Tai Chi as medicine

[taai gihk yahn]

so, in your perspective, do you disclude the traditional chinese medicinal practices that go along with good quality taiji?

define disclude? I am not talking about TCM per se to begin with: TCM is a PRC artifact that is to classical Taoist health practice / medicine as the taiji 24 etc. has to do w/the 108 long form; that said, "traditional" Chinese medicine was, to a large extent, a lineage-based practice that, while adhering to certain principles (5 element, yin/yang, etc.) was predicated largely on individual, subjective, anecdotal history as well as operator skill level; that doesn't discount it, it just contextualizes it; in fact, so-called "western" medicine was of a similar construct for centuries - only recently has the paradigm of relatively-objective evidence based medicine come to the fore, for a variety of both clinical as well as social reasons; thus, the whole idea of doing EBM vis-a-vis taiji is somewhat akin to reverse engineering - you are taking a construct from one social paradigm and applying it to another; which is fine and can work, but the "problem" is that to take taiji as such, well, first off, what is your lowest common denominator? even a quick perusal yields the discovery that "taiji" is a wide-ranging practice, that the parameters of what constitutes "good quality" is equally broad: to whit, I know several "traditional" teachers who consider the PRC 24 and its ilk an abomination of what taiji is / should be; similarly, "qigong" is a term that has no real operational power at all, given the wide disparity of what falls under that heading; finally, bear in mind that to a large extent, TCM has nothing to do w/taiji at all, they have only recently been "associated"...

anyways, i do agree that there can be types of exercise with many of the same benefits. i am just curious as to where you stand - as i am new here. but not new to internal boxing and qigong.

you have to go back to basics: taij / qigong did not sping into being ex nihilo - and they did not follow some sort of linear development; only in the last century were they standardized by the PRC, but in a way that was designed to disconnect them from their "roots"; and it is this artifact that we see today as representative of the practice more so than the older "classical" stuff; so as far as where I "stand" it is from a vantage point of having done both types, understanding the operational definition of both, having an appreciation for the value of each in context of what one is trying to do, but not invested via self-identification where that would be inappropriate (meaning that I have a very deep personal connection to my own personal practice, but I do not project it into areas when it is not called for)

btw, personally, i do feel that the specific requirements to be able to even do the form somewhat correctly and that type of motion makes a big difference from a standard rehabilitation type exercise.

yes - a lot of "standard" rehabilitation exercises will work much better for specific pathologies, whereas taiji and to a large extent qigong will have generalized effects only; if OTOH, one finds that a lot of "standard" rehab stuff doesn't "work", maybe the problem is not with the techniques of "standard" rehab, but wth the way in which much of it is misapplied by PT's who don't have the ability to think critically as to what is the appropriate application thereof (meaning that I think a lot of PT's over generalize and under analyze, as my first clinical instructor once put it); it's really a matter of content and context being matched properly: I could waste 3 months trying to improve someone's low back pain by having them do a bunch of taiji / qigong stuff, or I could get rid of it in 3 minutes with one well-applied manual technique followed up by application of one highly specific "standard" rehab exercise; OTOH, if you are working with something like fibromyaligia, taking all of the psychosomatic issues into account, a group taiji class might "work" far better than the "correct" manual therapy techniques...

of course if u mimic the same type of work, u will get some/most similiar results.

depends what you mean by "mimic" - if you are taking about "just" doing the "external" movements w/out the so-called "internal" work, I would be unmoved: "internal" is not something unique to Chinese movement practice, it's just contextualized a certain way; you can take any so-called "western" movement practice like Feldenkreis, Alexander Technique, Ariga Gym, Trager Mentastics, Brain Gym, etc. and arrive at pretty much the same effects; infact, bear in mind that most, if not all taiji reserach does not involve so-called "internal" practice as part of the research protocol...

almosts sounds like you are trying to descredit - and i am not saying you are for the record.

if you interpreted my original post biased towards "discrediting", then you may want to check your own personal / emotional stance, because no where do I state that the effects seen from taiji practice are false - in fact, I am saying just the opposite, that I don't find them in the least surprising; what I am proposing though, is that what constitutes the "essential" parameters of taiji /qigong, etc. (e.g. - conscious, intentioned movement with a great deal of unilateral weight-bearing), could be replicated outside of the convention of taiji and gain similar results; of course, there is a bot more to it than that: one could go into more depth and talk about coordinated activation of the connective tissue / neuromuscular system via unimpeded vertical transmission of ground reaction force through the body and the sort of postural alignment one needs for that to happen; also, as far as some qigong, the breath work has certain physiological effects, although upon clear analysis, it's not all that different from yogic practice; so again, there are numerous 'benefits", but they do not dissapear when one takes them out from under the moniker of "taiji"

and, i am going into the health field btw, as my mom had been in the health field before as a nurse - but i am more into physical therapy and kinesiology. so i do a bit of homework on movement in relation to effects on the human body.

good luck w/your endeavors;

not meaning to be judgemental at all, just wanna see what your veiws are.

my views are what I originally posted: which is that people shouldn't fool themselves or hold onto sacred cows for their own sake: if you are doing "research", then you need to get very clear as to what you are actually looking at and evaluating; if you want to research "taiji", you need to break don what you are studying into pure operational definitions and look at those for what they are;
the same problem exists in other ares: for example, in osteopathic manual medicine, there is an area of technique called cranial-sacral, that seem to operate in ways that get people talking about highly subjective experiences that they variously term as "energy" and "potency" and "the Tide" and what not; on the other end, you have patients who have had relief of issues via cranial that have not been resolved through any other means; as such, you get both practitioners and patients alike having a highly emotional connection to cranial, one which they hold onto fiercely in the face of objective research that pokes holes into all of the major theoretical assumptions as to what cranial is and why it "works"; at bottom, what you find is that, despite the clinical anecdotal "validity" of cranial, it's just not quite as "special" as its adherents would like for it to be - you can distill the technique down to a set of generalized physiological principles w/out all the bells and whistles; so too for taiji - it's good stuff, but not all that special per se...

OTOH, if you don't want to research taiji, and just simply apply it as such, that's fine too! I am not of the opinion that you necessarily have to research it - but then you can't make generalized claims or talk about what it's "good for" in certain venues;