Chapter

21

Do T’ai Chi and Change the World

In This Chapter

T’ai Chi is widely misunderstood. Is it an exercise, a martial art, or a meditation technique? Actually, T’ai Chi is all those things, but it also offers so much more. T’ai Chi can be a key to discovering our personal empowerment. As we find that we can take control over our body’s circulation, our blood pressure, and our stress responses, we are empowered. This empowerment begins to resonate out to every aspect of our lives—work, relationships, and society.

As we feel empowered and T’ai Chi works its clarifying magic, we find learning easier and more exciting. We become drawn to learning as the world becomes fresher and more magical because of our new attitude of well-being. T’ai Chi cultivates and supports our childlikeness, curiosity, and zest for life. When we treasure each moment of our lives, we are much less likely to engage in acts that endanger our health or our freedom. When we feel at peace within ourselves, we are much less likely to hurt others. Much violence is the act of someone in personal pain who externalizes that pain on others. T’ai Chi can help heal that pain, thereby reducing much violence.

Since the first edition of this book came out over a decade ago, T’ai Chi and QiGong, as well as other meditative mind-body practices, have spread rapidly around the entire planet, which I learned from organizing World T’ai Chi and QiGong Day (see Chapter 22). Psychologist Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature offers research showing that our planet is now less violent than at any time in human history. Yeah, I know, hard to believe that, given the steady stream of violence we get from the shiny box in the living room, but true, nonetheless. As mentioned in the previous chapter, emerging research has shown that human consciousness is actually physically connected on an energetic level, and that we actually impact the state of the planet by clarifying and calming our own consciousness.

The reason this is mentioned in a Complete Idiot’s Guide to T’ai Chi and QiGong is because Chinese Taoist philosophy, which T’ai Chi and QiGong philosophy are based upon, has been saying this for centuries. Each of us is the microcosm of the macrocosm of humanity, and by changing ourselves, we change the world. For example, by using tools like this to create a calmer household for ourselves and our family, we may actually be helping to lower future unemployment rates.

T’ai Chi and Unemployment

Because, according to research, people who grew up in high-stress households have higher unemployment rates, T’ai Chi may help both parents and children change that pattern. Furthermore, because the modern economy forces many people to change careers several times, T’ai Chi’s promotion of letting go of the past and relaxing into change can be helpful to adults in today’s job market.

England’s Royal Academy of Pediatrics College released a study that concluded that “stressful” households caused problems for children that could last a lifetime. One thing it discovered was that children from such households endured higher unemployment levels than kids from more peaceful households. We know stress limits our creativity and can affect our self-esteem. T’ai Chi’s ability to provide children with a tool that can help them find a calm place within, even when home is less than calm, can be of powerful help to them.

It is estimated that most of us will change, not jobs, but careers more than five times in our lifetime. For people who find change difficult, this can be excruciatingly stressful and even life-threatening over time. In a world of constant and relentless change, T’ai Chi’s ability to help us mentally, emotionally, and physically let go can be a great help.

SAGE SIFU SAYS

The economy is in constant changing flux today. We’ve seen massive economic shifts in our lifetimes that would have taken centuries to evolve in the past. Changes in environment, energy, and society are being demanded of our generation like no other generation in history has seen. Change is the order of the day. If you’re one of the unemployed, you might be thinking: What good does it do to be adaptable if there aren’t any jobs out there to get, at a time of high unemployment?

Again, back to the microcosm of the macrocosm of T’ai Chi philosophy. By society using and expanding mind-body tools like T’ai Chi and QiGong into our lives and our culture, it can have an impact on our entire nation becoming more fluid, so we can flow into a new economy that will nurture us all.

By being able to let go of the past and being open to new information and self-definitions, we can be ready to flow into our next occupation. This flowing can happen not only less stressfully, but with an adventurous anticipation, just like when we were kids. This is what T’ai Chi can help us do as individuals and as a society. View the Exhibition of the Entire Long Form and Exhibition of the Entire Mulan Basic Short Form (Chapters 13 and 14 respectively) sections on the Web Video Support to see how the physical model of flow and release can provide a daily example of how we can begin to flow with less resistance through all aspects of life.

