The contrast with "vigorous aerobic exercises" is also interesting. The study looked at
> "Aerobic exercise interventions included climbing stairs, jogging, brisk walking, and cycling. Exercise intensity in the aerobic exercise group was monitored. The maximum heart rate was estimated as 208 − (0.7 × age in years)."
which makes you wonder how much the findings compare to the well known benefits of zone-2 HR aerobic training. "Vigorous" is a bit of weird term that suggests very different things between different people. Low HR cardio is usually not considered "vigorous" at all.
Another broader question would be whether maximizing lowered blood pressure is more important than getting people doing "vigorous" aerobic exercise, which brings a whole host of important benefits along with lowering blood pressure. Most people should get a lot more aerobic exercise and use relaxation methods, but I would probably recommend aerobic exercise first.
And "not thinking about anything" is exceptionally hard.
More seriously, I can't think of a single reason as to why it could not be at least trained; there must be ways. Not that I disagree with you, far from it.
Of course, there is nothing magic about the Tai chi sequences and many other sequences of movements executed in a similar manner should have a similar effect.
A general stretching and mobility routine could be equivalent, but only if it would be similarly complete in exercising the whole body. Presumably the manner of executing Tai chi sequences, i.e. slowly and with appropriate respiration, matters.
The advantage of Tai chi sequences or of other sequences derived from Chinese martial arts or their Okinawan derivatives, i.e. various karate kata, is that in comparison with general stretching and mobility routines they are like reciting a poem compared to reciting a few pages memorized from a dictionary.
Such sequences of movements that have a meaning are both more pleasant to execute and easier to remember in every detail, to avoid skipping some parts.
I can tell you for example, xingyiquan, baguazhang, bajiquan, wing chun, akijutsu (among many others) all (historically) share a common set of practice principles (yijinjing) with taijiquan, yet what ends up happening under the cover are vastly different. For example, at some level of practice, taijiquan is like working with a beach ball floating on water, but baguazhang is more like winding up wires in different planes of motion. Yet both share a smaller set of common principles.
Although the forms and sequences are now taught as foundations and the source of these changes, they are probably better taught as a capstone in which a practitioner builds up and constructs from primitives over the years of practice. There are some taijiquan practitioners who get into the art a lot deeper than the mainstream, and end up practicing holding specific taijiquan postures statically. (In fact, the historical taijiquan manuals shows the set of core postures, not necessarily the sequence of them).
I disagree here.
Tai Chi is quite different from what most people will do with stretching. At least anyone I know or have seen exercising.
Just as Yoga is different than holding stretches. Both Tai Chi, Yoga, and Katas are somewhat similar, and they all incorporate stylized movements executed in particular sequences
Also, there is a part of them all to master the poses and movements and in longer sequences remembering it all and remembering corrections and more.
Ritual movements and poses perhaps.
When people stretch you know about how you do it and how to do it. It does not have the mastery and memory additions.
It does that but the discipline of what, how, how long and in what sequence separates it in practical terms.
Someone posted a video below, I noticed it was a Chen practitioner, which makes sense, since I feel the Chen style is more combative and science oriented, e.g. the body is not kept upright like in the other styles, but leans in the direction of force; there's emphasis on circular movement of the body (and not just the obvious hip movement like in karate) to generate force, and distal limbs or tools are then snapped at execution to impart that force.
Zone-2 aerobics definitely has plenty of other benefits.
No idea how legit it was. I've never seen tai chi presented primarily as self-defense since.
Results:
- SBP difference was 2.4mmHg (95%CI -4.39 to -0.41mmHg) between Tai chi and aerobic exercise.
> 7 YongDingLu Community Health Care Center, Aerospace Center Hospital, Beijing, China
> 8 Traditional Chinese Medicine Department, BaiLi Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinic, Beijing
> 9 Medical Department of Beijing Gulou Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, Beijing, China
hmmm
I remember studies coming out of China saying hypnotherapy could be effective in replacing anesthesia. Then I also found out about how there are many fraudulent studies coming out of China. (1)
With 17,000 retracted studies with Chinese coauthors since 2021.
Now that’s not to say that tai chai doesn’t work, nor does it mean this is fraudulent but it does pay to learn how to read these studies with a critical eye.
There are hundreds of millions of people who learned Tai Chi is something that it is not and now they're left to grapple with it.
