Mindful Resilience: Lessons from a Tai Chi Balance Training
Today’s episode of the podcast is about mindful resilience, inspired by a Tai Chi balance training that I took last week.
Episode Details:
The TaiJi Quan Moving for Better Balance training is a program developed by Dr. Fuzhong Li, a scientist at the Oregon Research Institute. It is based on traditional Tai Chi, but with some significant adaptations that tailor this program to balance training and fall prevention.
Photo: © Leremy Gan via Canva.com
What really struck me about this program was how it emphasizes capacity-building, neuroplasticity, and physical resilience. To improve balance, this training gently (but consistently) challenges your edges of stability. You practice leaning, stepping, wobbling, and simulating some instability so that you can learn to catch yourself before falling. (This program has been heavily researched on fall-risk populations, and the results are impressive – see links to some of the studies below.)
Resilience means that we can handle challenges and bounce back to a healthy baseline state – whether we’re talking about emotional resilience, nervous system resilience, or physical resilience.
Mindful Resilience Topics You’ll Hear About:
• key mindfulness teachings about relating to challenges
• turning towards our experiences with kindness and awareness, rather than avoidance or trying to control our circumstances
• how this balance training echoed those lessons, by preparing for stumbles and in-the-moment balance recovery
• the Window of Tolerance model, which explains how we can work with the nervous system to better manage our response to stressors
So, today’s episode is all about connecting the dots on the theme of resilience! There are many ways this principle shows up in Mindful Movement practice, where we have the opportunity to develop resilience on each of these different levels. Over time, this translates into trusting yourself more and more, and knowing that “you’ve got this”…whatever “this” is.
Links & Resources from this episode:
- This is the TaiJi Quan: Moving for Better Balance website, with information about their programs
- A 2018 Randomized Clinical Trial (involving 670 adults 70 years or older with a history of falls or impaired mobility) that showed this TJQMBB program to reduce falls by 58% compared with stretching exercise (control intervention) and by 31% compared with a multimodal exercise intervention. Read in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
- A detailed blog post about the Window of Tolerance, including some helpful visuals
If you found today’s episode interesting, you might want to check out Episode 42 with Qigong Teacher Mimi Kuo-Deemer or Episode 25 on brain-body wellness with stress resilience coach Jessica Patching-Bunch!
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P.S. As I mentioned during this episode, there is a NEW Moved To Meditate course coming soon! Ease In To Meditation: A Movement-Based Mindfulness Course will start on May 30th. With 8 weeks of do-able lessons, you’ll explore mindfulness techniques through movement FIRST…then learn how to apply them in meditation.
