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What is exercise?
In order to exercise the body a person must work the muscles,
tendons, ligaments, bones, nerves and cardiovascular system in a
coordinated manner.
There are many different approaches.
The Western way is usually to push and punish the body.
The Taoist method is to treat the body with care and respect; to work
the body gently and carefully.
Definition
Exercise involves putting the body under
sufficient duress in order to provoke a change: muscles get larger,
better endurance, cardiovascular fitness improves...
Without harming the body in the process.
The risk of heart failure was
more than double for men who sat for at least five hours a day outside of work
and didn't exercise very much, compared with men who were physically active and
sat for less than two hours a day.
(Dr. Deborah Rohm)
Expectations
People have all kinds of funny ideas regarding the
nature of exercise. In fact most people are not contented to exercise. They also
want to feel as if they are exercising.
Fighting against the pull of gravity at all times requires effort. The pull is
enormous.
Tensing-up, struggling, exerting, straining and pushing are all common
expectations when it comes to exercise. But are they even necessary?
Gravity
A baby cannot stand up because it's muscular strength relative to the pull of
gravity is inadequate. An adult is strong enough to stand up without realising
that they are fighting gravity.
Qigong and tai chi aim to use the skeleton in a balanced fashion within the
field of gravity, so no tensing or distorting the body's alignment is permitted.
Hence it feels effortless.
Kitsch
Wanting to feel the experience of exercising
is 'kitsch'. Indeed, the stronger you become, the less you even notice the
effort involved.
Not forcing?
Imagine cooking food on a baking tray and the tray being caked with food
afterwards. The burned-on remnants are very hard to scrub off. To scrub them
would require great effort/force.
Instead, we can fill the tray with water, and leave it overnight. In the morning
the remnants can be simply rinsed off and the tray washed as normal using
washing-up liquid.
This is 'wu wei'. Not forcing. The job is accomplished yet exertion is
not required.
The drawbacks of exercise
Not all forms of exercise are necessarily
good for you. For example, running may improve
cardiovascular health but is also very hard on the
joints.
Lifting heavy weights can cause significant tension to accumulate and - if the
muscles are large enough - adversely affect the
skeleton. Most forms of exercise have
pros and cons; especially sport.
Tear & repair mentality
The drawback of sport and mainstream exercise is that the emphasis is not upon
good body use, optimal alignment, emotional, physical and psychological
wellbeing.
The onus is upon the outcome rather than the process involved.
There is the pressure to win, to succeed, to perform, to be the best. Or to look
good; muscular, trim or sexy.
People push themselves and the body can suffer. Seeking to repair the body afterwards is not as smart as avoiding injury in
the first place.
So, people's shoulders being
up like this (lifted) it doesn't just affect their shoulders. It pushes their
neck vertebrae out - which is why they get sore necks. It actually makes their
chest lift a lot. It puts pressure on your heart. It does a whole lot of things
that are not good for you.
(Bruce Frantzis)
Ideal form of exercise
According to the book The Blue Zones it is
important to think of exercise in terms of what you can reasonably do
long-term.
The ideal form of exercise is moderate enough that
you can do it for the rest of your life. It needs to be joint-friendly, provide
a gentle workout and be sustainable.
This sounds rather like tai chi, doesn't it?
Daily exercise
Dr Michael Greger (author of How Not To
Die) recommends 90 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise every day.
The three doctors who wrote The Okinawa Program maintain that
tai chi -
with its
ancient origins and incredible health
benefits - is the ideal form of
exercise for modern
people.
Isn't
tai chi just
slow motion
exercise?
No.
Some of the training
methods are slow,
and
some are not.
As the student gains greater skill, their movements become
fluid and
dynamic.
They move at whatever speed the
situation demands.
To quote
The
Tai Chi Classics: "If the
opponent's movement is quick, then quickly respond; if his movement is slow,
then follow slowly."
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