Follow Me Tai Chi will be open for new drop in classes beginning May 6th at the Universal Light Centre at Coxwell Avenue and Danforth Avenue just steps from the Coxwell Subway stop. The class will be offered on Tuesday mornings at 10 am and/or Wednesday after work at 5:30pm.
This NO MEMORIZATION class will feature postures, breathing and meditation.
If you have never tried Tai Chi or you have tried the traditional way of learning and found it unsuccesful you will love this class.
Class structure:
A. Chi (energy) boosting Qigong warm up for 15 minutes.
B. Tai Chi forms for 45 minutes
C. 10 minute meditation.
D. 5 minutes self massage.
You will leave feeling relaxed, refreshed and positive.
Read further down the blog for some of the benefits of these arts.
Due to space and my desire to have a small class,a limited number of spaces is available.
Participants may take the first class free by registering by phone at 416.463.1719
or email me and I will help you!
NO MEMORIZATION - YOU WILL LOVE THIS CLASS!
*Linda Tenenbaum's opinions & interesting articles about Tai Chi and Qigong. followmetaichi@gmail.com
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Companies can increase productivity by offering Tai Chi classes to their employees.
1. “Tie”-Chi can save companies big money.
2. Tai Chi can be done in work clothes in an office.
3. Tai Chi can help employees get along.
Tai Chi’s a Natural for the Office
One thing that makes Tai Chi uniquely ideal for the workplace is that it requires no special clothing or equipment. If you have 15 minutes and a quiet room, you are all set to experience some amazing stress reduction and energy boosting.
Since Tai Chi is so slow and gentle, you often need not work up a sweat when taking a Tai Chi break. By simply loosening your tie or kicking off your heels, you are all set. In fact, Sitting QiGong or simple Moving QiGong can be done right at your desk. As employees become more adept at these tools of breath and relaxation, they’ll use them throughout the day to reduce stress and boost performance.
Investing in Tai Chi Programs
There are several ways companies can invest in Tai Chi. Some companies passively promote Tai Chi, offering a space for employees to practice during lunch or after work. Others do much more.
The best Tai Chi and Stress Management seminars are optional. Provide employees with the option of working or attending the seminar, but do not make the seminar mandatory. Most people will opt for the seminar to get a break from work anyway, but the quality of the seminar is completely different if the employee has chosen to be there. This is the first step in an employee creating his own healthy lifestyle. If it’s someone else’s idea, we resist, but if we feel empowered to change ourselves, we have a vested interest in a positive outcome.
Some companies may reward Tai Chi practitioners with a 30-minute morning break, if instead of drinking coffee and sodas for 15 minutes, they use the 30-minute break to attend morning Tai Chi classes in the area provided. This could be done in conjunction with a weekly one-hour video or live Tai Chi class during lunch or after work.
For the daily Tai Chi breaks, sign-in sheets could be used to document employee participation. This information may be helpful to acquire rebates or subsidies from company health insurance providers to cover the cost of Tai Chi classes. Ask your carrier.
Investing in Creative Potential
If Tai Chi can help employees recover from illnesses and thereby reduce absenteeism that can also mean major savings. But what about creativity? Tai Chi’s meditative quality enables practitioners to become more creative as they let go of being locked into old patterns. A popular corporate expression is to “think outside the box,” which means to look beyond the established way of doing things, to try to find new and innovative approaches. It’s a useful concept, but how do you really think outside the box? You have to release the old ways of doing things. Again, Tai Chi is about letting go of everything, mentally, emotionally, and physically which requires releasing prejudices and preconceptions, making you clearer and more open to new possibilities and potential. If Tai Chi can help employees think outside the box, this will open them up to fresh innovative approaches and may boost profits more than anything you could begin to measure.
Call me today and let's chat about how I can customize a Tai Chi program for your company. It can vary from a one time presentation and training sessions including a Follow Me Tai Chi Video class, or a regularly scheduled class at your facility.
