Tai Chi for Fall Prevention, Even in Harsh Climates"

"Minnesota has the nation’s fourth-highest rate of fall-related deaths," the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported in a recent article about how Tai Chi can prevent falls. Many studies have shown that Tai Chi helps improves many aspects of health, mobility, and balance. State commissioners of health and human services are seen here, following along in a training workshop.

Tai Chi participants can note a dramatic and quick improvement in balance and mobility by practicing even just the basics. Tai Chi is very multi-faceted, and can serve as a mindfulness exercise, as well as a martial art.

Yoga Practice Caveats and Lessons

When is a good thing too much? When it creates problems. That's the case for some yoga practitioners, as described in this New York Times Magazine article. According to yoga instructor Glenn Black,

...a number of factors have converged to heighten the risk of practicing yoga. The biggest is the demographic shift in those who study it. Indian practitioners of yoga typically squatted and sat cross-legged in daily life, and yoga poses, or asanas, were an outgrowth of these postures. Now urbanites who sit in chairs all day walk into a studio a couple of times a week and strain to twist themselves into ever-more-difficult postures despite their lack of flexibility and other physical problems. Many come to yoga as a gentle alternative to vigorous sports or for rehabilitation for injuries. But yoga’s exploding popularity — the number of Americans doing yoga has risen from about 4 million in 2001 to what some estimate to be as many as 20 million in 2011 — means that there is now an abundance of studios where many teachers lack the deeper training necessary to recognize when students are headed toward injury. “Today many schools of yoga are just about pushing people,” Black said. “You can’t believe what’s going on — teachers jumping on people, pushing and pulling and saying, ‘You should be able to do this by now.’ It has to do with their egos.”

While tai chi practice seldom leads to injury, the lessons of yoga practitioners--students and teachers alike--should give pause for thought. How far does one push oneself? How does one work out safely?

Tai Chi's Ability to Change Mobility

People who take up tai chi practice are often surprised by the positive changes it creates in their lives. A report in the New Zealand Marlborough Express captures well the benefits of tai chi for someone who's been challenged by mobility problems.
"Seventy-year-old Lynda Neame said she started modified tai chi classes in 2008 after suffering from concussion, which caused vertigo and dizziness. "I thought I would learn how to stand up straight, walk in a straight line and get control of myself."
The benefits proved more extensive. Mrs Neame also suffered from osteoarthritis and had resigned herself to gradual loss of mobility because of the pain in her shoulders, legs and hips. "I spent an hour recovering after half an hour in the garden and thought `this will be my life'."
But with the tai chi, she can now also enjoy pilates, bike riding, swimming and her beloved gardening." 
 Marlborough Express (7/13/2011)

Low-tech Play Still Popular with Children

Do you wonder about kids and the onslaught of technology and how it will affect kids, creativity, and play? "Children still enjoy playing traditional games like skipping and clapping in the playground despite the lure of mobile phones, computer games, and television, a study published on Tuesday found.
Playground games are 'alive and well ... they happily co-exist with media-based play, the two informing each other,' it said."
The two-year study by researchers at the Universities of East London, Sheffield and the Institute of Education was titled "Children's Playground Games and Songs in the New Media Age."
An interesting side-project: the British Library is collecting "oral histories" archive of childrens' games, and invites submissions of films and letters. (Reuters carries the full report.) It seems that this bodes well for the future of tai chi and other movement traditions.