the level of attentiveness you hold when you are just a beginner at something, you apply to every aspect of your life to aid you in your enlightenment. Right now take a look around you without attaching any significant meaning to what you see. As you come back to this screen, think about what you saw, what impressions you received of colors, shapes and images. Did you notice anything you’ve been missing or taking for granted?
With Taijiquan, once you’ve learned the form, you can find yourself falling into some bad habits, depending upon where your attention and intention lies. Problems with stance, hand positions, and discomforts during performance of the form can crop up because of inattention. So how do you fix this problem and make your way back to a beginner’s mind? Here are a few techniques that work for me:
Follow your hands
A student who had read Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain, remarked on how I “followed the clouds” as Chungliang Al Huang recommends you do. In reality, at that moment I was following my hands throughout the form, watching them as they moved. Doing this simple exercise keeps me moving my hands in the correct way, and gives me a beginners mind as I work to keep them moving correctly.
Move with martial intent
Taijiquan is a martial art, and the movements are put together as a Daolu (or Kata) to teach you correct striking and defensive movements. Visualize your opponent in front of you. Make them your height and build. Then apply your strikes to the points your teacher taught you about. Most importantly, after you’ve practiced some pushing hands, visualize your defense as well as your strikes. Again, as you apply martial intent, you’ll move back into beginner’s mind as you adjust your hands and body to make the strikes and defenses without strain or interruption of your Qi flow.
Drive your power through your hips
All strikes, throws and defenses in the form are powered by your hips. As you practice your form, focus on your hips and imagine the Qi flowing from their movement out into your hands. Use the beginner’s mind to learn how your hips connect to these movements.
Using beginners mind, you can renew your form in many ways, and although it may feel like a step back in your progress in the form, you will actually find yourself taking giant leaps forward.
Namasté
Relaxation is who you are
June 29th, 2010 by sifujc
Stressed out?
“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are,” is an old Chinese proverb I came across recently. I even made it my Facebook status.
Tension comes from stress. Stress is a part of our lives, but our handling of stress leads to tension and from a Tai Chi point of view is where our problems start. Compromise and repression may help us deal with the stressors, but the tension we feel is usually not dealt with at all, and everything from heart disease to diabetes to simple ailments can often be linked back to tension.
Where’s that knot of tension sitting right now? Mine’s usually under my left shoulder blade, and the more stressed I get the further that discomfort is carried down my left arm.
Qi (pronounced Chee) flows through the various meridian lines of our bodies. It nourishes our organs and cells in ways we’re only beginning to understand in western science. When people go to see an acupuncturist regarding a pain or problem in one area of their body, they’re often surprised to find him or her treating them in a different location. That’s because the flow of Qi is blocked at that point and its inability to move past that blockage has literally starved the affected area of its energy.
Bill taught us “all disease or dis-ease is caused by an interruption of the flow of energy through your body.” Whenever stress causes us to tense up, we block the Qi flow and get sick because of it. How often can you trace an illness you’ve suffered back to a stressful moment in your day when the tension seemed overwhelming, and just like that, you had the flu? I can link every case of the flu that I’ve suffered in my adult life to a moment just like I described.
So how do you cease tension? Like the quote states “Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.” We live in a state of tension, but the body’s natural state is one of relaxation. It wants to go there whenever it can, and we don’t let it. Once you understand that about yourself, it gets easier.
First off you want to understand both your tension and relaxation, specifically what do they feel like? In Yoga we use Corpse pose and Nidra to find that state of relaxation, in Taijiquan we work toward achieving “Sung,” a state of relaxation. In both ways the method is like “returning home,” finding you way back to a state you once achieved easily as a child, but have forgotten as an adult.
When we compromise away stress, we look at ourselves as “letting go” of what we need just to get the job done. But that need is often locked into our muscles as tension. It’s important to recognize that and let it go as well. Swami Sivananda said, “Crave for a thing, you will get it. Renounce the craving, the object will follow you by itself.” When we human beings don’t get what we want, we feel badly and we store those bad feelings in our muscles as tension. When we can learn to let go of cravings(‘renounce’ as Sivananda said), we find that those things we want flow to us with no need to feel bad for what we don’t get. Naturally, when you are able to successfully renounce your cravings, those things you want will change. You’ll become more aware of what it is you really do want, and those things often come easier than material possessions.
Right now, take a nice deep breath, so deep you feel your diaphragm expand down into your stomach. Feel that sweet feeling of the breath coming in… now push it out in an exhale, and lift your stomach a bit to move the diaphragm back up. As you breathe in, think: “I am relaxing my body.” As you breathe out, imagine any tension just flowing out with the breath and think: “I am smiling from my heart,” and at the end of the exhale, smile. Repeat as necessary,
Namasté
Doing No Harm
June 22nd, 2010 by sifujcDo no harm. Do no harm to others. Do no harm to the Earth. Do no harm to yourself.
Easy to say, but not always easy words to live up to, at least not completely. Making a choice not to harm another when they’re standing right in front of us, is a fairly simple process (providing they aren’t provoking us). But what about when a person is not in front of us and we’re saying negative things about them, or calling them a few choice names we’d never dare to say to their face. Does that do them harm?
They may remain ignorant of our feelings toward them in this case, but it does cause harm to us, and, by extension, to our relationship with them. If that person is always an @$$%0!# in our minds, then we can never truly develop a kind and loving relationship with them.
Often we harm ourselves with negative feelings. Doing no harm to yourself does mean you need to avoid intentionally injuring yourself; an admonition that extends to psychological as well as to physical damage. The more negative feelings we harbor within ourselves, the more negative our view of the world becomes. We close ourselves off and sever our connection with the world.