Linda 416 686 2466
Toronto
2. Tai Chi can be done in work clothes in an office.
3. Tai Chi can help employees get along.
Tai Chi’s a Natural for the Office
One thing that makes Tai Chi uniquely ideal for the workplace is that it requires no special clothing or equipment. If you have 15 minutes and a quiet room, you are all set to experience some amazing stress reduction and energy boosting.
Since Tai Chi is so slow and gentle, you often need not work up a sweat when taking a Tai Chi break. By simply loosening your tie or kicking off your heels, you are all set. In fact, Sitting QiGong or simple Moving QiGong can be done right at your desk. As employees become more adept at these tools of breath and relaxation, they’ll use them throughout the day to reduce stress and boost performance.
Investing in Tai Chi Programs
There are several ways companies can invest in Tai Chi. Some companies passively promote Tai Chi, offering a space for employees to practice during lunch or after work. Others do much more.
The best Tai Chi and Stress Management seminars are optional. Provide employees with the option of working or attending the seminar, but do not make the seminar mandatory. Most people will opt for the seminar to get a break from work anyway, but the quality of the seminar is completely different if the employee has chosen to be there. This is the first step in an employee creating his own healthy lifestyle. If it’s someone else’s idea, we resist, but if we feel empowered to change ourselves, we have a vested interest in a positive outcome.
Some companies may reward Tai Chi practitioners with a 30-minute morning break, if instead of drinking coffee and sodas for 15 minutes, they use the 30-minute break to attend morning Tai Chi classes in the area provided. This could be done in conjunction with a weekly one-hour video or live Tai Chi class during lunch or after work.
For the daily Tai Chi breaks, sign-in sheets could be used to document employee participation. This information may be helpful to acquire rebates or subsidies from company health insurance providers to cover the cost of Tai Chi classes. Ask your carrier.
Investing in Creative Potential
If Tai Chi can help employees recover from illnesses and thereby reduce absenteeism that can also mean major savings. But what about creativity? Tai Chi’s meditative quality enables practitioners to become more creative as they let go of being locked into old patterns. A popular corporate expression is to “think outside the box,” which means to look beyond the established way of doing things, to try to find new and innovative approaches. It’s a useful concept, but how do you really think outside the box? You have to release the old ways of doing things. Again, Tai Chi is about letting go of everything, mentally, emotionally, and physically which requires releasing prejudices and preconceptions, making you clearer and more open to new possibilities and potential. If Tai Chi can help employees think outside the box, this will open them up to fresh innovative approaches and may boost profits more than anything you could begin to measure.
Call me today and let's chat about how I can customize a Tai Chi program for your company. It can vary from a one time presentation and training sessions including a Follow Me Tai Chi Video class, or a regularly scheduled class at your facility.
Linda 416 686 2466
Toronto
Thursday, February 7, 2008
American Federation for Aging Research Article
Tai Chi Chuan
Tai chi chuan literally means “supreme ultimate boxing.” Although it was originally developed as a martial art in China in about 1,200 AD, people everywhere now practice it as a way to improve health, strength, balance, and mental calm. The movements are slow and precise, and particularly focus on the muscles of the lower body. This exercise system has become particularly popular among older adults, because its slow, meditative movements are more accessible to them–even those with some physical limitations.
For older adults with memory impairment, Prof. Chodzko-Zajko counsels that memorizing a long series of highly choreographed forms is only one–and perhaps the least important–aspect of the activity. “The four basic elements of tai chi chuan,” he points out, “are slow movement exercise, breath control, static and dynamic balance, and self-assisted massage.” You can gain benefit from doing repetitions of a single form, so long as it contains these elements.
Like yoga, tai chi chuan has demonstrated some surprising medical benefits. A study at Emory University in Atlanta, GA, (part of NIA’s Frailty and Injuries: Cooperative Studies of Intervention Techniques, or FICSIT, initiative, launched in 1990 to improve physical function in old age) for example, has shown that older adults who practice the system suffer significantly fewer falls than other people in their age group, and many find they’re able to negotiate activities of daily living far more easily.
Despite the slow moving nature of the exercises, practioners also show marked improvement in cardiovascular function. A study at UCLA, soon to be published in the journal Gerontology, suggests this happens through tai chi’s ability to balance the function of the sympathetic nervous system, which is the part of the nervous system that prepares the body for emergencies via the so-called “fight or flight” response.
