Tai Chi - a gentle way to keep healthy

Tai Chi Quan is one of the most famous martial arts in China. It was founded by a Wu Dang  master Zhang San Feng in 12^th century. Tai Chi Quan is widely practised by people of all age groups across China and has been for many centuries. In fact, 24-form  or 42-form Tai Chi Quan (simplified forms) class is offered at most Chinese universities nowadays. 

Why Tai Chi Quan is decidedly popular in China and in many overseas countries? I had an opportunity to learn Wu Dang style Tai Chi Quan, which includes 108 forms and over 700 movements, ten years ago. Based on Chinese traditional medical science, the thesis is that a disease is caused by inner energy flow blocks. Therefore, according to the master Taoist, all the movements of Tai Chi were designed to help human being’s enhance their inner energy system to flow smoothly and for people to breathe deeply. 

The essence of Tai Chi is to help people return to their natural state. As we all know, when a baby is in the mother’s tummy, he/she relies on the navel to absorb nutrition. But after a baby is born, the navel function is obviously lost. Tai Chi helps people to rebuild the connection between nature and the human body through focusing on this pivotal part. 

When you do any Tai Chi movement, bear in mind the concept of Yin Yang and a cycle. The Yin Yang picture is based on a navel’s cross section. Every movement has to be as smooth as a consistent cycle. Pick your comfortable position. Don’t think too much, just follow the flow of your body and you will feel refreshed after the practice. It normally takes 36 minutes to complete the entire set of 108 forms. However, it varies dependent on each person’s own pace. There is no strict restriction regarding the speed. The optimal times to practice are between 7am to 9am or 7pm to 9pm. It is recommended that you start the movement facing south as our body is a magnetic subject. This direction is aligned with the magnetic direction of the earth.

To see real benefits of Tai Chi are only fully realized through persistence. Your body will let you know how good it is after 3 months if you practise it every day.

There are side benefits of doing Tai Chi. Take myself as an example, I became more focused and calm after practising Tai Chi for 10 consecutive years. It also teaches me that a person must be humble and unassuming. This leads to no resentment, just like a cycle. 

Don’t let the wrong correlation of cause and effect impact your decision-making

Causes and effects are the most often discussed topic from a personal, an organization or a government perspective.  However, often times in haste, or lesser quality analysis or other subtleties, we can get inadvertently make the wrong correlation between cause and effect.

Here are some examples: 

According to an analysis, banks found out that well-operated companies seem to borrow much more money than the less profitable companies. However, it is because a company’s financial condition is good that a bank is willing to lend money in the first place.

There is a hilarious real story that in 1990, a US laboratory reached the conclusion that spiders depend on their legs to listen. They had an experiment that they made some noises close to a spider’s legs and the spider ran away immediately. But after they cut its legs, the spider did not move.  The confusion was that without legs, their hearing was compromised. Even a child would realize that a spider cannot move without legs. 

In 1992, an American plasma physics laboratory conducted a research project about nuclear fusion. In order to convince the US government to continue to fund this project, the professor did some research and reached the conclusion that a nation uses a great amount of energy has a positive correlation with the longevity of a country. But we all know that there are many other factors that influence longevity. For example, a nation is a developed country and has better medical facilities and people can afford a healthy lifestyle, technology presents the opportunity for higher and longer economic advantage, .etc. 

The impact of false cause and effect correlation is substantial.  There are mainly two reasons why people allow this kind of bias to happen.

1. We tend to believe in previous knowledge and/or our past experience. However, in a rapidly changing era, what proved to be true in the past may not work under current circumstances. We need to be more open and allow for different possibilities.

2. We trust authority. During the French colonization, Vietnam had an infestation of rats. The French government decided to pay $$/rat to people who could kill rats. But the result was astounding that the number of rats increased because people raised rats and killed them to qualify to make money instead of catching them in the wild, which was the obvious target.

In an internet world, it’s much easier to make a false correlation between cause and effect. For example, some dishonest analysts promote that the price of a particular stock will increase the next day to 5,000 people and send another email saying that the price will decrease to another 5,000 people.  They continue to do the same for other stocks.

In the end, there will be a small group of people who would see the results are always correct. These people will trust that the organization can accurately predict the stock movement and may give these dishonest analysts, who are engaged in illegal activity, their hard earned money. Once the criminals receive the money, they will disappear.