You are here: UK Essays » Essays » Nursing » Tai Chi Chinese Relax

Cookie Information

Privacy Information

Free Essays - Nursing Essays

Tai Chi Chinese Relax

Tai chi

Birds were flying over the light blue ski and the fresh smell of flowers embellishes the clean air while two mid age women were starting their tai chi session near the beach in Atlantic City. Their movements and gestures gave a relaxing impression like an ultimate force that drove them in a different world of peace.

I did not understand the meaning of those eloquent movements up until we talked about it in class. The fact that I knew that I was required to write a paper based on a complementary therapy, I’ve decided to explore and research about this wonderful and relaxing tai chi.

Tai chi is an ancient type of Chinese art which helps individuals to relax and feel better physically and psychologically. It is composed of many different forms and postures in which the person uses it as a form of multiple movements. It is used for health, longevity, self defense, martial art, relaxation, mental freshness, spiritual development and much more.

Every tai chi movement is the philosophy of the yin and yang principles. The yin and yang is anything that is opposite force. A good health requires a balance between opposing force within the body. When one or the other part of the body is too predominant, sickness result (citation from the bk).

Nowadays, Tai chi is very popular and mostly used by older adults because of its well known effect on health and longevity. It is used everywhere, for example in nursing homes, YMCA’s, senior citizen places, ect...) Tai chi also shows improvement in patients with respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, reduces stress, anxiety and pain if practiced regularly.

Tai chi is beneficial for me because my goal is to become an adult nurse practitioner after graduation. I chose this topic because I can share my knowledge with my patients on various alternative ways on how to live better, improve their strength, balance and longevity in a natural way instead of taking medications. To furthermore my paper, I’ve red six different articles that are related to various diseases and discomforts that occurs as we age and the effect of tai chi among each.

As age progresses, people need to make some lifestyle changes such as eating healthily, exercise the mind and body. Many elderly people live an inactive life in a long term care facility. They are alone with no family and friends which can cause severe depression and other neurological conditions. Chen K-M, Hsu Y-C, Chen W-T and Tseng H-F in the “journal of clinical nursing” conducted an experiment to see the effect of yang style tai chi on those inactive elderly patients in Southern Thailand.

Yang is the most commonly practice style of tai chi (academy of tai chi and Wu Shu, website). The types of yang style that were involve in the experiment were: “repulse monkey” which involves the anterior limb movements, especially neck and abdominal rotation, “grasp the peacock’s tail” which involves the body and lower limbs swings and extensions (Chen K-M et al. p.2).

The experiment was successful because tai chi did show an improvement in those elderly lives. It decreased their physiological states for example, depression and improves their physiological well being by making their body feels much better.

I think this study was a good idea because our elderly population is increasing and the baby boomers are getting older. Ten years from now, there might be approximately twice as much elderly. By providing these elderly with a simple exercise such as tai chi, they will increase their chance to live a longer life. Sometimes, older adults don’t exercise in a regular basis which leads them to a bone or a hip fracture.

Everyone’s aware that as we age, our bone density decreases which eventually leads to the deterioration of the bone and therefore can crack at anytime. Hip dislocation is a concern among elderly which in most cases requires a hip replacement. To further my knowledge about this topic, I’ve read an interesting article on “the effect of tai chi on balance and gait performance on hip replacement patients” from Krugger Tammy at the University of Memphis.

The purpose of the study was to determine if tai chi is a great inexpensive alternative therapy that patients with hip replacement can benefit from and at the same time improve their stability and mental alertness. The twelve subjects were patients between 65 to 75 years old who had a hip replacement for the past four to five months in which they needed an hour session of tai chi twice a week for twelve weeks.

Six subjects had tai chi session and six were in the control group and followed their normal daily routine. Based on the overall results, the experimental group drastically improves on setting balance and force on the affected hip bone area longer than the controlled group. Their confidence levels were also higher than the control group. All of the experimental groups participants were satisfied with their results and agreed that tai chi were beneficial.

I think that this article was very relevant and effective because tai chi does improve balance, strength, focus and trust. I feel that this study could of use more participants in which had hip replacement in the same month. Also, the study should have run longer; perhaps a year and half instead of twelve months in order to see the effect of a regular long term tai chi.

