Financial investments many of us spent a life making seem to be disappearing in a puff of dark smoke these days, leading many people to wail about a world spinning out of control. There’s a certain amount of gritty truth to objective numbers and certainly there are those folks out there whose food and shelter are in peril. The rest of us, however, might benefit from a change in perspective about what we can and cannot control: we can’t control the size of our 401K right now, but we can control our reaction to seeing it reduced; we can’t control constraints on our lifestyle and our choices, but we can control how we respond to those newly imposed limitations. We can, in short, train our body to react less strongly to stressors, and train our minds to be less attached to loss and more inclined in the direction of a deeper and wider view of life.

Mind/body training helps with precisely these things, and tai chi may be the finest mind/body training around. Tested by time, it has long helped everyday folks improve their health and extended their youth. In days of yore, Daoist mountain hermits bound the art with herbs, meditation and strict diet in pursuit of immortality, and ancient rulers gained a dramatic advantage over their enemies by plumbing its philosophical depths. Tai chi still confers these benefits today, and as such is the best tonic for loss of property and perspective. Strengthening our body raises our resistance to stress and makes us much less vulnerable to expensive-to-treat afflictions, including the degenerative diseases of aging. Training our mind helps us cultivate self-awareness, discipline, spiritual insight, and precisely those mental powers that help us avoid anxiety, depression, and the unwise urges that lead to more costly mistakes.

Think of tai chi as a kind of internal alchemy, a system founded on a set of guiding principles and deepened by a unique study of body mechanics and energetics. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) underpins it, and although that medicine was “sanitized” into “Maoist Medicine” during China’s so-called Cultural Revolution, tai chi still possesses the old system’s zing, the intuitive understanding of body systems that comes from 5000 years of paying attention. Daoist thinking provides another resource to the system, and the more competitive, crowded, challenging, and bereft of wild places the world becomes, the more relevant we find alchemical principles such as use force against force, and follow the flow of nature.

Perhaps tai chi’s clearest benefit is the way it restores wuji, the Chinese word for balance. Physical wuji helps range of illnesses from diabetes to Parkinson’s and stimulates the immune system. Mental wuji makes us calmer, more able to see different angles clearly, and reduces the swings of mood that come when the world around us seems chaotic. If things seem alarmingly out of kilter or scary to you right now, regain your equilibrium with tai chi practice. Experience for yourself how this ancient art helps you take quiet stock of what is really important. Be pleasantly surprised by how it enhances your mental equilibrium and deepens your positive experience of being alive. Wander by the park, the Y, a school or community center and step into the mind/body world of tai chi.

The Origins of Tai Chi