Why is Tai Chi so popular these days? And why do 180 MILLION people worldwide practice Tai Chi every day? It is because those who do practice every day have a longer, more active life than those who don't, and their health potential increases dramatically. Other exercises dissipate your energy, while Tai Chi accumulates it, leaving you feeling refreshed when you finish. The slow, dance-like speed of Tai Chi creates balance, flexibility and calmness. With an emphasis on deep breathing and using mental imagery, Tai Chi integrates your mind with your body, and is very effective at relieving stress. Recent medical studies confirm what these Tai Chi practitioners have known for centuries - that just 20 minutes a day of Tai Chi can dramatically improve your balance (and significantly cut the risk of falls among older people), improve your leg and lower body strength, increase flexibility, help with arthritis pain, aid in the recovery of injuries, and a recent study presented at the American Heart Association meeting even found that just 12 weeks of Tai Chi resulted in a small but significant drop in blood pressure in older people. Not all Tai Chi programs, though, have as their focus health and healing. In fact most Tai Chi styles come from a martial arts background where the main focus was on effective fighting, with any health benefit just a side benefit. That is where our Tai Chi program is different. Our Tai Chi style is called Chi Kung/Tai Chi, and it was developed from the healing arts called Chi Kung rather than from the martial arts. And since our Chi Kung/Tai Chi style focuses on the health aspects of Tai Chi, it can allow you to more quickly and easily access the health benefits of Tai Chi compared to the martial Tai Chi styles. How effective is our exclusive Chi Kung/Tai Chi style? With over 500,000 videos of our program sold, we know that people find our program easy to learn. And we hear from people every day how our 20 minute daily Tai Chi practice has really helped to improve their health and well being (see reviews at left). With the increase in popularity of Tai Chi has come a wave of Tai Chi Videos, and this can make it difficult to sort out which type of Tai Chi or Tai Chi Video might offer the most health benefits and be something you could actually learn on your own. So what should you look for when looking to learn find the best Tai Chi video? This guide will cover the basics you should look for when buying a Tai Chi Video:
You will also see why we believe that our easy to learn, 10 step Chi Kung/Tai Chi practice, along with the exclusive warm-up exercises and self massage and acupressure techniques we include in our Tai Chi routine, offers the most powerful Tai Chi health system on the market. And our Tai Chi program is easy enough so that almost anyone can learn. We believe so strongly in our Tai Chi video that we offer an unconditional 365 day money-back guarantee. So you can try out our Tai Chi program for yourself for a full year, and if it doesn't give you more energy and help you feel healthier, you can return the video with no risk or obligation. Another Sample of our Video Here's another sample of the video - the warm-up exercises that we do before our Tai Chi Form. Sample From DVD Video: Warm-Up Exercises
Why Tai Chi is Different From Other Forms of Exercise and Offers Such Health Benefits Most forms of exercise dissipate your energy, leaving you tired and hyper at the same time! The slow, gentle, dance-like movements of Tai Chi accumulates energy while calming you down, allowing you to feel refreshed when you finish. Tai Chi creates an awareness of and influences dimensions of our being that are not part of traditional exercise programs. Most exercises do not involve the meridian system used in acupuncture nor do they emphasize the importance of adding mind intent and breathing techniques to physical movements. When these dimensions are added, the benefits of exercise increase exponentially. If you are mostly interested in learning how to relax, gather more energy and reduce stress in your life, then Tai chi is right for you. As for Tai Chi's health benefits, many studies have shown Tai Chi to be extremely effective with slowing the effects of aging, increasing balance and reducing falls, reducing stress, minimizing the effects of diabetes and increasing the potential for preventing strokes and extending life. The fact that it is now encouraged by HMO's and Kaiser Permanente (mostly due to public demand) shows its effectiveness. Another thing to consider is the fact that Tai Chi is practiced by over 80 million people daily! This makes Tai Chi the most popular form of exercise on Earth! It is part of the 4,000 year-old system of Traditional Chinese Medicine practiced in China and now recognized by the U.S. National