Masters of Health Magazine October 2022 | Page 42

Lower Anxiety

With Tai Chi

by Teodor Ardeleanu

Founder of The Ki Train Method

Tai Chi Practice May Help to Dissolve Persistent Thoughts

Before I began my journey with Tai Chi, I was already a martial arts practitioner with over twenty years of training experience. Because of this background, I was more accustomed to fast, powerful moves rather than slow and gentle ones.

I had to go through a total paradigm shift in order to understand how to relax my body while moving. Now (over 13 years later, as of this writing), I teach others daily and am amused when I see new students struggle with the relaxing part, finding it too complicated. I smile when I witness their resistance to relax because I was exactly the same in my early days of learning Tai Chi.

 

While immersed in Tai Chi practice, one of the effects I noticed repeatedly was the absence of unwanted thoughts from my mind. At first, I didn’t know how to explain it. It was truly an unexpected phenomenon. At the time, I didn’t understand that a physical activity could have such a great impact on my mind. I simply labelled it as magic, like other things we cannot explain.

 

Many years later, I came across the concept of neuroplasticity and began to experiment further. I reached the conclusion that practicing Tai Chi regularly has the power to clear the mind’s unwanted thoughts and associated emotions. This is the main reason why many people categorize Tai Chi as a moving meditation.

 

Some thoughts are designed to activate stiffness in relative areas of the body. This is a result of blockages within the energy streams in the meridians. It is how the mind communicates with the body. Thoughts and emotions are manifestations of yin/yang energies. When yin and yang are in perfect balance, we are back in our original divine form of emptiness/nothingness. Whenever we emit a thought, an energy impulse (emotionally charged with a mix of yin and yang energies) is launched into the universe. According to the energetical imprint of the thought, a resultant vibration will translate into physical reality.

 

We emit thousands of thoughts every day while awake. The only moment of thought reset is during sleep, which is just like resetting a computer that has become overloaded by running tasks and software applications.

 

Tai Chi functions in a similar way to sleep, except that we remain awake during the process of clearing the mind to reach the original point of emptiness. This is possible because we focus on our physical movements while using both sides of the body (and respectively the brain) simultaneously.