This is superstition being exposed by the scientific method. Tai Chi is a pretend martial art that many people enjoy practicing. That doesn't make it worthless. It's a gentle exercise that isn't identical to others so it will have a somewhat unique benefit profile if you look deep enough. But the lens of science has burned away all the other bullshit and what's left is a mundane exercise with a unique cultural context. And that's fine, but hundreds of millions have yet to come to terms with that. It is difficult to have part of your worldview completely destroyed.
Sure, your blood pressure is not going to be low while you're doing aerobic exercise.
If you do a lot of aerobic exercise consistently, your heart will get bigger and stronger, with a lower resting rate. That will bring your pressure down. It's not uncommon for endurance athletes to feel unusually lightheaded when standing up because of the low blood pressure and slow heart rate.
Both his resting pulse and blood pressure are so low a nurse examining him (for what later turned out to be allergies) once thought he was dying and brought the hospitals cardiologist running while having someone else call the heart surgeon!
I'm honestly not sure his exercise regiment is even healthy, it's a bit on the extreme side, but I doubt tai-chi can bring down anyone's blood pressure as low as his!
However it is likely that most of its techniques have been lost and only some of its training exercises converted in health-preserving exercises have been retained.
While there still are some who claim to know which were the original meanings of the movements that compose the existing Tai Chi sequences, it is likely that most, if not all, such interpretations are just modern guesses and they are not based on any surviving secret information.
Actually might be even better if you do it after a hot bath, since your muscles are warmed up. And a darkened room.
Example episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edGlTd1pNi4
I assume restorative yoga, or mindfullness mediation or just "The relaxation response" would all do the same?
With Tai Chi you are doing movements which contract and relax your muscles for shorter periods of time, which helps you relax. Also, the fluid movements can bring you to a state of effortlessness, which is of course also relaxing.
Isometric exercise, which is when you are exerting force but not moving, has been shown to be great at reducing blood pressure: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/57/20/1317
* Horse Stance (Ma Bu): This is a foundational stance in Tai Chi (and many other martial arts) that resembles a half squat. Practitioners lower their center of gravity with feet wide apart, bending the knees and keeping the spine straight. Maintaining this position requires muscle engagement similar to an isometric exercise, strengthening the legs, core, and improving balance.
* Pushing Hands (Tui Shou): This exercise involves two practitioners who work against each other's force in a controlled manner, aiming to improve sensitivity, balance, and strength. While it's more dynamic than traditional isometric exercises, it involves moments where pushing against an opponent (or yourself in solo practice) can mimic the muscle engagement of isometric training.
* Holding the Ball: This position involves standing with knees slightly bent, as if holding a large ball in front of you. This posture engages the arms, shoulders, and core muscles in a static manner, similar to an isometric hold, while also improving balance and concentration.
Paper is here: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
However, gastro-diplomacy is a real thing!
https://www.vice.com/en/article/paxadz/the-surprising-reason...
As you can imagine, RSI runs big, especially on my right shoulder.
I've had many injuries over the years, tried all sorts of treatments - massages, yoga, physiotherapy, accupuncture, you name it. They all help and sometimes even heal the injuries completely but the only thing that really helps keep it healthy longer term (that I've found) is Tai Chi.
Of couse, being the lazy bastard that I am, after a period with no injuries, I stop practicing it. Until the next injury, or some time into it after I exhaust all other options and eventually get back to Tai Chi and the healing can start properly again.
Studies like this are just click-bait.
But I agree; any other criteria that reduced the 1189 patients screened down to the final 342 is not mentioned.
And I say this as someone who hates cardio.
Everyone knows what chai tea is referring to. In the same way they understand what naan bread is.
[1] https://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over-land...
https://tv.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/c1743b56-f791-49a9-9d22-0bd5...
Anyway, it's usually not nearly that spectacular, but the same basic dynamic has historically pervaded many martial arts. Participants in one style typically only practice and spar with each other, and the "more advanced" techniques might only be demonstrated using advanced students who wouldn't get to be that advanced in the first place without being heavily bought into the whole thing, so you can get some almost cult-like dynamics coming into play.
> Xu started a dispute with Wei on social media, beginning with a demand that Wei provide evidence of his abilities, and culminating in a bare-knuckle fight in a basement in Chengdu in 2017, where Xu won convincingly in less than 20 seconds.
One example (Yang-style tai chi): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp2jWeaKrqI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D5DGpORANE
I think that's a pretty good example of what "people who can actually fight well use tai chi techniques" looks like. A lot of force is going into those throws, bodies are flying, and they aren't students doing a demonstration for a crowd. Legit.