Institute of Health's Office of Alternative Medicine as an important method of Alternative Health Care. Thirty-four medical schools have included Complimentary Alternative Medicine programs in their basic curriculum and some have set up departments to incorporate Tai Chi into their research. The main conclusion from many studies is: Tai Chi helps the body heal itself. Another advantage is that Tai Chi is available to everyone, regardless of ability, age, belief system or life circumstances. Imagine this: 21st century- school children learning the health enhancement and self-healing techniques of Tai Chi as part of their PE class; office workers taking Tai Chi breaks, just as they do in China and Japan; seniors participating in gentle movement with breathing exercises to enhance balance and quality of life; care givers embracing a personal practice and finding renewal in their service to others; spiritual aspirants using Tai Chi to enhance their meditations and Tai Chi practice being instituted into prisons as a means to reconnect with life. Remember, society also benefits when an individual or a group of individuals assumes responsibility and takes action for their own health and healing. Why Are There So Many Different Styles of Tai Chi and Do Some Styles Offer More Health Benefits than Other Styles? There are five major Tai Chi schools and hundreds of offshoots of those original five. The style and video that is best for you is determined by the reasons you want to do Tai Chi. Many Tai Chi styles and videos emphasize the martial art aspect, and so these styles can emphasize more difficult body positions (lower stances, etc.) and longer forms (A Tai Chi form is the "dance" you learn made out of combining different individual movements. Many Tai Chi systems taught on video based on martial Tai Chi have 20 or 30 movements to learn even in their "short" form.) These longer, more physically exacting forms can be difficult to learn and are one of the reasons many people start then give up on Tai Chi. In contrast, there was a smaller school of Tai Chi that developed that emphasized the health aspects of Tai Chi rather than the martial aspects. This is the style of Chi Kung/Tai Chi that I have spent many years learning - and in fact I was the first Western person allowed to study with the world's leading Master in this health style of Tai Chi. I quickly realized that one of the benefits of this "Chi Kung/Tai Chi" style was that its movements weren't strenuous and didn't require any special flexibility or physical strength to perform. That is why we've found the Chi Kung/Tai Chi style to work so well for our students - it is an easy to learn style that lets students quickly access the health benefits of Tai Chi. Do you need to learn a lot of separate movements to get the health benefits of Tai Chi? Tai Chi Forms traditionally had 50 or more separate movements that were strung together to make up the "Form". Even "short" forms can have 20 - 30 movements to learn. And while these Forms can be beautiful to watch and fun to do, they just take a long time to learn - anywhere from 6 months to a year to learn just the basic movements. I've found, though, that if your interest is just getting the health benefits from Tai Chi, you don't need to learn these long forms. After many years of experimenting I came up with a Form that is just 10 movements - and I've concentrated on the easiest movements to learn as well. In my experience, these movements are simple enough that even students in their 80's are able to learn them in a fairly short time (weeks, not months). My goal was to simplify the Tai Chi Form - but keep its essence so that people would still get the health benefits. Why is it important for the Tai Chi video to offer instruction with the instructor both facing both toward and away from the viewer? One of the things I quickly learned when I began teaching Tai Chi over 20 years ago was that my students learned more easily when I demonstrated the movements facing them and then practiced the movements with me facing away from them (so that they could then just follow along with my movements - now in the same direction that they were moving). And I've incorporated this into my video - I have a full demonstration of the Tai Chi Form both from the front and behind so you can clearly see the movements and easily be able to follow along with the demonstration as shot from behind. Strangely, most Tai Chi videos don't seem to understand how important this is and only show the instructor teaching facing the camera. This just makes learning these Tai Chi forms more difficult than necessary - especially if you are just learning Tai Chi. Why Should You Buy My Tai Chi Video Instead of One of the Others Available?
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