Tai Chi and Women's Health

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How do you want to enter the next phase of your life?
Practicing Tai Chi and Qigong is great for women of all ages because the exercise addresses the most pressing women’s health issues with specific techniques that resolve, or even prevent, diseases, make women stronger, and promote mental and spiritual well-being.

You can increase the expression of your empowered spirit in yourself and in the world. Learn to gather, release, expand, connect to energies in yourself, in nature and in relationships, to strengthen the physical, emotional, and spiritual body.
Here’s how.

Proper practice of Tai Chi increases bone density. It often is said about Tai Chi that "the bones become like steel wrapped in cotton." This is to say that Tai Chi emphasizes bone strength and bone-generated force over muscle-generated force. Greater fluidity, flexibility, force and strength are produced by understanding the spiraling properties of bones, a biomechanical principle unique to Chinese internal martial arts training.

You can increase bone strength by learning how to correct your posture—to become straight in gravity, so that the bones bear the weight. Bones in their natural, plumb position become stronger and joints become more fluid. If the skeleton is out of position, much energy is wasted in work done by muscles that are in tension and in opposition to each other. The person’s balance suffers. Chronic pain sets in. Wear and tear on joints increases. As the skeleton ages, the result of inappropriate articulation and weight-bearing is osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. Exercises to improve bone strength and joint health are on Eight Pieces of Brocade Qigong Practice DVD.

These physical exercises, found on the Qigong Practice DVD, are part of the holistic approach incorporated in my teaching. They are key to the success experienced by women in my classes and for reducing symptoms of chronic pain and autoimmune diseases such as fibromyalgia, arthritis, and multiple sclerosis. Reducing mental stress is the other critical component for improving vitality.

Training mind-energy movement can amplify the individual’s power to reduce both physical and mental stress as well as enhance strength way beyond normal. Women can use powerful mind-energy training to foster a peaceful heart and quiet mind. Beyond that, many are discovering new levels of intuitive sensitivity and even healing abilities.

Tai Chi and Qigong employ meditation techniques such as brain and marrow breathing, and grounding the forces and energy of the earth, sky, and Spirit, into the body. Centering is practiced by focusing one’s thoughts and movements on a central point in the core. In fact, the mind can be trained to direct energy to any place in the body to heal tissues and improve circulation. A strong intent to heal is created with these detailed visualization techniques.

One of the strongest healing visualizations is the intent of love. When a woman uses multiple ways to infuse herself with self love, then transformation begins to occur on physical, mental and spiritual levels.

Many women in my classes have eliminated breast pain, lumps, and cysts using Daily Breast Massage©, a distinct method of self massage that utilizes both movement of tissues and Mindful Massage© to increase blood and lymph circulation, and to add energy, or Qi, to revitalize the tissues. As in all massage, Qigong, and Tai Chi’s integrative movements, Daily Breast Massage© is a technique that reintegrates parts of the body and the "self" which have become disconnected or disowned.

Considering the dramatic results we have witnessed, Daily Breast Massage© may be an effective tool for prevention of breast cancer.

Meditation, massage, and direct movement is part of bringing health to the reproductive system and pelvis. We add head and neck massage and other qigong to increase circulation to the brain to balance the endocrine and immune systems and to increase communication and feedback in the neuroendocrine system. Extremely effective are exercises, such as QiCircles,© and others that I have referred to, that increase circulation to the reproductive organs and bladder. Pelvic muscles are strengthened, urinary incontinence is relieved. PMS and menopausal symptoms are reduced, migraines stopped. Almost all practitioners of these techniques report greatly improved sexual function (found on the Qigong Practice DVD). Do Tai Chi.

What can you achieve by practicing Tai Chi?
Tai Chi fosters creativity, intuition and self actualization. It increases sensitivity and awareness that can broaden your horizons. Women can use the principles of Tai Chi to empower themselves in ways that can benefit the whole world. Our feminine strength, Yin Power—the hidden force—so available through the practice of Tai Chi, forms a natural counterbalance to the masculine yang force in our world that breeds competition, war, domination, and control—leaving much of the world needy and suffering.
Women already have the power. We only need to learn how to direct it to rebalance the world. We are healers, cooperators, idea makers, artists. We can generate creative solutions to problems and trigger a global shift towards balancing yin and yang forces. All of this is possible when each woman feels herself to be empowered as an individual.

Tai Chi practice specifically addresses the most pressing women’s health issues. You can become physically stronger, with healthier tissues and more vitality. You can avoid being subjected to the medical system’s inherent neglect of women’s needs. Taking charge of your own health care means taking charge of your own life! You can even save money on health care. Aging, breast cancer, arthritis, osteoporosis and Alzheimer’s can be addressed in curative, holistic, preventive ways through the practice of Tai Chi and tapping into your Yin Power.
Understanding Yin Power includes searching for your inner self and allowing it to express itself. Spirituality, creativity, intuition, and inner wisdom give you the power to step out confidently. You can find strength in relationship with yourself, with others, with nature.

Success in my workshops and classes stems from combining western science with eastern energetics and movement. This very unique and effective approach is a mind-body-spirit training system made up of techniques that train individual parts of your body as well as their relationship to each other. In and out of class, women practitioners consistently experience profound benefits by employing the principles of Tai Chi in daily life. My students and I are all getting younger in body and wiser in mind and spirit.

