Tai chi grain by grain

What is the difference between all the various well-being classes? Yoga, Pilates, Meditation, Tai chi, going to the gym - which should you choose? The analogy I like to use is of a spectrum - let's imagine each one has lined up in order of its "internal-ness". We have meditation at one end (very internal) and something like weightlifting at the other end (very external).

Now there is a traditional Chinese saying that every day you practice tai chi is like adding a grain of sand. Each day you add a grain, but the change is imperceptible, but after a few years suddenly you have a huge pile of sand. A poetic way of explaining cumulative benefit. So let me extend this grain of sand metaphor to my spectrum.

As you add your grains of sand, they do not stand precisely on top of each other, but they collapse into a mount whose base slowly widens. Therefore if you imagine that each day you are putting a grain of sand on the "tai chi" position, slowly the base will expand to also encompass neighbouring positions, such as "Yoga" or "kung fu". In other words if you put a lot gains of sand in any particular position these will begin to spill over into other positions. In other words if you do tai chi for many years, you will also have achieved some of the benefits of doing yoga and meditation etc. If you do meditation for many years, you will also achieve some of the benefits of doing Tai Chi. Of course you will achieve the most benefit (highest point of the pile of sand) from where you put the most grains.

Of course there is nothing to stop you putting grains of sand in multiple positions for a balanced exercise portfolio as I talked about before.

Tai chi emergence

I am fascinated by emergence and swarm intelligence. (An accessible "popular science" book for introducing the topic is "Out of Control" by Kevin Kelly). Whilst reading this book, I was reminded of the decentralised and emergent nature of the brain. In other words, the neurons of the brain behave in a similar way to bees in a hive. There is no centralised "you" or ego, thoughts and  thinking "emerge" out of the set of neurons firing. The emergent nature of the body and mind is the scientific meaning of the traditional Buddhist concept of the destruction of ego.

Neural networks, of which the brain is the ultimate example, are extremely adept at pattern matching, in fact I would go so far as to say it is their raison d'être. Pattern matching is what allows us to interpret the world without being overwhelmed by the data we're constantly being bombarded with from our senses.

In visual terms, this allows us to recognise objects and comprehend the space around us. We learn what a dog looks like, and the more dogs we see, the better we get at recognising them, irrespective of distance, colour, orientation etc. [As an aside recognising a dog is an extremely challenging task for a computer to accomplish, although we as humans take it for granted.] The pattern matching rules of vision are most famously exploited in what we call optical illusions.

In auditory terms, pattern matching allows us to understand speech and extract meaning from the varying tone and pitch of sound waves. Equally it allows us to enjoy and comprehend music, and recognise different styles and genres. Again speech and musical recognition and interpretation is very challenging for a computer.

But how does this relate to Tai chi? Well my supposition is that there is also a pattern matching associated with proprioception. Proprioception is what allows us to feel how our body moves and is orientated, and this is what we are (re)training when we do Tai chi. As you get better at tai chi, you get more astute at recognising the patterns of movement (In tai chi language, we call these the principles of tai chi). Aha you say, this rollback motion in move X is just like the rollback motion in move Y.... The spiralling of the hips is the same as the spiralling of the shoulders.... and so on. As you train more, you become more astute at recognising the patterns. Sequences of movements become natural and patterned. But what's more, they emerge in a distributed manner. In the beginning it is your conscious mind deliberately placing each of your limbs in particular positions. As your body begins to understand the patterns, it is almost as if the muscles of your body are moving independently (like individual bees), but the whole body is moving collectively (like the whole hive).

In practical terms as the body is an emergent system, without a centralised controller, the only way to program it is through chicken and egg iterative improvement (i.e. practice). Outwardly beginners and advanced students do the same training, it is just that inwardly, the advanced students understand more of the patterns. The beginner will therefore only be training the single exercise, where as the advanced student, seeing the connections and patterns (or principles), will be training hundreds of exercises simultaneously.

Kinect-ing with a Tai Chi robot

Well, if this isn't a mechanism to train a robot to do Tai chi I don't know what is!