The book "Professor in the Cage" goes into this distinction at length. It's an interesting thing to consider for people like me who are into martial arts.
It was obvious to me that the students were simply responding to what they saw the master doing. I don't believe for one second that it would have worked if the students had blindfolds on.
While some of the things he described about studying with masters had elements of the video you describe (if put less strongly), he also expressed that this was folks who had been studying for a long, long time, and moved on from the rote movements associated with Tai Chi to other aspects. He said he'd been studying awhile (at least ten years) and didn't think he could use it to defend himself.
Younger kung fu people wouldn't generally be so into Tai Chi. You'd learn it as you aged so that as you became less athletic you'd be substituting smart for strong and extending your lifetime as an effective fighter. All of this context was lost when it came to the west.
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Chengfu this is kinda what top tier tai chi people used to look like: neckless bears with fists the size of your head.
Also: weapons. In China open hand stuff is taught before you attempt the complexity of swinging round a sword but these were (and are) armed arts. Nobody shows up at a real fight without a machete or sabre I believe.
And the weapons part, totally true - I mean, humans have always beat other animals by using tools that extend their strength, reach, speed, armor, damage, etc. You do learn to fight with your hands and feet in a pinch, but whatever stick is around increases your chances 10x if you know how to use it.
There are some ancient arts that are unbelievably powerful. We have forgotten breath techniques that allow you to survive in space and travel backwards through time. It is said that some of the great warriors of the past practised these techniques. How could David destroy Goliath? With a sling? I broke my arm once and had it in a sling. Wouldn't have helped me destroy a titan. It was martial arts.
Some say Superman wasn't just a comic book story but a real man who used these techniques. Unfortunately, he defected to the Japanese and so we had to drop an atomic bomb to stop him. Many of the unique methods were lost with him.
1. You use conscious part of your mind to slowly doing isolated drills with good control and understanding of every detail. On this step conscious part controls process and unconscious part of mind is being trained by observing the drill and outcome.
2. unconscious part of mind is now trained, and you can disable conscious part which will make result better, because unconscious part is better in contoling motor functions.
Masala Chai = Chai + spices (masala)
I'm building one now using the wonderful Cosmos Keyboard Configurator [0], from the same author of the older Dactyl generator [1].
If you meant simply that a posture or position is held against the resistance of gravity or some other resistance (like a partner), then that's isometric contraction by definition, since there is muscle activity but the joints are not moving.
Still, by that definition, describing taichi as a form of isometric exercise doesn't really cut it for me. A fundamental part of practice is to continue discovering how to muscularly engage less, in order to free up the sensitivity, availability, and responsiveness of the body. The phrase "isometric exercise" doesn't conjure up that important aspect in my mind, but that's entirely subjective.
Another aspect is that in practice, there is constant motion in the joints in taichi. Holding static postures is a common and useful aspect of training, but the actual use of taichi (a martial art, after all) is entirely dynamic. To an outside observer, a movement might appear as though a practitioner is holding their arm, spine, and head in fixed positions while turning the waist or stepping, but in actuality, every joint should be adapting and moving in concert with its neighbors. Nothing is held in a fixed position--one reason being that as soon as you're committed to holding something in a fixed position, your partner/opponent will exploit that as a fulcrum to destabilize you.
If Tai Chi is indeed so deadly, it must be possible to tone it down just a little to make it 75% as effective inside a ring. Just short stop of breaking bones or dislodging joins (submission holds) and still be useful. Good martial arts and artists are flexible enough to adapt. If Tai Chi were so deadly and a practitioner gets accosted in a narrow alley, it should be flexible enough to be useful. Otherwise, it's simply not effective as a fighting system. Either that or we can make the claim that it's not a fighting system. It's a set of exercises (like pilates etc.) that achieve certain outcomes and measure against those metrics. That's fine too.
The tendency has been parodied in countless media instances. e.g.The Bruce Lee appearance in "Once upon a time on Hollywood", the youtube channel "Master Ken", The instagram account "McDojo life" etc. Master Ken does this especially well with his "Ameri do te" which is so street lethal that it's impossible to even demo some of the techniques.
I've never fought anyone, but as I've been taught the moves in Tai Chi's martial technique are generally intended to put people down quickly and hard by doing things like breaking elbows, eye gouges, and other grappling intended to severely injure the other party, essentially breaking every MMA rule that would get you disqualified.
This all varies significantly depending on the teacher, my teacher studied Chinese grappling, Mongolian wrestling, Aikido, and other arts that I'm sure he brought elements in from.
