🌿 Folk Prescriptions

People constantly battle diseases threatening the body, accumulating vast knowledge and methods for health preservation. Tai Chi is one such method. Though classified under Chinese martial arts, it can also be considered part of traditional Chinese medicine. Practicing Tai Chi achieves the goals of disease prevention, health preservation, and longevity. Martial arts are divided into internal and external styles. External styles emphasize training muscles, bones, and skin, while internal styles like Tai Chi focus on cultivating qi and unblocking meridians, essentially promoting relaxation and regulating the body’s qi and blood—making it a form of qigong. Thus, Tai Chi is most suitable for treating illness, regulating qi and blood flow, and restoring normal internal circulation.
Practicing Tai Chi is not merely learning forms—it requires mastering foundational skills and achieving “relaxation” and “smooth qi flow.” The lungs govern the body’s qi; when lung qi is harmonized, the entire body’s qi flows smoothly. Thus, practice must ensure qi flows freely, avoiding stagnation. Therefore, one must not hold breath or exert force during practice—relaxation and sinking qi are paramount. Practice must coordinate breathing with opening and closing movements. Due to these requirements, Tai Chi practitioners naturally focus on relaxation and breath control, leaving them mentally refreshed and physically invigorated after each session. Slight sweating increases metabolism, providing tangible health benefits. Exercise physiology tells us that any exercise must have sufficient intensity and duration to significantly impact health, particularly the circulatory and respiratory systems. The combination of appropriate intensity and duration is essential for enhancing these systems. Tai Chi embodies the essence of China’s fine cultural traditions—it is both martial art and culture, both fitness and martial art, training both inner (mind) and outer (body), cultivating spirit, qi, and essence simultaneously. It offers both health benefits and artistic appreciation.
Emphasizing lower-body exercise greatly helps prevent “upper excess, lower deficiency”—a modern ailment. Since the 20th century, a significant change in human lifestyle has been the growing emphasis on health and exercise for a healthy body. Fitness activities increasingly focus on lower-limb exercises, such as walking.
Long-term Tai Chi practitioners commonly report thicker thighs. Sports experts believe that high-functioning thigh and calf muscle groups act like many small pumps, assisting the heart—reducing its burden and benefiting cardiovascular health. Since Tai Chi emphasizes lower-body strength training, it promotes downward flow of qi and blood, correcting the “upper excess, lower deficiency” condition, helping prevent hypertension, falls, and aging. The saying “people age first in the legs” reflects that middle-aged and older individuals often suffer from various ailments due to this imbalance. In the U.S., falls among the elderly have become the third leading cause of death, prompting government funding for research on Tai Chi’s effectiveness in preventing falls. The rapid growth of Tai Chi in the U.S. over the past two years is partly due to this.
From a traditional Chinese medicine perspective, “upper excess, lower deficiency” is a term describing a condition in middle-aged and elderly people with liver and kidney deficiency, yin deficiency, and yang floating—leading to high blood pressure, insomnia, cold intolerance, cold extremities, poor digestion, constipation, etc. Patients often appear rosy-cheeked with no obvious signs of illness. However, due to lower-jiao deficiency, they feel weak legs, difficulty walking, heel pain after prolonged walking, stiff knees, back pain, and general fatigue. TCM believes that after age forty, liver and kidney are prone to deficiency—like roots drying up and leaves turning yellow. To nourish, one must fertilize from the root—strengthening the liver and kidneys is the secret to health preservation. Besides consuming nourishing foods and medicines, it is crucial to intensify exercise in the Dantian area (lower abdomen) and lower limbs. The lower abdomen, between Dantian and Mingmen, is the most critical site where absorbed nutrients convert into essence and blood (and hormones). Thus, strengthening the lower abdomen, waist, groin, and lower limbs is the most fundamental step in promoting digestion, absorption, and blood circulation. Stronger waist and legs mean smoother blood flow, brighter spirit, and sustained vitality—effectively eliminating or preventing “upper excess, lower deficiency” symptoms. Tai Chi emphasizes not only physical relaxation but also mental relaxation throughout practice, balancing cerebral excitation and inhibition. It also promotes emotional stability. Therefore, for today’s lifestyle, practicing one or several forms of Tai Chi and its implements is a reliable path to health. As long as you practice daily, it can maintain lasting physical and mental balance and dynamic equilibrium.