T'ai Chi: The Secret To Long-Lasting Fitness

Do you know what T'ai Chi is? T'ai Chi is a great form of low stress exercise that can help you lose weight. It gives you special alone time to enjoy how your body feels as it lets go of stress and relaxes. It is an easy routine to stick with. The good feelings it promotes in your body help you learn to love your body more and to accept it the way it is. Surprisingly, the more we accept the way we are now, the easier it is to change to the way we want to be.

T'ai Chi's helps weight loss by relieving stress and nervous tension. Often when we snack at night, we are "nervous snacking." This is an attempt to repress feelings of unease by stimulating our taste buds and other sensations. That's why we usually want greasy, salty or sweet foods to munch on at night when we are trying not to feel our stress; the tastes distract our minds.

Besides stress relief, T'ai Chi does more to promote healthy weight loss. T'ai Chi's physical, emotional, and mental centering helps us feel good. The Chinese call this state "smooth Qi," while modern psychologists call it "homeostasis." But no matter what you call it, it feels good.

As we awaken to the T'ai Chi state of "feeling good," we become more aware of what habits reinforce that feeling. We realize that junk foods detract from a smooth Qi. We also begin to understand in deep ways that proper sleep, diet, and making time to enjoy life all contribute to our smooth Qi. The more we feel that way, the more we want to feel that way. This helps our body to find a healthy weight effortlessly as we learn to love things that promote this feeling, such as light healthy foods.

T'ai Chi tones muscles and promotes a more elegant elongated form. Many exercises are designed to "buff us up," giving us a shorter, stockier appearance. T'ai Chi, on the other hand, may actually lengthen the body over time, making us more lithe. As we age, believe it or not, tension shortens our bodies more than gravity. The relaxed movements of T'ai Chi allow the muscles to release tension as they seemingly let go of one another and release their grip on the bones and connective tissue. We can actually lengthen each time we do T'ai Chi.

T'ai Chi does wonders for the joints. As we age we often lose mobility. There are two reasons we lose mobility. The first is because calcium deposits build up in our joints. The second is because our liquid systems function less well when we are sedentary. Therefore, our joints get more brittle and stiff.

T'ai Chi can solve both problems better than any other exercise. T'ai Chi movements require the body to rotate about 95 percent of the ways it can be rotated, thereby working out the potential calcium deposits wherever they may be lurking. T'ai Chi also stimulates the liquid systems of the body to keep our joints and other tissue more supple, even into advanced old age.

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