Here’s How We Do It!
Tai Chi, as well as the closely related practice of Qigong, can be described in terms of physical biomechanical movement, visualization of movement of internal energy, and mental, or spiritual, intent. Practitioners integrate all of these to create effective whole-body movement, full of power and spiritual development—with a very real potential to heal.

1. Get More Energy
The first goal is bring health and energy to physical tissues, which eventually leads to a healthier, more energetic psyche and spirit. This requires a daily practice of self care and prevention, and learning about your anatomy and biological systems. Increased energy enables you to "see" the world in new ways. We use the following two techniques, among others, to gather energy.

Blood Circulation and Energy Gathering Qigong—In class, we learn simple, yet powerful, exercises that increase relaxation, health and longevity. Massage and movement are employed to improve the functioning of major physiological systems. Better blood and lymph circulation, and internal organ health, including the breasts, results. The nervous system is activated to work more efficiently. Blood pressure and heart rate are controlled, stress is reduced, and digestion improves. The endocrine and immune systems become balanced. Your joints become less painful and more flexible. You achieve peace of mind. The drain on your energy is reduced.

Grounding—Increase energy, consciousness, sensitivity and mind in the body by energetically grounding, filling, and connecting the three dantiens (head, heart, womb), and the zhong ding (central equilibrium) with the energy outside the body and moving with it, healing with it. Energy in the body, and blood and energy circulation to the brain sharpen awareness. We wake up in the moment in a state of peace.

2. Get Physical Power, Strength
The superior strength that can be generated using Tai Chi techniques is particularly suited to women’s bodies, because it teaches yin, or feminine, force rather than hard muscular force. A Tai Chi practitioner gets more strength out of being relaxed, loose, soft, yet extremely connected so that one learns how to use the body’s entire structure, especially bones, for strength. As a woman develops internal "core" strength she gains emotional strength and spiritual wealth. Core strength is important for a woman to heal, especially from old abuse. Even the women living with a "core" of fear can experience peace.

Biomechanics of Rooting—Obtain a strong "root" by understanding postural alignment in gravity, the mechanics of transferring weightedness to the feet, and lowering the center of balance.

Full body integration and connectivity—Chan SSu Chin practice, or the Biomechanics of Spiraling Bones, strengthens and connects joints and tendons into a continuous "snake." Physical strength is greatly increased through the use of integrated "bone" power rather than relying on muscular strength. Healthier bones and more flexible joints result.

3. Yin-Yang Theory Applied to Daily Life
Create balance, physical stability, and relaxation by learning how to first gather energy inward in order to project yourself outward. Take conscious control of minute aspects of your body and every aspect of the self by practicing exercises of looking inward and grounding to the earth both physically and energetically.

4. Understanding and Using Yin Force
Various Tai Chi exercises strengthen the mind’s connection to Yin Power, or the gathering and storing of energy. Yin is the flow of creativity—the manifestation of ideas, art, and intention. Yin is the current behind the outward flow of Yang, which is the expression of creativity and the qualities of higher self. Yin force uses power generated in the lower abdomen, the dantien, and is easier to cultivate in women, because they have a womb.

Dantien Energy Power—Dantien rotation exercises develop fluid movements which begin deep inside and move the extremities. Transmit energy from heaven and earth through the heart to the hands, as an individual, beautiful, wise and full of love.

Zhong Ding training cultivates awareness and energy in the spine, fostering a connection to intuition, higher consciousness and higher energy centers. Cultivating jin suspends the spine between Heaven and Earth.

5. Harmony and Nature
We all want to live on the planet in healthy ways. In the Taoist tradition, maintaining a balance of yin and yang manifests harmony with nature and with natural cycles. Tai Chi cultivates an inner harmony of movement and mental focus that expands outward into the world. Nature becomes self. Harmony with others becomes self.

Two-person exercises—Experience the power, joy and creativity released as we allow ourselves to experience a synergy of mind and heart with other individuals.

Broadsword training—Learn how to manifest expression of energy of the greater self through use of the sword.

About Susan A. Matthews, M.S.
Susan Matthews has practiced Tai Chi and Qigong for over 25 years and has experienced the wisdom and benefits of integrated health care. Employing a method of assimilating human anatomy and neurophysiology with ancient Chinese understanding of the internal workings of the human spirit, she has effectively taught students and patients in personal consultation. There are no real secrets in the remarkable stories of healing that many of her students and patients tell, and Sifu Matthews takes little credit for their achievements. But there is a trick. It is simply a trick of knowing human energetic anatomy through her own experience as a long-time practitioner of Tai Chi and Qigong—this combined with her ability to quickly and accurately assess the patient’s physical condition and understanding it as a symptom or a manifestation of their emotional, mental, and spiritual state. She then shows them how to fix the problem themselves. If you stay with her long enough and develop a home practice, you continue to learn and discover techniques for building a stronger, more relaxed whole being.

Sifu Matthews has been involved in the psychology of personal growth for 35 years. She received a Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and the Univ. of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio Graduate School in Anatomy and Neuroscience. Her research was in the dopamine, Parkinson's, stroke, spinal cord development and neuroendocrinology of the pineal gland. She also holds a B.A. in Anthropology and a B.S. in Molecular Biology.

Taijiquan and qigong strengthen and tune the body so that it becomes like a violin string.
When plucked by the mind, it is able to transmit energy with vigor:
for health, for healing, for spiritual wisdom.