When most people think of tai chi, they think of the slow and meditative movements that are the signature of this art form.  And a logical question that arises for people who want to lose weight is, “How can slow-motion movement burn a lot of calories and help me lose weight?”

The answer is it comparatively doesn’t burn a lot of calories — yet it is a great art to learn to help with weight loss.  To explain this paradox we have to understand where our focus belongs for weight loss:  Less on the exercise side of the equation, and more on the eating side of the equation.

While exercise is important for our health and all forms of exercise can be good for us, the key to losing weight is making changes in our eating habits.  We gain weight because we eat the wrong foods, we eat to big a portion, we eat too frequently due to stress or boredom or emotional imbalances.

Tai chi, being a meditative artform, helps us to become more mindful and aware of what and how we eat, and gives us the tools to make real and lasting changes in our eating and other lifestyle habits.  You could play tennis all day and burn a lot of calories, but that won’t help you deal with the mental demons that make you eat poorly.  But if you practice tai chi regularly, you’ll get healthy exercise with modest calorie burning.  But more importantly, you’ll make real progress in significantly reducing calorie intake as you become more relaxed and in control of your own mind.

When’s the last time you saw a commercial for tai chi while watching American Idol or CNN news?  I’ll have to take your word for it because I don’t watch anything like that, but I’m willing to bet the answer is never.

Instead, you see commercials for drugs and medications (both prescription and over-the-counter), and for the fast foods that create the illnesses that the drugs and medications purportedly help cure.

The reason you see the commercials that you do is because those are multi-billion dollar industries and they can afford to spend a lot on marketing to get you to believe what they are saying.  And the tai chi industry?  Only a few legitimate instructors ply their trade in any given city, and most can barely scrape together the gas money to go teach their classes never mind spend millions to promote the real benefits of the art they are teaching.

But when it comes to what works for good health, the dollar amount spent on advertising has zero relationship to the effectiveness of the product or service being promoted.  Drugs and medications do not make you healthy — they simply mask the symptoms caused by an unhealthy imbalance in your mind/body (which is caused in great part by the unhealthy food — and I use that word loosely — that we are suckered into eating by the food industry) .

If you do a little bit of free on-line research you will discover the real, centuries-old benefits of tai chi that you won’t know about if you sit zombie-like with the TV remote in your hand.  You will need an authentic teacher to learn tai chi and the classes will cost you a bit, but here’s a tip to help pay for it:  Eat real food at home instead of the fast foods and pre-packaged foods promoted on TV, and cancel your cable TV subscription.  You’ll be so healthy you might not even need tai chi.

Here at The Peaceful Dragon we just held our annual Chinese New Year Festival, followed by our banquet awards and promotions dinner for our students.  A special thanks to all who participated in the festival — close to 400 people attended and I believe every one of them had a great time.

The Chinese New Year, sometimes called the Spring Festival, is the biggest and most important holiday in China and many neighboring countries.  As American cities have become more international, this celebration has taken hold and is now enjoyed by millions here in the US as well.

Traditionally, Chinse family members travel from near and far to be with each other for the new year.  Weeks of cleaning and cooking take place in preparation, and then days of celebration mark the coming of new opportunities in the new year.  Last year I had the good fortune of being in Hong Kong for the Chinese New Year, and came to appreciate just how exciting and meaningful this time of year is for Chinese residents.

While I couldn’t be in Hong Kong this year, celebrating with our “Peaceful Dragon” family was just as fun and rewarding.

On the New York Times web site this morning I read an article about a young woman teaching yoga without the usual ”philosophy” and traditions — she has stripped the practice down to mere exercise. 

To some, this is just what the doctor ordered:  A simple way to get a healthy workout without all the mumbo-jumbo with Hindo overtones and without going home with your clothes smelling like incense.  But for others this is heresy:  Yoga is a lifestyle that can’t be separated from the philosophical and spiritual, and to make that separation is to make it something other than yoga.

We get the same kinds of partisan perspectives with martial arts and tai chi.  Some argue that the only purpose for these arts is to learn how to fight.  After all, they say, these are martial arts.  Others argue that the combat aspects are secondary at best, and maybe much further down the totem pole.  The real benefits are the peace of mind, fitness, increased energy, improved health, and so on.

I have my views on each of these perspectives, but it’s not important what those views are.  What’s important to me is that I remain free to have my views without being whipped on by those with differing views.  Why is everyone so hell bent on trying to get everyone else to agree with them?  What’s wrong with accepting the fact that some people like yoga to get skinny, and some people like it to get enlightened?  And some people like martial arts to fight real well (perhaps they are ornery people?) and some people like martial arts to be more at peace.

Like Ghandi said of religion, there should be room in this world for all of our views.  Too many insular groups get stuck on their own way of thinking without leaving room for other perspectives.  That kind of group think generally does suck.

I hope you’ll take a moment to read the following excerpt, and take a guess as to where it is from :

“In the past, people practiced the Tao, the Way of Life.  They understood the principle of balance, of yin and yang… thus they formulated practices such as… stretching, massaging and breathing to promote energy flow, and meditation to help maintain and harmonize themselves with the universe.  They ate a balanced diet at regular times, arose and retired at regular hours, avoided overstressing their bodies and minds, and refrained from overindulgence of all kinds…

…These days people have changed their way of life… They do not know the secret of conserving their energy and vitality.  Seeking emotional excitement and momentary pleasures, people disregard the natural rhythm and order of the universe.  They fail to regulate their lifestyle and diet, and sleep improperly.”

You might guess it’s from any number of current books or magazines advocating a more natural or integrative approach to taking care of our health and well being.

But in fact, this excerpt is from The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine (translated by Maoshing Ni, Ph.D), one of the fundamental texts on Chinese medicine.  When was this classic text written?  Sometime in the THIRD MILLENIUM BCE!  Shows how far we haven’t come in the last 2500 years.

I’m intrigued by how much publicity Amy Chua’s new book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother has received.  You may have seen the excerpt in The Wall Street Journal last week (I linked to it on my Facebook page – and it’s been all over the news) but if you didn’t it’s still there and I suggest you go read it.

In a nutshell, she claims that Chinese mothers are superior because they cut their kids no slack and demand excellence, both in academics and extra-curriculars.  The excerpt has probably caused such a stir because of the severity of her approach:  As a Yale professor, she accepts nothing less than straight A’s from her daughters. They are not allowed to watch TV, play video games, go to sleep overs — or any of the other things that American children enjoy.

She claims it is the cultural way Chinese mother’s show their love and ensure bright futures for their children; by contrast she says Western mothers coddle their kids and create artificial self-esteem based on minimal achievement.  Her critics, of which there are many, argue that Asian children have a higher suidice rate and don’t grow up to be well-balanced, spontaneous and creative individuals.

I know there is more than one way to skin a cat, and as with many things I think culturally we can learn from each other.  We probably should shun the extremes of both our own culture and that of others, and find the best of what lies somewhere in the middle:  The balance of Yin and Yang.  What do you think?