There are a lot of weird capabilities that can come out of it, but those ridges are probably the most obvious effect, yet it is among least documented yet observable effect when you go searching for things about tai chi or yijinjing.
He is indeed excellent, but if that is the level it takes to use Taiji in practice, you won't find many people in the world who can.
If it's just about learning how to fight really really fast the WW2 combatives courses seem to be the best available system. I don't think any martial art is suited to the speed and directness of modern life.
how do you know?
Nonetheless, the serious half is to be understood with a contextually reasonable definition of "thinking": "the thoughts running through the mind of an adult [when he tries to relax]". It seems fair to argue that such thoughts require a prolonged, sophisticated interaction with human society, which newborns lack.
So by that definition teenagers don't do any thinking because they are not adults?
Also by that definition nobody ever thinks at work because they are working, not trying to relax.
(Not even mentioning that the definition as given only applies to males.)
I'm suspicious of this definition and doesn't match how I use the word "thinking". But I see that if you have this definition then tautologically newborns don't do it.
You might want to revisit who’s incorrect.
Edit: Like in Italian Latte just means milk, but in English it means an espresso with steamed and then frothed milk on top, what would be called a cappuccino in Italy usually. Americans calling it a latte aren't wrong, they're just using a loanword to mean something different then the original language.
I suspect that if we venture into the streets of an American city and interview random passers-by, fewer than 10% will know that "chai" is a word that already means "tea".
In India, chai specifically means tea with milk. It’s not just any “tea”. It’s fine to use, but not entirely accurate.
Still, rude to correct someone for using what's essentially a colloquialism. If enough people use a word 'wrong' then, well, that's a new usage that we can't ignore or get prescriptive about. Because prescriptive usage is from some point of view after all. The Chai tea people have their point of view, and are correct within their community.
They also sell masala chai, which is the above + spices added.
Starbucks uses chai tea and chai tea latte to mean something else.
Some grocery stores (Trader Joe's?) sell chai as just a spice mix.
So Americans aren't really using it "differently" as much as they're using it wildly inconsistently. That's not really the same as cappuccino vs latte, is it? Latte is at least used to mean the same thing across the country.
Let me rephrase the argument then: if you've been meditating at least a little, you'll know that the thoughts running through your mind simply cannot occur in the mind of a newborn. When those thoughts go away, your mind go quiet, hence it's reasonable to assume that newborns are naturally, essentially quiet.
Besides, I'm not proposing a mathematical/exact definition here: common sense/good faith is naturally required to make sense of it. I am not redefining what "thinking" means, but locally using the word "thinking" as a loose shortcut for "the mind activities occurring when one tries to relax/meditate".
That is interesting, because i would have used the same example of meditation but to argue in the opposite direction. People intentionally need to learn how to meditate. Calming your mind takes practice and effort. The default state of being seems to be not the meditating state.
Newborns seems to have all the bits adults have, except they don’t really have a good control over them yet. I assume this is the same for their mind. Therefore i would assume they have all kind of racing thoughts. Clearly of course non-verbal ones, more like bundles of emotions and feelings. But i would assume their head is full of “proto-thoughts”. They of course are not worried if their tax returns were filled out correctly, for the simple reason that they don’t know what a tax return is. But i wouldn’t assume that their head is a calm place.
I’m not saying that I am right, and newborns have thoughts. What I am saying is that it is not obvious to me why they wouldn’t. Why would their mind be the only thing they have better control over than at adulthood?
Now maybe i just haven’t meditated enough. ;) Maybe if i just reach a higher level of consciousness it will be all clear to me. But so far you haven’t convinced me.
If you agree, then I'd shift to a weaker statement: they have a stronger potential [than adults] for being calm, but with little to no conscious incentive to exploit it, in general.
That is, assuming calmness is proportional to emotions/feelings.
Out of curiosity, I've googled "emotions innate": there doesn't seem to be a status-quo [0][1]. AFAIK, imitation is crucial for learning, but I'd be surprised if nothing had been left from the mother's womb.
[0]: https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2017/februa...
[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3z50ur/are_emot...
So the usage is all over the place.
Citation needed with the part of India referred to here.
> Masala chai is a popular beverage throughout South Asia, originating in the early modern Indian subcontinent. Chai is made by brewing black tea (usually CTC tea) in milk and water and then sweetening with sugar. Adding aromatic herbs and spices creates masala chai, although chai is often prepared unspiced.[2][3]