Month: September 2019

Tai Chi’s Active Ingredients for Well-Being

Harvard medical professionals have been studying the benefits of tai chi, and the results are worth noting and incorporating into your exercise regimen.

 

Peter Wayne—medical director of Harvard Medical School’s Introduction to Tai Chi—has discovered, along with his research team, that tai chi benefits participants in a variety of ways, like a “multi-drug combination.”

Wayne devised what he calls the “eight active ingredients” of tai chi, which he and his colleagues now use as a conceptual framework in evaluating tai chi’s benefits, a way to explore the underlying mechanisms that provide these effects, and for shaping the way tai chi is taught to both the clinical trail participants and teachers.

Each different tai chi style stresses different ingredients, but these therapeutic ingredients are interwoven and symbiotic—they work in combination and compliment one another. And complete one another, like two perfectly-timed and orchestrated ballroom dancers.

 

Critical tai chi components—

Rather than focus on one body part—like doing bicep curls to increase bicep strength and tone or squats to tighten your glutes —tai chi movements look at the body (and rightly so) as an interconnected system. Upper body to lower body connectedness; right side to left; and the limbs with the body’s core.

I can appreciate this whole-body interconnectedness.

 

As a gymnast, my entire body functioned as an interconnected unit—when I made foot or hand contact with the ground or when airborne. One false move, and the rest of the body follows suit, usually to a splat on the mat.

When I handed in my leotard for a teeny bikini and oil-slicked body for body building competition, I noticed big body coordination changes.

Yes, I was incredibly toned, strong and buffed up, but my ability to move gracefully, multi-directionally, and smoothly plummeted. It was clear that the one-directional (single plane) exercise structure of weight lifting wasn’t benefitting my body’s connectedness and fluidity. (See the grainy snapshot below of me in the Palm Springs Classic many moons ago.)

I decided to retire my signature royal blue bikini.

And for those of you old enough to remember, a popular NFL player started taking ballet classes to improve his dexterity, litheness and body control on the football field. People razzed him to no end about it, but today a number of 300-pounders take ballet lessons to improve their football form. And they say it’s the hardest activity they do! (Yes, ballet is much more difficult than football.)

 

Tai chi focuses—

Alignment and posture are critical components. Tai chi teaches you to move in safe, unstrained alignments. And this integration promotes graceful movements that extend beyond the tai chi session to your daily life.

The result?

Less stress and load on your joints, and improved balance. A win-win situation all around, especially for aging seniors who spend too much time sitting in recliners watching television and losing their balance and strength.

 

Added bonus from doing tai chi—

If being able to move without pain weren’t enough, tai chi boasts another bonus: improved mental health.

Interestingly, shoulder slouchers tend to have a more negative outlook on life. Upright walkers more positive.

Maybe tai chi helps contribute to your feeling active, a benefit we talked about here on a Meditation Mondays installment.

Anyone out there a tai chi devotee? I’d love to hear your experience with this activity. I just purchased Wayne’s Introduction to Tai Chi. Can’t wait for it to arrive so I can have one more tool in my graceful aging toolkit! Wayne is also the author of Harvard Medical School Guide to Tai Chi.

Until next week, branch out, think integrated movement, and pick a activities that strengthen, coordinate and balance your body.

Blessings,

Andrea


Andrea Arthur Owan is an award-winning inspirational writer, fitness pro and chaplain. She writes and works to help people live their best lives—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

How to Improve Your Happiness with Future-Mindedness!

In a recent newsletter, Greater Good Science Center’s Greater Good Magazine (online) managing editor, Kira Newman, highlighted three main takeaways from her recent excursion to Melbourne, Australia, where researchers from over 60 countries gathered for the International Positive Psychology Association’s 6th World Congress. She said that the findings the researchers shared “added depth and complexity to our understanding of major keys to a flourishing life.”

We’ve already looked at how positive solitude and feeling active can increase happiness.

Today we’ll do the final installment with:

Future-mindedness.

 

How much do you plan and daydream?

Do you still daydream, make a mental (or literal) list of things you’d like to accomplish tomorrow, next week, next month or next year? Even though they don’t always come to fruition (and we intuitively know they won’t all bear fruit), it turns out that our future ponderings actually contribute to our happiness and well-being.

Newman gives a run-down of what social psychologist Roy Baumeister presented at the conference.

 

“Happy and optimistic people tend to think about the future more often than their less-upbeat counterparts. Thinking about the future seems to come in two flavors: First we dream big and imagine fantasy outcomes; then, we ‘get real’ and come up with a pragmatic plan.”

 

And evidently future-mindedness benefits us both personally and relationally. Some of those bennies include:

  • allowing you to develop more concrete goals
  • solving romantic-partner relationships (by projecting your feelings about it into the future.

 

That latter practice can lead to less blaming and more forgiveness and greater relationship well-being.

 

Dangers of faulty future-mindedness—

Negative focused future-mindedness can contribute to:

  • depression
  • anxiety
  • other psychological disorders

 

That may be why so many popular therapies being used today—future-oriented, hope, solution-focused, and cognitive –behavioral—therapies help you improve the way you think about the future.

 

How to improve your future-mindedness—

Want to try to improve your future-mindedness at home?

Try journaling—the positive, rather than woe-is-me type of constant lamenting. Write about what opportunities might come your way, what opportunities you could create for yourself.

Make time for future-minded dreaming, individually and as a couple, if you’re married. My husband do a future-minded retreat every year, usually around our anniversary, to take stock of our current life and talk about dreams we have as individuals and as a couple. Hearing someone else’s heart and dreams helps us draw closer and know how to better support one another.

 

Big future-mindedness—

Societies may also be moving toward being future-minded too, both individually and together.

I think that idea started 50 years ago, when our young President John Fitzgerald Kennedy posed a challenge to both the United States and the world when he said:

 

“Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what American will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

 

After nearly 60 years, perhaps we are finally embracing the possibilities Kennedy espoused with his most decidedly future-mindedness.

But let’s not overlook the end of Kennedy’s inaugural speech:

 

“…let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

 

And to that I add an Amen!

 

Until next week, start doodling your daydreams and planning (and hoping) for the future and note how it affects your happiness.

Blessings,

Andrea


Andrea Arthur Owan is an award-winning inspirational writer, fitness pro and chaplain. She writes and works to help people live their best lives—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.