Research indicates that even just watching T’ai Chi can trigger relaxation responses in your body. Why this happens may be explained by genetic studies showing that humans, other higher-thinking species like dolphins and primates, and even mice according to research at the Pain Genetics Lab at McGill University, have an empathy gene that causes one to actually feel what the person or creature they are watching is experiencing. As you watch the T’ai Chi exhibition videos, feel yourself breathe and loosen as the T’ai Chi practitioner is doing so in the video.

When you catch yourself considering worst-case scenarios while engaged in a task or project, take a deep breath and let your entire body release thoughts, tensions, and fears. Then make a list or flow chart of what is required for your success. This will let you realistically decide whether to proceed rather than resist change because of irrational fears. T’ai Chi promotes a sense of being in the moment, of dealing with the tasks at hand, and of letting go of fear-based projections of the future.

T’ai Chi and the Healthcare Crisis

According to Dr. David Sobel, commenting on a long-term study by Kaiser Permenete, approximately 80 percent of the illnesses that send us to the doctor are due to stress. The six leading causes of death are stress-related. Today’s healthcare crisis is literally due to stress. Stress can be managed, and perhaps no more effective stress-management tool exists than daily T’ai Chi and QiGong meditations. If these tools were taught on a massive scale in education, our healthcare crisis could end in one generation. This isn’t some airy mystical T’ai Chi vision, it is scientific fact.

Thankfully, hospitals and insurance carriers are incorporating T’ai Chi and QiGong into what they offer clients. Physicians, neurologists, cardiac and hypertension specialists, and mental health providers are prescribing T’ai Chi for a host of physical, emotional, and mental conditions. Medical universities are now introducing T’ai Chi to their students as part of their training.

SAGE SIFU SAYS

T’ai Chi begins to show us that we have a healthcare crisis simply because we choose to have a healthcare crisis. Each of us has it within our own power to dramatically lower our dependence on general healthcare, pharmacology, and surgery. The fastest-growing investment industry in the United States today is pharmaceuticals. The three top-selling medications are ulcer, high blood pressure, and mood-altering medications. T’ai Chi and/or QiGong can have significantly positive effects on all three of these conditions, in some cases.

SAGE SIFU SAYS

T’ai Chi and QiGong are not at odds with modern Western healthcare. They are partners with it. You don’t decide between medication or surgery and T’ai Chi. If you need medication or surgery, then use it. However, medication and surgery should not be the first line of defense. If we practice T’ai Chi, we might never develop the need for certain medications or for heart surgery. If we daily water our “T’ai tree” roots with the soothing balm of life energy, we will be less likely to ever need that medication or surgery, saving ourselves pain and money, while saving society a great financial burden.

We cannot afford to ignore our body’s signals and our health until we are in a crisis situation and then expect society to lavish money upon us for expensive surgery or medication. This isn’t just about Medicare alone; all our health insurance premiums are skyrocketing due to a national need to become mindful of our health. T’ai Chi can save us all big money and help us feel good while doing it. And by this evolution occurring, it will bring down the cost of surgery and drugs, so that when we do need them, we’ll all be able to afford them.

T’ai Chi in Education

I mentioned that by training all students in schools in these techniques it could end our nation’s health crisis, but it should also happen because it would improve their education.

Studies show that change, even change for the better, is stressful. A good example is when you upgrade your computer. The newer program gives you new tools to make your work faster and more efficient, but letting go of the old ways and learning the new is often stressful.

In many ways, each day our children are learning new ways to do everything, both at home and at school. Kids today are under tremendous stress because the world is changing very fast, and they will see changes we never dreamed of in our lives. Therefore, the best tool we can give them to launch out upon the world with confidence and health is, you guessed it, T’ai Chi.

Helping Students Stay Current in a World of Change!

