Tai Chi is called “sports meditation”. In fact, it is a more advanced meditation exercise, which is not comparable to ordinary meditation activities. They have something in common, but it is not something that ordinary meditation can achieve.

Of course, not all Tai Chi can be called sports meditation. Only Tai Chi with appropriate intentions has this honor.

Meditation and yoga were formally studied in the West earlier than Tai Chi. On Harvard University’s website in 2014, Tai Chi was listed as a form of meditation. At present, there is still a yoga column on its website’s category list, but no columns for Tai Chi or Qigong. The research results on Tai Chi are mostly scattered in multiple categories.

Although there are continuous domestic and foreign research results on the medical value of Tai Chi, it may take more efforts to make it an important category. It is reported that someone in Beijing, China has already conducted special research on Tai Chi in conjunction with Harvard University’s resource plan.

The Journal of the American Heart Association published a scientific statement on September 28, 2017, saying that ancient meditation can calm the mind and regular practice can help reduce the risk of heart disease.

The ancient, mind-calming practice of meditation may have a role inreducing the risk of heart disease. So says a scientific statement from theAmerican Heart Association in the Sept. 28, 2017, Journal of the American HeartAssociation.

While the practice of meditation has been around for thousands of years, research on its health benefits is relatively new but promising. A review of studies published in January 2014 in JAMA Internal Medicine found that meditation helps relieve anxiety, pain, and depression. For depression, meditation is as effective as antidepressants.

James E. Stahl, PhD, and his Harvard University research team studied the mind-body relaxation program offered by the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. The eight-week program taught participants several different mind-body approaches, including meditation, yoga, mindfulness, cognitive behavioral skills, and positive psychology. The study volunteers attended weekly sessions and practiced at home. The study found that people in the relaxation program used 43 percent less health care services than they had the previous year, saving an average of $2,360 per person in emergency room visits alone. This means that such yoga and meditation programs can reduce health care costs from $640 per patient to $25,500 per patient per year.

Reuters reporter reported: “Meditation not only brings tranquility, but also brings economic returns. The meditation industry is booming, especially in big cities such as New York, where people are willing to spend money to buy peace of mind.”

In a studio in New York, a 33-minute meditation class costs $18, and many customers think that it is nothing to spend this money to get a peaceful state of mind in the hustle and bustle of life. The New York Public Library even has a meditation class every week.

More relevant data shows that the meditation industry generated $1.1 billion in revenue worldwide in 2016, an increase of 10% over the previous year. Yoga and meditation classes are gaining widespread appeal. Nearly one in ten Americans practice yoga, and 45% of adults who do not practice yoga say they are interested in trying yoga. Americans are also using other forms of complementary health therapies, such as meditation (8%) and deep breathing (11%).

Meditation can relieve pain and help with treatment

Formal scientific research on meditation and yoga in the West is earlier than Tai Chi. In the 1970s, Dr. Kabat-Zinn, a doctor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, combined meditation and psychology and applied meditation to his critically ill patients. He found that meditation could help everyone relieve pain and release stress. He then developed a stress relief course for business people.

In the past few years, meditation has begun to enter the public eye, spreading from abroad to China and being accepted by many people. In addition to the huge economic benefits, the physiological effects of meditation are the fundamental reason why modern people follow it. “Meditation is likely to become a new generation of popular fitness methods after running became popular in the circle of friends.” Many reports have put forward such views.

“There are many ways to stay healthy – there are many doors to health, but not every door is open to everyone. The key is that it uses many different tools, complements each other, and allows many resources to be opened to the public,” said Dr. Starr, chief researcher at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in the United States.

Types of meditation

In 2014, Harvard Medical School summarized the forms of meditation as follows:

• Focused meditation: teaches you how to focus on your thoughts. It is the basis of other forms of meditation.

Heart meditation: involves quieting the mind and bringing awareness to the heart, the energy center in the center of the chest.

•Mindfulness meditation: encourages you to focus objectively on negative thoughts as they move through your mind so that you can achieve a state of calm.

•Tai Chi Qigong: is a moving form of meditation that combines physical exercise with breathing and attention.

•Transcendental meditation: is a well-known technique in which you repeat a mantra – a word, phrase or sound – to quiet your mind and gain more awareness.

•Walking meditation: breathe as you step, shifting your attention to the body and mind. With the development of brainwave science, emotions and brain activity that were originally ethereal can be tracked and recorded. The effects of meditation are no longer myths, but scientifically visible and measurable parameters.

A recent article in Harvard Business Review suggested that health insurance companies should provide low-cost and evidence-based wellness and preventive treatments, such as yoga and meditation. The article discusses a study of Aetna employees who participated in the company’s mindfulness program, which found that they experienced 28% less stress, 20% better sleep, 19% less pain, and increased worker productivity, with an estimated $3,000 increase per employee per year. As a result, these companies offer free yoga and meditation classes to their employees.

