According to modern medical research between 70 and 85% of all illness leading people to doctors is caused by stress (Kaiser Permenente twenty year study). The United States annual health care costs exceed one-trillion dollars each year. This means that effective stress management techniques, if provided to people en masse through education, business, healthcare, etc. in an aggressive national campaign to train our citizens in such techniques, could save our nation alone hundreds of billions in health care costs year after year.

Tai Chi and Qigong have been proven over many centuries, including in emerging modern medical research to be powerful stress reduction technologies. The results of this are found in studies like the one at UCLA indicating that Tai Chi practitioners doubled their immune resistance to viral infection. Many studies also show Tai Chi can provide cardiovascular benefit, lowering high blood pressure, and providing an effective gentle rehabilitation therapy for those with heart disease.

So bottom line, we know stress costs us hundreds of billions annually in health care costs. We know that Tai Chi and Qigong can help millions lower stress levels and the deleterious health effects of that stress. Yet, there is to date no aggressive national effort to spread the knowledge of these health tools to the mass population through public education etc.

This is a tragedy, not only because of the unnecessary health problems people suffer, but for other important reasons as well. If the world employed these tools on a massive scale and began to save the trillions of dollars they could be saving, major global social and environmental problems could be addressed with that money.

It is estimated that for a mere $20 billion annually, we could end starvation on the planet, which could lessen the pressure on societies that spurs instability and violence. If we saved trillions worldwide each year on saved health care costs, $20 billion would be hardly missed. We'd still easily be able to afford clean water programs and global education programs that could also help stabilize the world, making us all safer and healthier. Global health is affected by poverty, as nations in extreme poverty pay little attention to environmental laws, and may hunt extinct animals or decimate rain forests in order to earn money to eat and live on.

A few billion dollars could pay for the one hundred square miles of solar cells in the Mohave desert that experts say could supply "ALL" of the electrical needs of the United States, and perhaps create technology that could be exported worldwide. Also, by supplying all the electrical needs with cheap renewable solar, we could explore more efficient and effective electric cars that could be fueled by electricity supplied from solar collection, creating an absolutely non-polluting economy eventually. In a world where oil production has peaked and will only dwindle and become more and more expensive, this is an exciting possibility for all of us to have cheaply fueled personal transportation that will never run out.

Global health and personal health are more closely related than one might think at first glance. Holistic solutions are simple and make a great deal of sense, once we look into the heart of possibility, unclouded by cynicism that tells us we are victims of "what is." We are not victims. By allowing our minds to explore possibility we imagine, "image-in" a new more expansive reality that could make our lives not only healthier, but more exciting and profound. Einstein wrote, "imagination is more important than knowledge," and those words were never more true than they are today. Dare to imagine what is possible, and the veil separating reality from that vision becomes thinner with every new person willing to step beyond the walls of limitation.

Copyright 2006 Bill Douglas