Best Heart Herbs

According to a twenty-year study by Kaiser Permanente, between seventy
and eighty-five percent of illness is caused by stress, meaning that in
the U.S. alone stress is costing us about one-trillion dollars per year
in healthcare costs.  Since most absenteeism is due to stress, US
business is losing upwards of $300 billion per year.  

On a more personal level, it is disturbing to realize that aging is
accelerated by stress, and stress is a growing issue with all of us.
Studies show that change is stressful, even “good” change. So as we
computer jockeys settle into the saddle of a new age of rapidly
changing information, we need an edge that can help us stay healthy,
sane, “younger” and more vibrant, even as we are often at the very
center of the hurricane of modern change, such as keeping up with new
hardware and software.

Ironically an ancient mind/body tool provides the perfect balm for our
generation’s modern problems — it is called “Tai Chi” (pronounced
tie-chee). T’ai Chi is a gentle series of relaxing motions that cleanse
the body’s tissue of accumulated stress and, by doing so, boosts all
aspects of our health systems.  According to emerging research
boosting the immune system’s strength dramatically, while reducing the
incidence of depression, anxiety, and even reducing chronic pain
conditions, are just a few of T’ai Chi’s myriad benefits.

What makes ancient T’ai Chi the perfect modern balm is that it doesn’t
require special facilities or clothing, and doesn’t even make you break
a sweat, meaning you can do it in office attire in an empty boardroom
just by kicking off your heels.  Yet, it provides the same
euphoria of a long run, the cardiovascular benefit of moderate impact
aerobics, and burns nearly as many calories as downhill skiing.

Our time is filled with paradox. A problem in this modern age stems
from the great promise of the information age — a tidal wave of data
being created by and offered to our “left brain”; that part of our
minds that is analytical, calculating, and categorizing the world. Of
course, this is a powerful and important part of who we are. This is
the part of the mind that gets things done, pays the rent, builds the
houses, and makes the cars. Our “right brain,”
however, is getting left behind in our rapidly changing techno-world,
and this imbalance of thought processes is at the heart of modern
stress.

Our right brain is the feeling, smelling, sensing . . .
enjoying part of the mind. This is the part of the mind that smells the
flowers, not to analyze the smell, but to be filled with its beauty –
and this is the part that has been left behind in the digital world.
When we go to the cyber mall, for example, our right brain doesn’t get
to play. The cyber mall is a wonderful thing that saves us time, money,
and gas for our cars (and thereby saves the environment), but there are
no Auntie Anne’s Pretzels to smell in cyberspace, or warm sunlight
streaming in through the big skylights.

So what do we do? We get the best of both worlds. T’ai Chi is a series
of exercises to balance the mind. T’ai Chi teaches us to experience
life for sheer pleasure, thereby creating balance in our busy “get
things done yesterday”
world. If you learn T’ai Chi and practice in the morning before you sit
down at your computer, your right brain (the sensing and enjoying
brain) will be turned on more. You will feel the texture of your
computer keys. You will remember to take the time to get a nice cup of
green tea or herbal cinnamon spice tea, and you’ll interrupt your
staccato keyboard occasionally to smell the tea’s rich aroma, feel the
warmth in your hands, and breathe the breath of life deeply into your
lungs.  

Although you are at the cutting edge of the information age revolution,
you are also in the garden of life. This will give you an edge in the
long run. Why? Because chronic stress diminishes our cognitive skills
and therefore, our creativity.

Einstein said, “Creativity is more important than knowledge.” Even if
we have the world’s knowledge at our fingertips, if we are too stressed
out to use the knowledge “creatively,” we are much less effective.
Plus, we’re not as much fun!

The bottom line is T’ai Chi is a set of exercises to practice enjoying
life. It’s not enough just to say, “I’m going to enjoy life more.” We
actually have to practice mind/body tools that can positively affect
our brain wave activity, in an integrative way, as T’ai Chi is proven
to do.

T’ai Chi is an extremely sophisticated mind/body science that evolved
over millennia, and is now being made available to all of us after
centuries of being closely guarded secrets in China. Even though the
practices are ancient, they are in many ways just as cutting edge as
the multi-gigabyte computer.

Don’t just be “cutting edge” with your left-brain. Go all the way and
stretch the envelope with your right brain, too, by weaving T’ai Chi
into your life. You will be forever glad you did, as you discover
balance and calm in the eye of the modern world’s ever accelerating
storm of changes rushing at us.

Bill Douglas
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/tai-chi-in-the-information-age-ancient-cure-for-modern-problems-3046.html