Another study at UCLA, which appeared in the April 2007 issue of the Journal Of The American Geriatrics Society, demonstrated that tai chi chuan can actually help older adults avoid getting shingles, a painful condition caused by the chicken pox virus (varicella-zoster) both by increasing natural immunity and by boosting immune response to the varicella vaccine.
Finally, a study done by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the New England School of Acupuncture, published in the October 15, 2004, issue of the American Journal of Medicine, did a randomized, controlled trial that demonstrated people with heart failure experienced improved heart function after 12 weeks of tai chi chuan practice.Tai chi chuan, or alternatively, Tàijíquán, literally means “supreme ultimate boxing.” Although it was originally developed as a martial art in China in about 1,200 AD, people everywhere now practice it as a way to improve health, strength, balance, and mental calm. The movements are slow and precise, and particularly focus on the muscles of the lower body. This exercise system has become particularly popular among older adults, because its slow, meditative movements are more accessible to them–even those with some physical limitations.
Qigong
Qigong means “cultivating breath.” It is a practice in tradtional Chinese medicine that cultivates the coordination of breathing with particular postures and movements to manage the “energy field” that surrounds the body. It is generally practiced to maintain good health, but some traditional Chinese doctors occasionally use it to help cure medical conditions.
According to Prof. Chodzko-Zajko, qigong is among the most common physical activities you will see among older adults in its countries of origin. “If you visit a public park early in the morning in China or Korea and you see people doing morning exercise, very seldom will you see them doing the highly choreographed movement types that we have come to associate with tai chi,” he says. “Oftentimes they’re doing energy work, where they’re doing slow movements, but they’re not necessarily following a prescribed set of forms…I don’t think there is a consensus about how strictly you have to stick to a particular style or a particular form.”
Like yoga and tai chi chuan, quigong may be an effective way of calming heart palpitations–a hyperawareness of your own heartbeat, which may be brought on by overexertion, illness, alcohol, drugs, or a panic disorder.
However these three systems work, experts all agree on one basic fact about them: each can help reduce stress, which is important in maintaining cardiovascular health. Emotional stress causes you to release the hormone adrenaline from your adrenal gland and noradrenaline from the nerve endings in your heart and blood vessels. This, in turn, makes your heart rate go up, and ultimately causes your blood pressure to rise.
Prof. Chodzko-Zajko emphasizes that each of these activities will work best as part of a broader program that includes other types of exercise. “I’d love to see programs that integrate tai chi chuan and qigong type activities into walking programs or chair-based exercise programs,” he says.
Finally, he emphasizes that these physical activities can play a part in an overarching wellness program that should many six aspects of your life into account, including the physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, environmental, social, and financial. “I think there’s been a growing acceptance that in order to promote quality of life, independence, and active aging, you need to acknowledge these multiple dimensions of wellness. And yoga, tai chi chuan, and qigong are activities that span several of these dimensions.”
This article is brought to you by the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR). AFAR has been at the forefront of a revolutionary approach to the science of healthier aging. AFAR has played a major role in providing and advancing knowledge of aging and mechanisms of age-related disease by providing start-up grants to more than 2,400 early-career scientists. To learn more about AFAR, click here. We also invite you to visit our web site for the latest information on the biology of aging, common diseases of aging and healthy lifestyles.
Tai chi chuan literally means “supreme ultimate boxing.” Although it was originally developed as a martial art in China in about 1,200 AD, people everywhere now practice it as a way to improve health, strength, balance, and mental calm. The movements are slow and precise, and particularly focus on the muscles of the lower body. This exercise system has become particularly popular among older adults, because its slow, meditative movements are more accessible to them–even those with some physical limitations.
For older adults with memory impairment, Prof. Chodzko-Zajko counsels that memorizing a long series of highly choreographed forms is only one–and perhaps the least important–aspect of the activity. “The four basic elements of tai chi chuan,” he points out, “are slow movement exercise, breath control, static and dynamic balance, and self-assisted massage.” You can gain benefit from doing repetitions of a single form, so long as it contains these elements.
