Time Magazine wrote, ". . . Tai Chi is the perfect exercise . . ." While serving as the Tai Chi Expert at DrWeil.com, I learned that best selling author and acclaimed naturopathic physician, Andrew Weil, suggested that poor breathing habits are at the root of many of our health problems. This was exciting news to me, confirming what I'd spent a lifetime learning in my Qigong (Chi Kung) and Tai Chi education. Yet, Dr. Weil's insights helped me describe to people just why Tai Chi is the perfect exercise.

Tai Chi originated in China, where it is said that a Taoist monk by the name of Chang San-Feng witnessed a struggle between a crane and a snake. The crane attacked the snake with hard jabs of its beak, while the snake's soft and flowing maneuvers won the battle. The snake's movements were the inspiration for Tai Chi, which is now practiced not only in China, but all over the world.

Studies have shown that Tai Chi can lower high blood pressure, and profoundly boost aspects of the immune system, while improving balance and coordination far better than any other known exercise. Tai Chi can reduce or eliminate chronic pain or limited mobility, while lessening the incidence of anxiety, depression, or overall mood disturbance. Tai Chi is the lowest impact exercise there is, and has even been used by those with arthritis, yet as gentle as it is it burns about 280 calories per hour, and provides roughly the same cardiovascular benefits of moderate impact aerobics.

Sounds too good to be true doesn't it? But, it is true, and this is only scratching the surface of what Tai Chi offers our busy lives. Not only can Tai Chi do all these amazing things, but it is so multi-dimensional that it provides these healing results to all the systems of our mind, body, and spirit in a regimen that only takes less than 30 minutes a day, and can be done in office attire at work in an empty boardroom or stock room. Anywhere where you can have some time alone with a little space to be uninterrupted, making Tai Chi the exercise of the future.

Tai Chi's gentle movements, breathing techniques, and visualization techniques combine to massage the accumulated stress loads out of our 50 trillion cells in our body. The result is to cultivate a newness of being each time we "play" Tai Chi. The Chinese don't speak of "work-outs," but rather "play" Tai Chi. If you can play yourself into a whole new life, a healthy, and happy, and hopeful one . . . why wait?