To heal it is seems to be necessary to go beyond health and sickness. To understand why one needs to be healthy, to have a conscious or unconscious reason to be healthy. Tai Chi Chuan points beyond health, every single exercise is a means to spiritual attainment. It wants to create a very healthy and durable body, a transformed body, that is not only healthy, but capable of enduring exhausting meditation and all the energetic processes, that come with it.
Most people train Tai Chi Chuan for the strong healing, life improving effects of the training. Actually many people come with a certain condition, they want to change.
Very often an accident brings someone to train Tai Chi Chuan, and creates the drive, to train deep and hard, until not only the affliction is healed, but also the spiritual and martial aspects of Tai Chi Chuan become realized.
In our courses people who train mainly to heal an affliction, train together with people, who are more interested in the martial aspect. The martially interested people stay for the second part of the training, which is harder and for the sparring sessions.
While one can force a healthy body through a tough training, one needs to be very aware of every exercise, if there is any physical problem. This awareness increases the quality of the training. In that way someone with a physical affliction often reaches higher levels faster, then someone who is healthy and enjoys the luxury, to train wrongly.
There are many aspects of Tai Chi Chuan, and Internal Arts in general, that contribute to activate the self healing capacities of the body. I will list some of these.
If the ligaments (fascia) are cleared of knots, stretched, activated, strengthened, the bones will be realigned, the body is rejuvenated, runs smoothly and elastically. As a result of that training the fluids and energies (Qi) of the body run stronger, carry toxins out of the body, the new efficiency of the body frees up energy for healing, creates overall health, and well being.
The calming of the, the emotional release and the eventual experience of oneness of awareness is another important factor for healing and is intertwined with the process of opening the body and removing blockages.
Another simple, but effective aspect, is the possibility, to express healthy aggression and feel ones power within contact with another human being. This release of tension has a relaxing effect on the nervous system, and allows the body to go into healing processes.
FURTHER READING
Broken Sword, Trauma and Internal Arts