Like yoga, tai chi chuan has demonstrated some surprising medical benefits. A study at Emory University in Atlanta, GA, (part of NIA’s Frailty and Injuries: Cooperative Studies of Intervention Techniques, or FICSIT, initiative, launched in 1990 to improve physical function in old age) for example, has shown that older adults who practice the system suffer significantly fewer falls than other people in their age group, and many find they’re able to negotiate activities of daily living far more easily.
Despite the slow moving nature of the exercises, practioners also show marked improvement in cardiovascular function. A study at UCLA, soon to be published in the journal Gerontology, suggests this happens through tai chi’s ability to balance the function of the sympathetic nervous system, which is the part of the nervous system that prepares the body for emergencies via the so-called “fight or flight” response.
Another study at UCLA, which appeared in the April 2007 issue of the Journal Of The American Geriatrics Society, demonstrated that tai chi chuan can actually help older adults avoid getting shingles, a painful condition caused by the chicken pox virus (varicella-zoster) both by increasing natural immunity and by boosting immune response to the varicella vaccine.
Finally, a study done by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the New England School of Acupuncture, published in the October 15, 2004, issue of the American Journal of Medicine, did a randomized, controlled trial that demonstrated people with heart failure experienced improved heart function after 12 weeks of tai chi chuan practice.Tai chi chuan, or alternatively, Tàijíquán, literally means “supreme ultimate boxing.” Although it was originally developed as a martial art in China in about 1,200 AD, people everywhere now practice it as a way to improve health, strength, balance, and mental calm. The movements are slow and precise, and particularly focus on the muscles of the lower body. This exercise system has become particularly popular among older adults, because its slow, meditative movements are more accessible to them–even those with some physical limitations.
Qigong
Qigong means “cultivating breath.” It is a practice in tradtional Chinese medicine that cultivates the coordination of breathing with particular postures and movements to manage the “energy field” that surrounds the body. It is generally practiced to maintain good health, but some traditional Chinese doctors occasionally use it to help cure medical conditions.
According to Prof. Chodzko-Zajko, qigong is among the most common physical activities you will see among older adults in its countries of origin. “If you visit a public park early in the morning in China or Korea and you see people doing morning exercise, very seldom will you see them doing the highly choreographed movement types that we have come to associate with tai chi,” he says. “Oftentimes they’re doing energy work, where they’re doing slow movements, but they’re not necessarily following a prescribed set of forms…I don’t think there is a consensus about how strictly you have to stick to a particular style or a particular form.”
Like yoga and tai chi chuan, quigong may be an effective way of calming heart palpitations–a hyperawareness of your own heartbeat, which may be brought on by overexertion, illness, alcohol, drugs, or a panic disorder.
However these three systems work, experts all agree on one basic fact about them: each can help reduce stress, which is important in maintaining cardiovascular health. Emotional stress causes you to release the hormone adrenaline from your adrenal gland and noradrenaline from the nerve endings in your heart and blood vessels. This, in turn, makes your heart rate go up, and ultimately causes your blood pressure to rise.
Prof. Chodzko-Zajko emphasizes that each of these activities will work best as part of a broader program that includes other types of exercise. “I’d love to see programs that integrate tai chi chuan and qigong type activities into walking programs or chair-based exercise programs,” he says.
Finally, he emphasizes that these physical activities can play a part in an overarching wellness program that should many six aspects of your life into account, including the physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, environmental, social, and financial. “I think there’s been a growing acceptance that in order to promote quality of life, independence, and active aging, you need to acknowledge these multiple dimensions of wellness. And yoga, tai chi chuan, and qigong are activities that span several of these dimensions.”
This article is brought to you by the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR). AFAR has been at the forefront of a revolutionary approach to the science of healthier aging. AFAR has played a major role in providing and advancing knowledge of aging and mechanisms of age-related disease by providing start-up grants to more than 2,400 early-career scientists. To learn more about AFAR, click here. We also invite you to visit our web site for the latest information on the biology of aging, common diseases of aging and healthy lifestyles.
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