So should we naively trust everyone and everything in this world? No. Like with enlightenment, we strive to view the world with our eyes, and all of our perceptions, wide open. We want to avoid harm as much as we want to avoid causing harm. By keeping our perceptions and our hearts open, we can become both accepting and wary of someone’s potentially dangerous nature. For example, a friend once complained to me about a mutual friend’s unintentionally harmful actions. I thought, “well, that’s just the way they are,” and found little offense in their behavior as I was prepared for it after a couple of peripheral experiences with them.
Martial arts teaches us many important things. The most important is how to protect ourselves and how to be prepared to protect ourselves. Yes it teaches us how to harm others, but in doing so it is also teaching us how not to harm others. When we learn that an action such as punching someone in the temples is a deadly attack, we also learn to not use that attack, unless we wish to violate our promise to do no harm.
Finding my inner teacher
June 8th, 2010 by sifujcMy teacher, Bill, always said, “to really learn Taiji, you need to access your inner teacher, to find that teacher, you must teach the form in some way; whether it’s teaching it to others or teaching it to yourself –like with left-handed form.” He would then go on to say, “there will come a time when I will say ‘I can teach you no more,’ because to teach you more, I would have to teach you to be me, and you don’t need to learn to be me; you need to learn to be you.”
Those were the words that led me to be a teacher, to impart my skills and training to others and teach them the beauty of this art. Which is something I’ve gladly done for over 13 years now. A couple of years ago one of my (and Bill’s, coincidentally) students approached me about certifying as a teacher. I had worked out an apprentice program about a year or so before she asked, and I was eager to try it out. Melissa has been a great apprentice, and very patient with me as I figure out this whole certification thing.
Recently, as part of her test, I asked her how she would break down the form into a structured class. She answered correctly, and in doing so reminded me of an old grid-style agenda I used to use to help me run the class. I found it and brought it to class to show her. Both of us came to the same realization. I should start using it again!
The old Dragon Studios agenda
After 13 years, I’ve become a bit absent-minded when it comes to teaching. I still teach the core principles and manage to transmit enough of my knowledge that my student’s learn Taijiquan. Yet I realized, looking at the agenda form, that over the last few years I had been missing certain teachings that I could have imparted, and, had I been following the agenda, I would have taught a few core ideas more than once every six or so months.
I continue to learn from my students, even if it’s being reminded to return to my old ways from time to time. I hope I never stop learning from them.
Namasté
One World, One Breath… Our 10th Anniversary!
April 12th, 2010 by sifujcJoin Us As We Celebrate Ten Years of World T’ai Chi and Qigong Day in Utah on April 24
As part of the annual World T’ai Chi and Qigong Day, celebrated in 60 countries around the globe, University of Utah T’ai Chi instructor, Professor William Parkinson, and participating Utah T’ai Chi and Qigong schools invite everyone, regardless of age or physical condition, to experience these ancient Chinese forms of exercise by joining local practitioners at the annual Utah observance of World T’ai Chi and Qigong Day.
The event takes place at the Marriott Library Plaza on the University of Utah campus, April 24, 2010 beginning at 9:30 AM, and is FREE to the public. Demonstrations to raise awareness of the health benefits of T’ai Chi and Qigong practice will take place throughout the morning.
Governor Gary Herbert has declared April 24 2010 as World T’ai Chi and Qigong Day in Utah in an official proclamation.
World T’ai Chi and Qigong Day was founded in 1998 by Kansas City T’ai Chi instructor, Bill Douglas, the author of the best selling “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to T’ai Chi and Qigong.” Losing both of his parents to stress related illnesses led Douglas to found the annual, global World T’ai Chi and Qigong Day event. The popularity of World T’ai Chi and Qigong Day has spread each year since its founding, and the observance now features events on six continents, in sixty countries, and all fifty of the United States.
“Each year to see people of many nations, many races, many religions, coming together across geo-political boundaries, for one simple purpose . . . to celebrate personal and global health & healing . . . is too moving for words,” says founder Douglas. “To see that same ‘look’ on so many diverse faces, that look we all share when life energy courses through us . . . the commonality of that look reminds us that we are ‘one world . . . one breath.’”
In April 2000, Sifu Don Stringham organized the first Utah Observance of World T’ai Chi and Qigong Day. The event was held in the back yard of a student’s residence, and was attended by students and representatives of different schools of T’ai Chi, Qigong and Falun Gong based in Utah. The following year, expected attendance tripled, so the event was moved to the University of Utah, where it has been the primary Salt Lake City observance of this world-wide event ever since.
Won’t you join us for our annual celebration of this art that has changed so many lives for the better? For more information, visit our World Tai Chi and Qigong page.
It was time for a change…
April 6th, 2010 by sifujcThose of you who have followed my blogs know I originally ran separate Tai Chi and Yoga blogs on this site. Recent events made me re-think this strategy. Blogger, my original blog provider, has decided to cease supporting those of us who create blogs on their site then publish the blogs onto our own servers, and were rather asking those of us who did that to set up our domain names on their servers. I, of course, wasn’t about to do that as this blog is one small part of this website. My hosting provider, Verio, offered free WordPress installation so I decided to try something new, and in the process, decided to merge the Way of Tai Chi and Way of Yoga blogs into one. I’ve categorized for the different arts, so hopefully if you’re only into my Yoga wisdom or only into my Tai Chi wisdom, you will find what you’re looking for.
In the words of Brother Kusala Bhikshu: “I hope you find this useful, I hope you find this interesting.”
Namasté!