Practise makes points

Doing Tai Chi is all about regular practice. But motivating yourself to get into / maintain the routine can be difficult when surrounded by life’s other pressures. That's why in a flash of inspiration I’ve decided to use some of the motivational techniques that dieters and gym freaks use. In both of those systems you have “points” i.e. calories or minutes on the treadmill etc. You create a training program by setting yourself point targets (i.e. max calories per day) and your natural inbuilt competitiveness helps you strive so improve your previous “score”. It also has the added benefit of being able to track your improvement.  Tracking your improvement over time is something that is very difficult to do with Tai Chi as it is all internal, personal and there are no real milestones to judge yourself against.

My plan is therefore to award myself points for every bit of Tai Chi I do. I will set myself a minimum number of points required per day (more is great of course), and then increase that minimum over time. The idea is to make it a very low threshold in the beginning, as what you're really training here is “getting into a routine” (which I believe takes about 4 weeks to make into a habit). At the end of every day I will write down the points I have scored (which I’m sure I will immediately over complicate with statistical analysis). Anyway, the point system I plan to use is:

Points	Activity	Notes
10	Lao jia	Long form (takes about 15mins)
4	Canon fist, Sword, Sabre, or Competition form	“Advanced forms” (takes 3-5mins ish each)
2	Short form	Takes about 2mins
2	10mins of standing	Standing meditation / Standing like a tree
1	One set of Silk Reeling, or Chi-gung	A good 8-10 reps, on both left and right sides
1	10mins of seated meditation	Ommmm
10	Going to a group class	A pretty stingy number of points for over an hour class, but the idea is to improve home practice.

My teacher Wang Hai Jun recommends 5 Lao Ji’s a day – that’s 50 points. I think I’ll start with a much more modest 4 points and work up. But remember this is a minimum, I fully intend to do more than 4 points worth most days. The point is, I must absolutely not fail to do at least 4 points worth every single day (i.e. training regular practice), or face the shame of having to write a 0 into my wall chart.

Paul Dong's chi ontology

Interesting extract on the differences between "science" and "chi" here: http://www.martialdevelopment.com/blog/science-problem-with-chi/. I love the quote that:

Chi theory is an ontology, in which it is pointless to declare one’s belief or disbelief prior to understanding.

One particular extract caught my eye:

The differences between a living human being and a corpse are that the former has an EM field and movement (together called “bioenergy”) and neutral chemical acidity, whereas the latter lacks an EM field, does not move, and is highly acidic. Three possible implied explanations for the changes between the living and the dead can be stated in the form of propositions: (1) absence of bioenergy is an effect of altered biochemistry (the Western scientific proposition; (2) altered biochemistry and exhaustion of bioenergy are effects of a third factor; (3) altered biochemistry is an effect of exhaustion of bioenergy (the Chinese scientific proposition).

This is effectively talking about cause and effect, with the hypothesis that Western science thinks A causes B and Chinese thinking is that B causes A. Paul Dong seems to argue that only the Chinese version is logically consistent. But to my mind, he seems to be missing a fourth possibility, that it is really a chicken and egg situation and an emergent self reinforcing phenomenon. In this model there would be a feedback relationship and so each one causes the other, and hence both would be correct. Anyway, I should really read the book before commenting further.

The capitalism of hippie babble

A great comic from the folks over at xkcd:

Science search engine

So you want to know what scientific research there is out the about Tai chi? Why not try the scientific search engine:

http://www.scirus.com/srsapp/search?q=%22tai+chi%22+&t=all&sort=0&g=s

One review article I read had the following conlcusion in it's abstract:

RESULTS: Seventy-seven articles met the inclusion criteria. The nine outcome category groupings that emerged were bone density (n = 4), cardiopulmonary effects (n = 19), physical function (n = 16), falls and related risk factors (n = 23), quality of life (n = 17), self-efficacy (n = 8), patient-reported outcomes (n = 13), psychological symptoms (n = 27), and immune function (n = 6).

CONCLUSIONS: Research has demonstrated consistent, significant results for a number of health benefits in RCTs, evidencing progress toward recognizing the similarity and equivalence of Qigong and Tai Chi.

 Seems like there's some good health stuff there (as we all knew - it's common sense). But also as we knew there's nothing there about "chi energy" or proof about hippy cosmic energy forces man.... 

Next time you read something about "how western science is just starting to understand how.....blah blah" have a wander over to scrius or google scholar and check for yourself.