T'ai Chi Awareness Helps with Health

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I injured my back three times 20 - 25 years ago.

One time was actually during T'ai Chi practice.  It was the 2nd Part of the Yang Long Form, and the movement was Old Man Finds Needle at the Bottom of the Sea (that's a mouthful).  I bent forward at the waist, and apparently I bent too far for whatever looseness my body felt at the time.

I was practicing T'ai Chi regularly, but I was also under the stress of graduate school.  I was quite flexible and strong, as it were, so hurting my back was a surprise.  But what I learned after self-reflection was that the stress reduced the awareness I had for my body. It was relatively early in the morning, when my body was naturally still a bit stiff from sleeping and I was preparing to head to campus downtown.

That was a pivotal lesson learned for me.  There are other bending and twisting movements in T'ai Chi, but with better awareness of my body, especially under stress, and with more patience in doing such movements, I have never again hurt myself from T'ai Chi.    

The second and third times I injured my back came from the same activity:  doing seated leg presses on the weight machine.  I have very strong legs, and I had upped the poundage very high.  But even as I braced myself well against the seat back, and used proper form in the exercise, I hurt myself.

You see, this was my lesson learned, well after the injuries.  In fact, I was baffled as to how I hurt myself.  I was not doing anything strenuous or even bending at all.  I may not have been doing anything physical, really.  The pain came on suddenly, but well delayed following the seated leg presses.  For about two weeks it was tough sitting and standing and also getting in and out of bed.  Thankfully it didn't impede my graduate studies in the least, and I recovered soon enough.

It was a handful of months later, I hurt my back again.  The same injury, the same circumstance:  That is, I wasn't doing anything strenuous, when the pain shot through my back.

I simply kept aware of my activities, including weight training, when I recovered from it.  What I remember was, As I positioned myself on the seated leg press, I could feel the pressure of the padded back on my lower back.  It was exactly where I injured myself.  Then, I figured out that I was way overloading the weights for this exercise.

The body is a well-connected thing, as athletes know.  Doing this exercise clearly wasn't just for the legs.  My back had quite a play into my lifting very heavy weights.  My back was strong, but it simply wasn't up to that heavy-duty lifting that my legs were.

Mentally, too, I obviously had the discipline and toughness to push my body forward.  But I needed to be smart about it, as a back injury isn't anything to take lightly.  Rather, I needed to be more aware of how my body was doing.

I am thankful  to God that I have had no back, or any other, injury since.

T'ai Chi has kept me healthy via its discipline around awareness