The magic of tai chi

I began taking tai chi in September of 2014 through a Tai Chi for Arthritis program at my local senior center. Just having turned 55, I was eligible for membership. Woo hoo! My main reason for joining the center was to learn tai chi, which I had been fascinated with after seeing it on TV and in movies. The slow, graceful choreography of the moves appealed to me and I have read and heard much about tai chi’s many health benefits.

Although I had done much core and balance work previously, I soon began to feel even greater strength and stability. The mind-body aspect only enhanced what I had developed in yoga and Pilates in recent years. And something more, I began to sleep more deeply as I had heard I would.

Wanting to share this with my group exercise students I took Tai Chi for Arthritis instructor training in Memphis and began teaching tai chi classes at Dawson Memorial Family Recreation Center in Homewood, Ala., and several area senior facilities. It’s rewarding to see others benefit from the gentle and health-producing martial art. Plus it has deepened my own tai chi practice.

Dr. Paul Lam, an Australian physician, developed the Tai Chi for Health programs - including Tai Chi for Arthritis - incorporating up-to-date medical knowledge a number of years ago. These programs are proven by medical studies to improve health. Both the CDC and Arthritis Foundation recommend the Tai Chi for Arthritis program. I was fortunate to be able to follow up my initial Tai Chi for Arthritis training with an intensive in-depth tai chi workshop led by Dr. Lam in Cartersville, Ga. in Sept. 2015.

If you have any interest in learning tai chi, please try it. And if you don’t have access to classes please visit Dr. Lam’s Tai Chi for Health Institute website at http://taichiforhealthinstitute.org where you can order instructional tai chi DVDs.

Here are a few basics for beginning your tai chi practice:

CULTIVATE THE HABIT OF TAKING SLOW, DEEP BREATHS - The more slowly and deeply you breathe the more relaxed you will feel. Deep breathing is abdominal, meaning that your diaphragm contracts fully and creates a vacuum to more fully fill the lungs with air. When you breathe in deeply your belly will naturally bulge out like a baby or opera singer. On the exhale the belly will flatten.

CHECK IN WITH YOUR POSTURE PERIODICALLY. Hold yourself up so you can breathe freely; Lifting the rib cage, elongating the spine, shoulders up and back, chin parallel to the floor, balancing the head above the body. Gently stretch out your joints.

MOVE SLOWLY, SMOOTHLY AND CONSISTANTLY AS IF THROUGH GENTLE RESISTANCE, SUCH AS IN WATER. Slow down your pace and gently control your movement by becoming mindful of it and your breath. By relaxing and patiently going through the exercises at whatever your level or ability you will gain strength and improve your balance. You will also develop greater inner calm and improve your sleeping patterns. Don’t worry about doing it “exactly right.” Just move in your range of comfort. Tai chi is a process and works its magic as we practice it, however imperfectly.

MINDFULLY SHIFT YOUR WEIGHT AS YOU WALK IN TAI CHI. Slowly shifting our weight to one leg and then sinking into that foot before lifting our other foot and stepping out (then slowly transferring our weight to that foot) develops core strength as well as leg strength. It also challenges our inner balance control system and improves our stability over time.

Strong or flexible?

When it comes to being strong or flexible, which is best for keeping your muscles and tendons healthy?

Okay, it's a trick question as it is best to be both. Muscle-bound weight lifters can lose range of motion and become so stiff they walk funny. Ultra-flexible yoginis can injure themselves because of too much muscle and tendon laxity and little strength.

Weak and/or tight muscles – often associated with poor posture and body mechanics - can lead to muscle spasms and painful trigger points that can only temporarily be relieved by massage. The underlying problem needs to be addressed.

Another problem weak and tight muscles - as well as muscle strength and flexibility imbalances - can lead to or worsen is osteoarthritis. Healthy (strong and flexible) muscles and tendons help keep joints working properly. A balanced exercise routine to avoid repetitive use and injury of the joints is also important.

Any time you participate in strength training, please stretch afterwards. Resistance training tightens the muscles and over time can lead to loss of range of motion. Also, when you can, stretch after walking or other cardio.

Yoga and/or pilates can improve your flexibility overall. After doing my fitness turnaround several years ago, the increase in my range of motion, just through a bit of yoga and additional stretching, has me feeling 20 years or younger than my actual age.

For do-it-yourselfers: As I have mentioned before, an excellent book on stretching is "Stretching" by Bob Anderson. It's thoroughly illustrated and includes stretches targeting various sports and activities. There are numerous books on strength training. The American Council of Exercise website offers a wealth of information on balancing strength and stretch.

No matter how you approach it, just remember the archer’s bow. Seek to be both strong and flexible.

A few tips for healthier holiday eating

It's just way too easy to mindlessly overindulge during the holidays and then have extra work to do at the beginning of the new year to lose those extra pounds. Fortunately with a little focus and a plan we can reduce the amount of extra calories we're taking in during the festivities and still enjoy ourselves. Here are a few of my favorite strategies for healthier holiday eating.

Always carry a healthy snack. A small bag of nuts (100 to 150 calorie portion) can be a good choice. Use them when needed to take the edge off hunger. Otherwise if you let yourself get to the point of ravenous hunger before a party, when you are presented with a table full of holiday treats, the natural course of action is to go wild devouring goodies. I've done that more than once and it's not pretty.

Seek out raw fruits and veggies first. Fiber and well-hydrated food (versus food that is sugary, fatty, dry and/or crisp) is our friend. Our favorite fruits and veggies can keep us full and satisfied. So if we eat plenty of salad or the carrot sticks and apple slices first, we'll likely eat less of the calorie-laden casserole, chips and cookies.

Opt for whole grains versus stripped down wheat, rice, etc. when available. Again, the more fiber we eat, the more satisfied we will feel. Plus whole grains are soooo much more nutritious.

Avoid going back for seconds or grazing. When you can see how much you truly are eating, you eat less. We tend to underestimate how much we have eaten when we go back to the table over and over again. It's especially insidious when we're having a wonderful time talking with our family and friends over the holidays. Studies have shown that people actually tend to eat more when they are happy!

Stay hydrated and avoid excess alcohol consumption. Drinking plenty of water will help keep your appetite down. Sometimes hunger is actually pangs caused by dehydration. And please watch out for how alcohol affects your food consumption. Because alcohol loosens our inhibitions in general, it tends to promote heavier eating at meals and more frequent snacking between them.

Toys vs. the machines

You don’t have to be a gym member to get or stay fit. Working on those bulky weight machines may seem to be the be-all-end-all, but they definitely aren’t the only way to gain strength and better health as well as improve your appearance. Exercise props or “toys” as some of us like to call them, can be just as effective and in some cases more effective. So don’t despair if the gym is not for you for whatever reason!

Before I studied to become a personal trainer and group exercise instructor I relied on weight machines for my resistance training. But when I started training to be a trainer I became better educated about the advantages of toys. I’ve come to use them pretty much exclusively for my own workouts because of their convenience, flexibility and power.

Instead of struggling with machines that are often awkward to adjust, I can custom tailor my workouts and those of my personal training clients as well as my group exercise classes. Another advantage: You get more core work in by tightening and stabilizing your abs and lower back muscles, etc., when doing resistance while sitting on a stability ball or standing.

Exercise toys are extremely inexpensive and portable. You can buy them at many discount or sports stores. Getting a basic set up can cost you less than $50, approximately the price of one month of a gym membership. I use toys all the time when I do in-home training, carrying dumb bells, bands, a weighted ball and ankle weights in a bin and a mat under my arm. Some of my clients invest in their own set of equipment plus some additions, including a stability ball. Having toys on hand makes working out so much more convenient and private. Some of my clients take exercise bands or tubes with them when they travel in case their hotel doesn’t have a fitness center.

I also use toys in my group exercise classes. My students love the variety. Instead of doing two or three sets of the same arm and back exercises on a machine, for example, we vary the sets by training the arms and upper back as well as the core stabilizers first with dumb bells, then with exercise bars and then with tubes. Afterwards we get down on the mat and really work that core some more! Seated crunches on a machine get awful boring by comparison to Pilates-style body work on the mat.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not dissing exercise machines. Machines can be valuable for gaining and maintaining strength if you regularly get to the gym. Some of my clients who are gym members prefer them for at least part of their regimen. And if you are exercising without a trainer, machines require less memory work. They often include instructional displays in case you forget how to adjust or use them.

Still, I recommend even those who have access to and enjoy machines to learn how to work with dumb bells, exercise bands and the like whether at the gym, home or when traveling. Toys give you more options and ability to do strength training!

To move or not to move?

Machines that aren't regularly maintained with proper coatings and lubricants and kept moving tend to rust. Their moving parts move only with difficulty or not at all. Over time their rusting metal gets so brittle that it breaks into bits, disintegrating little by little. Kind of sad and a waste of a beautiful mechanism that's useful life was cut short.

Most of us wouldn't let that happen to one of our treasured possessions. Unfortunately some of us do let a similar process of disuse and decay happen to our bodies. Fortunately it's reversible if we get off the couch, out of our chair and up and moving.

I have definitely been guilty of not moving enough at times in my life. I had no idea the price I was paying, especially as I grew older. Now that I'm so much more aware of anatomy and physiology and the danger of disuse because of my personal training study I am super motivated to stay moving and fit.

When we don't move our bodies often enough or in a great enough variety of ways our joints don't get lubricated with synovial fluid as they should. Our tendons, ligaments and muscles stiffen and weaken. Our bones become more brittle. Over time we become weaker, more unbalanced, rigid. For most people the debilities of aging, including the inability to perform regular activities of daily living, aren't so much about the natural aging process, but about disuse.

True, it's often a greater challenge to keep moving as we age because of weight gain and/or a growing number of aches and pains. But we can't let that stop us. Otherwise we'll just start a downward cycle of weight gain, more pain, less and less activity and greater and greater debility.

The truth is that we're either getting fitter or less fit every day because of our choices to move or not to move. The more we move on a consistent basis the healthier we'll be. Even those with health challenges, pain and/or disabilities need to move and can with some medical guidance.

I so admire the seniors in the 70s, 80s and 90s in my exercise classes and personal training sessions who continue to move it on a consistent basis even with discomforts such as arthritis, neuralgia, stroke debilities, and other chronic conditions. They are all younger than their chronological age in terms of physical health, appearance, mood and general well being. They aren't rusting out, they're stepping out into every day like the adventure it is.

Do you really know?

I often hear the complaint from significantly overweight women, especially those middle age and older, that they know exactly what to do when it comes to losing weight but they just can’t make themselves do it. Or if they can lose weight, they can’t keep it off. The temptations of fattening foods like cake, cookies or chips and their desire to avoid exercise are just too great. I’ve been there myself.  I remember feeling just the way they feel.

Food is often the nice person’s guilty pleasure. It’s actually quite similar to the more frowned-upon compulsions of drinking, drugging or gambling too much. It just doesn’t sound as bad or appear to be as harmful … at least until one develops heart disease, diabetes and/or joint problems. Oh yeah, don’t forget having to deal with the daily fatigue, feelings of disempowerment and self-loathing as well as social repercussions of carrying around excess poundage.

But I would challenge these ladies’ assumption that they do really know what to do when it comes to weight management. Otherwise I think they’d be doing it. They are all smart, accomplished, capable women. Like them I thought I knew what to do, but at the age of 50 I actually didn’t. It took finding out about what I personally needed to do to lose weight. In the process, which covered many months, I lost 55 lbs. and now am maintaining my weight loss.

Knowing the caloric counts of various foods and how many calories various forms of exercise burn is important, but is just part of the equation. The most important knowledge is what it takes for to become motivated and empowered to lose weight and keep it off based on your psychology, age and lifestyle. That’s especially true at midlife and beyond as it becomes more challenging to lose weight because of a slower metabolism.

My first best step was calling on my higher power. I had come to a point several years ago that I was going through menopause and didn’t seem able to lose a pound. My blood pressure was on the rise and I feared I would have to go on medication. I was totally overwhelmed, luckily, because it was only then that I remembered to call on God to help me solve my weighty problem. The challenge was just bigger than I was, and I cried out to him for help.

Soon came a big part of the answer to my prayer:  I ran across the book “A Course in Weight Loss” by Marianne Williamson, one of several good books that have come out in recent years that address the spiritual and psychological components of carrying excess weight. Such books alert us that the biggest barrier to weight loss and weight loss maintenance can be our relationship with food.

Do we see food as fuel for our activities, a means of rebuilding our bodies and a healing gift from God? Or do we see it as a way to reward, comfort, sedate, or punish ourselves? Do we overuse it as an avenue for social bonding and acceptance? When we come to rely on food to fill us emotionally and/or spiritually, we develop an unhealthy relationship with food. And an unhealthy relationship can easily lead to dependence or addiction to highly caloric foods that burden us with excess weight.

That was the path I was on. I had come to rely on food as a source of comfort. After my weight had crept up to a certain level, and my life situation had become extra stressful, it was a natural road to take. After all what more harm could a little extra cheddar popcorn, chips, dip, pizza and/or beer most days of the week do? Those things had become my refuge.

For someone else, using food as a refuge could mean indulging in too many dishes at church potluck socials, eating everything on their restaurant-portion-size plate, or binging on cookies or ice cream. It really is like alcohol dependence when you think about it. When I faced my own dependence on food for comfort and that fact that some foods especially (salty, crisp snacks) had an addictive hold on me, it was another step to creating a healthier relationship with food. I resolved to completely avoid foods that were addictive to me and to severely limit my alcohol consumption, including not keeping any at home. I asked God to give me strength to do those things. Such strategies were critical in my successful weight loss journey.

For the person suffering from an unhealthy relationship with food that is too severe for self-help measures, psychological counseling can be helpful and part of the journey to spiritual healing. When thoughts of food and/or weight loss become obsessive and/or when the urge to partake in unhealthy food or even healthy foods in unhealthy amounts becomes compulsive, it’s critical to bring in professional help. It can save years of wasted time and immediately start the psychological healing.

Misusing food is a major stumbling block to losing weight, but it isn’t the only stumbling block. Please take time to examine what’s really keeping you from losing weight and learn how to overcome the obstacles - whatever they are. There are many effective strategies for healthy weight loss, you’ve just got to find out what works for you. Keep seeking the answers and you will find them! Being the size you truly feel fit and are most comfortable with is so worth the effort!!

Why functional fitness is critical as we age

Mom wants to stay independent.

Several weeks ago the house shook. My first thought was that a transformer had blown up. It didn’t sound like a tree limb or a gun shot. I wondered if my 74-year-old mother had fallen. Because she weighs 100 more pounds than I do, there was no way I was going to be able to pull her off the floor.

As Mom squirmed like a little baby, it made me realize that she has lost more of the functional fitness in her legs and core than I had realized. I knew she had trouble getting out of a chair and tended to be a coach potato, but it never occurred to me that she wouldn’t be able to get off the floor. I had tried to get her to exercise before, but she has a vestibular problem that makes it challenging for her to stay active.

Fortunately, it finally dawned on me to get out an aerobic step so Mom could put her knees on to make it easier for her to pull and wiggle herself up on her bed. I’m not sure what she would have done if I hadn’t been there. Because my mother has always taken pride in being highly self-sufficient her inability to get off the floor was extremely disheartening.

You may think neither you nor your loved ones will ever lose the ability to get off the floor, even if you don’t exercise, but it happens to inactive seniors all the time. Even worse, seniors sometimes must rely on walkers or may become bedridden, not because of illness or injury but because of muscle disuse. Even more alarming, muscle weakness is a major risk factor for falling.

I tell you this story as an illustration of the importance of functional fitness. Simply put, functional fitness is the physical ability to do what we need to do to live our lives. If we can lift 20 pounds but we can’t climb a flight of steps without great difficulty, we may have arm strength but we’re not really functionally fit. We lose functional fitness when we are inactive and don’t regularly challenge all our muscles, including our heart and breathing muscles, our core and our legs - not just our biceps and triceps.

Anyone who has had a bone break or other injury that required a period of not using their muscles can attest to how fast muscles can lose their strength and flexibility, if not challenged. Astronauts come back from space weaker and have to build back their strength because during spaceflight their muscles aren’t challenged by gravity. The exercises they do during the flight only do so much good.

Your current physical limitations may be minor, such as not being able to turn your head as far back over your shoulder as you once could. Or they may affect you a bit more, such as not be able to carry as many grocery bags or easily reach to change a light bulb. Maybe you can’t dance as gracefully as you once could. Maybe you’re prone to neck or back spasms. All these things may seem of limited consequence, but why should we accept them when we could avoid them by doing a little exercise.

Like many people I knew nothing about functional fitness for most of my life. We hear that we need to exercise to keep our weight at a healthy level and avoid or lessen chronic illnesses like cardiovascular disease and diabetes. But we don’t really hear about how exercise can work magic when it comes to retaining and even improving our physical abilities. Our biological age can be much younger than our chronological age with a little exercise.

Four years ago I was seriously overweight and began a healthy weight loss program, which included not only a balanced diet but walking 10,000 steps a day. I wasn’t thinking fitness. I was thinking getting rid of some fat. But the most immediate effect of the program was the improvement of my cardiovascular health. I didn’t get winded as fast. Plus my legs felt stronger, and even my core strength improved. I became physical capable of more.

Later when I added yoga to my routine I gained some strength and range of motion. I could turn my head back farther over my shoulder. My lower back became stronger and I quit suffering from those occasional lower back spasms. During this fitness journey I decided to become a certified personal trainer, and as I began reading about functional fitness I incorporated strength training into my workouts. Soon I was able to carry in many more grocery bags at one time. After adding Zumba, a Latin dance aerobics, I have become more agile, coordinated and my balance has improved. My core feels as strong as after I had taken ballet for years in high school.

All this increase in functional fitness was been a shocker to me. I had no idea when I started my fitness journey how much my functional fitness would increase. When I was 49, I felt 99. Now I’m 53 feel as spry as when I was 33.

Although I had tried to encourage Mom do some leg and core exercises periodically before, she never would. I didn’t nag her of course because that is counterproductive, but I did pray. Fortunately after my mother’s fall she reconsidered her policy on exercise. She began to do leg squats and some other exercises with me. We started slow, but now she’s building up her legs and core nicely. We’ve now even begun working on her posture and arm strength as well. Mom has become a true believer. “I thought working out was just about looking better, which I'm not worried about. I didn’t realize exercise is really about being able to function!” my mom says.