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Tai chi, and more specifically chi gung, have been developed over thousands of years to affect the physical body and the acupuncture/energy meridians of the body in a positive way, balancing all systems, and preventing or decreasing illness.
Historically, in 1949, tai chi and chi gung were put to the test, when a medical crisis gripped China after the revolution. In the book Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body, Bruce Frantzis writes that ‘China found itself with less than half of its former medical personnel, both Western and traditional. The rest had been killed, fled the country, or gone underground. During the Mao era, the population increased from 400 to 800 million.’
Less than half the medical staff, and then the population doubles. What to do, what to do.
Frantzis says:
What the government did was this: they told the top tai chi teachers that they must design tai chi and chi gung programs for the health of the general population. Many of these masters wanted to keep their secrets to themselves, so their families could retain their ‘patents.’ It has been said that the government insisted that they make their secrets public, or face the extermination of their families down to the last child or relative.
Certainly not what Canada would have done.
Until more medical staff could be trained, the program operated this way:
Non-emergency patients visiting hospitals with complaints from chronic illnesses caused by poor lifestyle or overwork were directed to the hospital administrator. There, they were provided with an ID card and given the name of a nearby tai chi or chi gung practitioner. If patients wanted to qualify for another doctor’s appointment, or admittance to a hospital, they were required to have their card stamped every day for three months by a local tai chi or chi gung instructor, certifying that they had practiced.
That this actually happened somewhere in the world astounds me for a number of reasons. The violence of how it came about. The methods used to make sure the teachers actually supplied the ‘real’ healing exercises. That many people could not get access to medical care until they practiced at these exercise systems daily for three months. Terrible, and yet the last one does tickle the kinesiologist in me. Imagine, exercise as a mandatory part of the medical system.
And the fate of this Chinese stopgap measure? With such a draconian medical system, you’d think resentment alone would have torn it asunder. And yet, it worked. Frantzis says:
Tai chi and chi gung managed to keep health matters as stable as they could be kept given the poor sanitation and starvation diet most lived with. For the Chinese to get through this incredibly rough period, from the mid 1950s on, it is estimated that between 100 and 200 million people practiced tai chi or chi gung daily.
Canada spends a tremendous amount of money promoting healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle habits, but it will never force them on its people. We have choice. We are a democracy. We can choose to be inactive or we can choose to be active.
I made a decision a long time ago that a couch potato lifestyle was going to be the death of me, so I don’t even think about being inactive anymore. Movement has become part of who I am. As have tai chi and chi gung.
Luckily, we don’t have to go back in time to a medical crisis in China to experience all the benefits of movement and health. We can do it in the here and now, gaining immeasurably from whatever exercise system we choose to work with.
Movement Is Life.
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Photo Credit: Lukasz Klejnberg
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