Hip replacement can be painful just as other arthritis pain that occurs as we age. A common arthritis pain that adult suffers is rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis is a disorder that causes a deformation in the wrists, hands, ankle or feet. It affects more adults in their mid age because their body starts to denature the patient’s healthy cells (Wikipedia, website). Because of that deterioration, the affected area enlarges and puts pressure in the bone which then causes pain.

Tai chi is related to rheumatoid arthritis because of its natural therapeutic effects on muscle strength, flexibility and pain relievement. To prove that tai chi can relieve rheumatoid arthritis, Han A, Judd MG, Robinson Va, Taixiang W, Tugwell P, and Wells G from the Cochrane Collaboration conducted this study with selected participants that had rheumatoid arthritis. Throughout the experiment, some expected side effects did occur in mid week of the experiment such as tenderness and discomfort in the upper and lower body muscles. Based on the results, the participants benefited from tai chi and mentioned that they were much relieved from the arthritis pain.

Rheumatoid arthritis is not the only difficulty an adult face. Most of the time, it can be hard for a patient to get an adequate amount of sleep at night. A good night sleep is a sort of remedy that your body and mind need in order to function properly throughout the day. About 75% of adult don’t get enough sleep at night (sleep deprivation, website). The study was conducted by Li F, Fisher K, Harmer P, Irbe D, Tearse R and Weimer C, in Oregon to determine to determine the effect of tai chi in older people. The study contains one hundred eighteen men and women from age sixty to ninety two.

The participants were chosen randomly to either perform tai chi or low impact exercise for sixty minutes, three times a week for a period of six months. Varieties of tai chi were used including breathing, yang style, arms legs movement segment, multi directional weight lifting. Types of exercise movements’ use for the low impact exercise were stretching of the upper and lower body with fewer meditations than the tai chi group.

As a result, tai chi and sleep quality with tai chi improved by 42 minutes per night with a decline in sleep during the day. There was no improvement from the low impact exercise participants because of it only involve one type of exercise with less meditation than the tai chi group.

I think this study is also effective because the more you meditate, the better your mind will function, the more relaxed your muscles will be, and the less anxiety, depression or any neurological issue you will have. The only criticism that I have for this article is the fact that the experimenter didn’t perform an actual test to make sure that the patients didn’t have any sort of neurological disorder. I think asking the patient is not enough evidence because there are some patients with sleep problems that have a neurological disorder and don’t even know about it which can make this experiment imprecise.

As you can see, tai chi has a lot of positive impact through health. This last article talks about the effects of tai chi on cardio respiratory patients with bypass surgery by Chang L., Yuan S. Y., Shin L. J. Coronary artery disease is when the arteries that supply blood and oxygen to the heart muscles harden and narrowed (Medline Plus, website). Millions of people suffer from this disease in the US. A way that prevents this disease is to eat well and exercise regularly.

But not everyone in the US eat well and exercise; instead, the majority of them rely on high fatty and greasy foods from in which can build up plaques in their arteries, increases their cholesterol level and lead to heart problems. In this article, these patients were males only and were practicing tai chi for 54 minutes a day for a year. All the participants showed significant improvement with tai chi after a year. Cardiac patients will have the greatest benefits if they can continue a lifetime maintenance program of tai chi (Chang L. et al.).

Based on all these articles presented, we know that tai chi has a positive effect on people with rheumatoid arthritis, hip replacement, sleep in older people, coronary bypass surgery patients as well as major improvement in the two yang styles such as the “repuse monkey and “grasp the peackot’s tail”. Tai chi is a low cost exercise that is beneficial for everyone either healthy or ill in order to improve their health, longevity, and strength.

It is used for several chronic conditions and health. One thing that these articles showed is that all these diseases, are preventable thru lifestyle changes. Exercise is an essential in someone’s life. People can reduce their risk for a disease by more than half if exercise. Some people don’t work out either because they cannot afford a gym or they don’t have time. Exercise is about you; If you don’t care about your body, you will be misshape or obese and have diseases. If you love your body, you will have to treat it right no matter what; if not, you will always be sick. I actually learn a lot by reading these articles. I will actually recommend tai chi to anyone so they can enjoy its benefits.

Sign up and be the first to receive our latest offers: