I have been doing Qigong and a little Tai ji for close to a month now. Besides all the normal things that occur with a completely new practice such as aching muscles etc, I have noticed something which has really hit me. As far as I can remember, my whole life I have been a side sleeper, mainly left side but occasionally right side. A week ago I noticed that I am now a back sleeper, I CANNOT fall to sleep on my side. However I do turn onto one side or the other for a short time during the night. As I also have my arms either down by my side or across my chest, I started to wonder if this was something to do with 'grounding'. Has anyone else experienced this or similar and can the teachers explain this phenomenon. (Or am I just being weird?)

Rooted Alchemy family, we just surpassed 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. Wow. Back in August, who would have thought we would build a Tai Chi community of over 100,000 people practicing together from all over the world. This journey has been incredibly humbling, and we’re deeply grateful to every single one of you who has been here, practicing, watching, and growing with us. We’re excited for what the future holds and grateful for your patience as we continue building intentionally behind the scenes. Just know that we’re still early, and there is so much more to come. And a huge thank you to Sonny for practicing, teaching, and learning with such depth and integrity that it naturally spread far and wide. Stay the course.

Hope you are having a good day. Until today, most of my exercises have been following the Qigong Daily videos. Today using the same group of videos I started with the Tai Chi Symmetry Training. I found it VERY difficult to follow along ,when Sonny started talking about combining 4 movements. Are there any other videos which explain these movements individually before looking at combining them?

These next few comments are, I think to show progression. Although I have been doing Qi gong daily, I have not always done them as part of the videos. This morning I have practiced whilst watching the above mentioned video. I have noticed several things; when I initially started this whole program, I had difficulty in even bending my knees. With the daily practices, I now find that my quads have strengthened. Not only am I able to bend them, but to do it with comfort. Now this next comment I make I am not sure if it is a good or bad thing. As someone previously commented, they found that their blood pressure had lowered. I have noticed that in the movement 'Reach for the horizon' when I fold forward, I then start to get slightly dizzy as I then unfold. I am on a low dose of blood pressure medication, so after the session I took my BP and I saw that the systolic had dropped by 15 points. Obviously I am going to keep an eye on this. My hope is that over a period of time that these practices are enough to allow me to withdraw the medication. I hope that these two comments aid others who are starting out to be a little more aware of the benefits of Qigong and Tai Ji.

Are Tai Chi and Qi Gong aerobic? Below is a short article discussing several studies done on the effect of tai chi on energy expenditure and blood pressure. The article was written by a “Tai Chi uncle” of mine Dr. Harvey Kurland who is a Kinesiology professor at UC Riverside. Tai Chi uncle means he trained under the same teacher that my teacher did, in fact he is very good friends with my teacher and trained with Tchoung Ta Tchen for many years. He has done several studies on tai ji over the years and since his methods are very similar to our own we can learn a lot from the findings. The interesting take away from this for me is the energy expenditure related to the different forms and experiences and the range of METS found. This does show that the practice can meet you where you are at, almost self adjusting as you get better and learn more. Do you need to know about all these studies to get the benefits out of tai chi? Absolutely not, but at a time when there is more data easily available, studies such as this as can help us confirm our instincts and give us more confidence and energy to relax into the learning and training process. "T'ai Chi Ch'uan Lowers Blood Pressure" ©Harvey Kurland MSc, CSCS, MFS, 2013 Many students comment how the t'ai-chi they practice in our classes has helped them to keep their blood pressure under control. But, Dr. D. Young from Johns Hopkins University was surprised to find that t'ai-chi significantly reduced blood pressure. In a 12 week study, she found systolic blood pressure fell 8.4 mm Hg in the aerobic exercise group and 7mm Hg in the t'ai-chi group. The benefits were seen after only 6 week (AHA press release, Washington Post, 4/14/98, p. Z28). I don't find these results surprising, based on what students have said and the research we reviewed in past issues. Several studies showed that t'ai-chi ch'uan is an aerobic exercise and has reduced blood pressure. For example Dr. K. Channer found that t'ai-chi reduced blood pressure in cardiac patients (Postgrad Med J 1996 Ju;(848):349-351) and Kurland (UW 1975) found it lowered blood pressure acutely after one session in normal, non-hypertensive, students.