Tai Chi for Health
By Master Eric Sbarge of The Peaceful Dragon
When’s the last time you saw a commercial for tai chi while watching American Idol or CNN news? I’ll have to take your word for it because I don’t watch anything like that, but I’m willing to bet the answer is never.
Instead, you see commercials for drugs and medications (both prescription and over-the-counter), and for the fast foods that create the illnesses that the drugs and medications purportedly help cure.
The reason you see the commercials that you do is because those are multi-billion dollar industries and they can afford to spend a lot on marketing to get you to believe what they are saying. And the tai chi industry? Only a few legitimate instructors ply their trade in any given city, and most can barely scrape together the gas money to go teach their classes never mind spend millions to promote the real benefits of the art they are teaching.
But when it comes to what works for good health, the dollar amount spent on advertising has zero relationship to the effectiveness of the product or service being promoted. Drugs and medications do not make you healthy — they simply mask the symptoms caused by an unhealthy imbalance in your mind/body (which is caused in great part by the unhealthy food — and I use that word loosely — that we are suckered into eating by the food industry).
If you do a little bit of free on-line research you will discover the real, centuries-old benefits of tai chi that you won’t know about if you sit zombie-like with the TV remote in your hand. You will need an authentic teacher to learn tai chi and the classes will cost you a bit, but here’s a tip to help pay for it: Eat real food at home instead of the fast foods and pre-packaged foods promoted on TV, and cancel your cable TV subscription. You’ll be so healthy you might not even need tai chi.