Steven Barnes, a martial arts instructor and bestselling author, explains how Tai Chi and Qigong reduce anxiety, improve immune function, and ease arthritis and cancer side effects. He recommends 60 seconds of diaphragmatic breathing every few hours and daily practice, citing government research on the physiological benefits of joint mobility and stress reduction.
Hi. Let me turn some lights on here. Oh, okay. The lights are okay. The lights going up and down. This is Steve Barnes here. I am a New York Times bestselling author, martial artist, martial arts instructor, ecstatic husband and father. And I'm here to talk about fire dance, which is, in my opinion, is the best blend of the. Of two incredibly dynamic tools that that exists. One of those tools is the morning ritual that is used to center yourself and get ready for the day. It is amazing. And the other tool is Tai chi chuan, which is the most popular exercise system in the world. And what I've done is combine these two things, and I want to talk about the effects of each of them so that you can create your own program or join us with ours. So Tai chi, recently I came across an article. If you take a look in the resource box down, down below, you'll see a link to a government article talking about research on the effects of Tai Chi on anxiety, osteoarthritis, Covid, cancer. You know, the effects of cancer, not. Not the. Not the cells, but the. But the side effects, the thereof. Effects of aging, just, you know, fatigue and anxiety and things like that. Just, you know, so many different things that it would sound ridiculous if I were to say tai chi has benefits in. In these ways. But click on that link and take a look for yourself. I think if I were to try to understand why it would have those benefits. There are a couple different things. First is the benefits of things like osteoarthritis and lack of energy and so forth. You are doing a patterned joint mobility drill that because of balance and moving each segment of the body in sequence in very specific ways. You are working the synovial fluid in between the joints and also your lymphatic fluid. You're moving. So you are doing really healthy things for yourself just in that pattern, moving, movement. Also, to the degree that a degraded immune system can lead to a lack of capacity to compensate for or deal with various illnesses and life stresses, anything that taxes your immune system will diminish your health and energy. Now, that implies that anything that strengthens your immune system prevents it from behaving as if it is impaired, because there is certainly a maximum amount of efficiency and effectiveness that your immune system can have. You don't just want it to be more and more and more powerful because it'll start reacting to your own blood cells, but making it more efficient and effective by reducing the degree to which stress damages your immune system. That makes sense. And that works. And I think that in combination the movement, the lymphatic system focus, the working, the joint mobility, the reduction of stress, or the negative effects of stress that can hamper your immune system. It's very clear to me that right there you've got some scientific explanations for a lot of the positive benefits that people have talked about for many hundreds of years. So if you have any questions, if you're looking for a brief practice that can have a massive effect on your life, then qigong and Tai chi. Because qigong is the energy system inside Tai Chi, the way that you want to feel when you're doing it, okay, these are the moves, but the feeling of the move is what you're looking for. So that you can actually do this while you are walking, while you're going to sleep at night, when you wake up in the morning, is going to that feeling in your body of connection, of bringing your mind, your eyes, your breath and your motion all together in the same time in the same place. So check out that link. And if just commit to taking care of yourself. Commit to doing something that only takes a couple minutes a day. And if you're having a hard time seeing yourself to a couple minutes a day, then for God's sake, use the five minute miracle, which is just once every hour or every one to three hours, you simply stop what you're doing and you do 60 seconds of deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing. You go onto YouTube, you find the videos on diaphragmatic breathing. Learn it every hour. If you're under a lot of stress, if you're already feeling okay, then once every three hours, at 9 o', clock, 12, 3, 6, 9, stop and breathe for 60 seconds. Deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing. Once you do that, you'll start seeing that taking time for yourself is actually making more efficient and effective decisions all day long. So if it's critical, if there are people you need to take care of, if there are things that you need to do, you want to care for your family, your community, or your own heart and dreams, start taking that time. The whole diamond hour concept is that you can completely transform your life in no more than an hour a day, and that you can start on this process with just five minutes. So go there, take a look at that report. If you would like to join us on the Fire Dance Tai Chi march, then you go to www.firedancetaichi.com. you can also go to my new website, www.stephen-barnes.com. take care of.