T’ai Chi brings you back to the calm center, no matter how fast life’s carousel is spinning. In today’s rapidly changing world, this is a very important tool to give our children. No matter how much math, science, and economic facts we give them, they will be lost if they don’t know how to thrive healthfully in a world of change. Why? Because our understanding of math, science, and economics is changing on an almost daily basis. The world is only getting faster with the explosion of the information age. Therefore, children with mind/body training that can help them adapt to new ways more easily and more healthfully will have a distinct advantage over kids who learn only the current ways things are done or the current textbook facts.

Chronic stress can even inhibit our thinking processes, literally shrinking parts of the brain. So by teaching children T’ai Chi, we help them be calm and provide them a physical model to relax through changes, which thereby can improve their mental function and their educational experience.

A T’AI CHI PUNCH LINE

Studying Health from the Inside Out

Hopefully, every school will begin providing T’ai Chi instruction through all levels of education and to teachers as well. T’ai Chi is a cross between physical education and health science, and should eventually become a staple of health science. What better way for kids to learn about their bodies and health than by paying attention to the laboratory they walk around in every day, their own miraculous minds and bodies, through practicing T’ai Chi’s mindful exercises?

Although most of the high school T’ai Chi classes I’ve taught have been in health science, instructors in physical education, art, and drama are considering T’ai Chi as an adjunct to their classes.

Helping Students Avoid Drugs

Some schools are already providing T’ai Chi to students. I have taught T’ai Chi and QiGong relaxation therapy to students in elementary, junior high, high school, and university levels through health science, college-preparatory programs, and drug-abuse-prevention programs, as well as for developmentally disabled students. Health science teachers have told me that students claim the main reason they begin smoking or using drugs and alcohol is to alleviate stress. Of course, those of us with more life experience know that, in the end, drug abuse creates more stress, but it’s not enough to simply tell kids to “just say no.” We must take the next step and provide them with tools to manage the enormous stress they face in an increasingly complex world.

T’ai Chi and Crime and Law Enforcement

T’ai Chi is now being taught in prisons, as well as in court-sponsored rehabilitation programs. T’ai Chi’s ability to build self-esteem, heal childhood trauma, and manage potentially violent stress makes it an incredible coping tool for anyone trying to change. If we want to reduce crime, finding ways people can become productive parts of society is a cost-effective and just plain effective way to do it. It costs twice as much to send a child to prison as it does to send that child to Harvard. Per capita, the United States has incarcerated more of its children than any nation in the world. It’s time to find creative solutions such as T’ai Chi and mind/body fitness training to heal the very roots of crime—the potential criminals. Doing this before the crime occurs will save us all much pain and vast amounts of money.

A T’AI CHI PUNCH LINE

Law enforcement officers work in constant danger and often see only the worst sides of people. This can be very stressful. Historically, law enforcement officials have suffered from stress-related maladies such as alcoholism, drug abuse, coronary heart disease, diabetes, and suicide, according to Police Chief Magazine and the U.S. Public Health Service. T’ai Chi may be an effective, multipurpose way to help law enforcement officers deal with job-related stress. T’ai Chi’s martial applications are an added bonus to officers learning T’ai Chi’s soothing stress-management tools.

T’ai Chi can help in several ways. First, it can help officers dump job stress after work. Then if they do go out for a drink after T’ai Chi class, they will be doing it for pleasure rather than for stress reduction. This can mean the difference between a couple of social drinks and a mind-numbing binge.

Second, if officers are less stressed on duty, they will likely see more options in any given situation. Problems can be defused more easily when in a calmer, clearer state. Even in difficult situations, T’ai Chi’s calming effects can resonate, especially if it helps the officers sleep better, which T’ai Chi is known to do. T’ai Chi’s calming aspects can help defuse potentially dangerous situations, which leaves the officer with less stress to take with them off duty. Less stress begets less stress, and so on and so on.

Hopefully, departments will eventually provide officers with seven-hour shifts and use the last hour for T’ai Chi decompression time. This will make business sense for all the reasons listed in Chapter 19 on corporate T’ai Chi, but these benefits are magnified because law enforcement officials’ stress can be even higher.

