Tai Ji with H.E.A.R.T

by Cynthia Ghiron

Published in: Tui Shou, Newsletter of the Living Tao Foundation, November 1999,
Issue #6.

For a number of years, I taught Tai Ji at Boulder Medical Center's H.E.A.R.T. (Healthy Environment for Artherosclorosis Reduction Treatment) Institute to patients who recently had a heart attack, angioplasty, or bypass surgery. The Institute consisted of four components, which were nutrition, exercise, group support, and stress management.

Last fall, my responsibilities were increased to include facilitating the entire stress management portion of the H.E.A.R.T. Institute. This included sharing a version of Jon Kabat-Zinn's stress management model (designed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center), as well as an experiential portion that gave the participants a chance to use stress management tools such as full body relaxation. Tai Ji, meditation, and yoga. I became part of a team that included a cardiologist, nutritionist, exercise physiologist, and psychotherapist. This gave me the opportunity to implement a combination of contemporary approaches to stress management.

Jon Kabat-Zinn's and Dean Ornish's programs typically focus on yoga. Because I had been teaching Chungliang's Tai Ji form successfuly for years, I brought this form into the program as a stress management tool. I was able to share the practice and value ohow it could be beneficial in reducing stress.

The results were amazing. People's appreciation for the Tai Ji form was very moving. One student commented, "If I had been taight Ti Ji at the age of five like the Chinese, perhaps I might not had had a heart attack!" He found that Tai Ji improved his quality of life. For example, when he stopped to do Tai Ji on his morning walks, he felt that his day was more peaceful. He found that Tai Ji became a doorway for healing.

Other students who practiced regularly dropped as much as 30 points in their systemic and systolic blood pressure. One students experienced this drop after doing just one Tai Ji session. Other Tai Ji students have found that they could do Tai Ji at their desk or in a partk, and lower their blood pressure into normal range. This helped them feel more in charge of their symptoms.

Another student had been in the hospital for a procedure the morning before her first Tai Ji class. She said that when she was doing Tai Ji, she felt like the was going to be okay again for the first time since her heart attack.

The Tai Ji was profound. We opened with our arms outward to do the first move. We reached to the earth and circled our arms about our head to embrace the sky energy. They began to connect to the feeling of "chi" energy from the Tai Ji and found that they were learning to trust it. I noticed that one woman, who had recently suffered a heart attack, had tears flowing down her face. As I looked around the room, I noticed that many other students were tearful as well. One of the men in the group, a psychiatrist, said that he was experiencing feeling himself in a way that he hadn't felt since he was a teenager. Another participant, a corporate executive, asked if we could do the first move again so that he could feel what the others were feeling. There was no need to go beyond embracing heaven and earth and embracing tiger that day.

Tai Ji became a stress management tool that helped establish mindfulness (a moment-to-moment awareness) that allowed the H.E.A.R.T. participants to respond to stress rather than react with the "fight or flight" response that could lead to short and long term health problems. By using mindfulness, the students learned that in the present moment, change was possible. With this awareness, they could choose more effective communication, problem-solving, or emotional strategies which allowed them to respond to stress in new ways.

This article is written in gratitude to my friends in Vevey for their support, as well as all my Living Tao friends.