T’ai Chi and Violence

Most domestic violence is a very ineffective form of stress management. Domestic violence is a way a very unhappy person takes out personal stress on his or her loved ones. It’s ineffective because as we tear down those around us, that eventually tears us down. We create a sanctuary of pain rather than a loving home.

T’ai Chi can change that from many angles. If children begin to use T’ai Chi’s mind/body fitness stress-management tools to self-heal in school, the cycle of pain at home will be changed and diminished in some ways. Then if parents are encouraged to learn these tools through community services, they can change the cycle even more effectively. There is a great spider web of connection in a community that will be affected as well. If one parent breaks a cycle of abuse and pain, his or her children will not spread that pain by being mean to the children around them at school or by growing up and passing it down to their kids by being violent to them.

A T’AI CHI PUNCH LINE

Alcohol and other substance abuses aggravate much domestic violence. (The benefits of T’ai Chi for drug rehabilitation are discussed in Chapter 18.) Substance abuse and domestic violence all set a destructive dynamic in motion that reaches far beyond the home. A famous “kick the cat” story shows how a community is affected by one person’s calm or rage:

An executive gets a traffic ticket on the way to work and then fumes at his administrative assistant. She, in turn, snaps at the other executives and employees she deals with. They get ticked off and snap at their co-workers, who are testy with people in the other companies they deal with on the phone, and so on. Eventually, thousands of people who have had a lousy day hit the freeway and begin to give the one-fingered salute to other motorists. And so it goes.

Finally, all these seething people get home and yell at their spouses, who yell at the kids, who walk upstairs and kick the cat.

T’ai Chi can invert this process, and thousands of family cats can get a loving caress by kids growing up in a more loving world, nurtured by parents who work at companies that provide health tools to them like T’ai Chi. Sound far-fetched? Not really. Stress is the source of much of our communal pain, and stress management such as T’ai Chi can act as a balm and dramatically heal it.

A T’AI CHI PUNCH LINE

A study done by the Transcendental Meditation Foundation (which teaches an excellent form of stress management called Transcendental Meditation, or TM) found that when a small percentage of the population of a community, school, or organization practiced TM, it had a positive impact on that entire social body. Therefore, even though many people will never practice T’ai Chi, those who do may change the entire community in positive ways.

T’ai Chi and the Environment

At first, it may not seem like T’ai Chi has anything to do with our world’s environment, but it does. The words T’ai Chi mean “the Supreme Ultimate Point in the Universe.” Every single part of the entire world exists within each and every thing, even you and me. Modern physics demonstrates this by explaining that all things are made of energy—the same energy. You, I, the sun and moon, and Earth’s oceans and mountains are all made of the same energy. We are connected. This is brought home even more as science explains that you and I and everyone on this planet have breathed an oxygen atom breathed by Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed. The world gets smaller.

SAGE SIFU SAYS

When you practice T’ai Chi and especially Sitting QiGong, you often feel at peace, somehow connected to the world around you, as if you were the center of the universe. This experience leaves you feeling as though you matter, yet it also leaves you feeling as though every other person and every other thing in this world are of vast and profound importance as well.

T’ai Chi and QiGong remind us that we are energy by immersing our mind and body in the experience of it each day. This constant immersion reminds us how closely we are linked to all things. This isn’t an illusion. The illusion is that we think we are separate from the world. The rainforest and ocean are the earth’s lungs and thermostats. Without them, we perish. To feel connected to the world is to become real. T’ai Chi and QiGong help us become more and more real.

Our decisions about how to live in our world will be healthfully influenced by the realness that T’ai Chi cultivates. This will be a powerful asset to building a cleaner, healthier world. As with all things, the world’s environmental health begins with our own state of health. Your heart beats to supply oxygen to your entire body. However, the first thing the heart feeds is itself because if it is healthier, stronger, and clearer, it is more useful to its world (your body). By feeding yourself the healing force of life energy every day, you enable yourself to be a healing force as you flow through the world around you.

The Least You Need to Know