Meditation can reduce the incidence of disease by 50%

Harvard University physician Herbert Benlin said: “Excessive physical and mental tension in a person will weaken the function of the body’s immune system. The complete relaxation brought by meditation will reduce physical tension and is an effective way to prevent and treat many diseases.”

A medical survey showed that meditators have a 50% lower incidence rate than those who are not good at doing this. This therapy is more effective for elderly hypertension, coronary heart disease, neurasthenia, etc. Even for healthy people, regular meditation is beneficial, which can eliminate fatigue, benefit the balance of the left and right brains, and “recharge” the health of the human body.

Among the eight limbs of yoga, five of them, namely, breathing, pratyahara, dhyana, and trance, need to be completed in a meditative state. Meditation is a technique and way to achieve a state of concentration in yoga. It focuses the mind, intention and spirit completely on the original beginning. The ultimate goal is to lead people to the state of liberation. There are many ways to achieve meditation in yoga, the most important of which include: blueprint meditation, candlelight meditation, sleep meditation, charging meditation, dance meditation, etc.

1, The effect of meditation on the central nervous system

    With the cross-study of psychology, physiology and neuroscience, more studies have begun to use physiological indicator observation tools to observe some physiological phenomena of compassion meditation, mainly using brain imaging technology, such as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), PET scan (positron emission tomography), EEG (electroencephalogram), DTI (diffusion tensor imaging), etc. to observe changes in brain structure and function [4]. Brain imaging technology is widely used. It can reflect the subtle changes in brain structure and function of individuals at specific moments, helping researchers to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanism of compassion meditation on body and mind regulation.

    The research team led by Davidson recorded EEG indicators and found that the gamma wave activity of monks during compassion meditation was significantly increased compared with their rest period, with an average gamma wave amplitude of 25-42 Hz, and even when resting, the gamma waves of these monks were more active (compared with student volunteers). The researchers concluded that long-term compassion meditation training changed the way these monks’ brains were active and may have caused short-term and long-term changes in brain neuroplasticity.

    Lutz and other researchers used human sounds, such as positive sounds (baby laughter), neutral sounds (noise in a restaurant), or negative sounds (women’s pain), to stimulate 15 compassion meditation veterans (more than 10,000 to 50,000 hours) and 15 novices, and observed brain imaging (fMRI) changes in meditation or resting states. The study found that when the trainees were in a meditative state, compared with novices in compassion meditation, veterans of meditation were more sensitive to negative sounds (such as the sound of a woman’s pain). Brain imaging showed that their insula was very active, and the activity of the insula was consistent with the increase in altruism reflected in self-reports.

    The researchers conducted an in-depth analysis of some participants and found that the activity of the anterior cingulate cortex was also related to meditation training, especially the veterans who had been training in compassion meditation for a long time showed more activity in this brain area. The insula and the anterior cingulate cortex are important parts of the central nervous system for detecting psychological effects, which can reflect the physiological responses of emotions (compassion, sympathy) and cognitive functions (attention, decision). In addition, the study also found that meditation training can increase the activity of the amygdala in the brain area. The amygdala is a subcortical center of the limbic system of the brain. It is crucial for processing emotions and is an important part of the brain involved in compassion when perceiving thoughts and emotions.

    2, The effect of meditation on neuroendocrine

      In recent years, scientists have begun to study the molecular biological mechanism of meditation. The biomarkers commonly studied include cortisol, telomerase, interleukin-6, etc. Biomarkers are usually used as a marker of biological state, which can objectively measure and evaluate the normal process, pathological process or intervention response of organisms. In meditation research, biomarkers are used as an indicator to detect the effect of meditation treatment, and physiological changes are measured before and after evaluation. The study of biomarkers has opened up the field of molecular biological research of meditation, and has laid a certain foundation for the scientific research of meditation to enter the mainstream of biomedicine.

      Pace et al. conducted two studies to study whether compassion meditation training regulates immunity and neuroendocrine through stress. Their research team randomly assigned 61 healthy adults to a 6-week compassion meditation training class (n = 33) and a healthy discussion control group (n = 28), and measured their plasma cortisol, plasma interleukin-6, and observed subjective anxiety responses using a stress test method involving social performance ability. Although there was no significant difference in plasma cortisol and interleukin-6 concentrations between the two groups, the compassion meditation training group reflected that an increase in meditation time was associated with a reduction in stress-induced interleukin-6 and subjective distress. The results showed that compassion meditation training can reduce stress-induced subjective distress such as anxiety symptoms and immune responses such as plasma cortisol and interleukin-A .

      research team led by researcher Clifford[10] tracked 60 experienced meditation practitioners and conducted three months of intensive meditation (mindfulness and compassion) training for them, practicing for at least 5 hours a day. They found that meditation training can increase the activity of telomerase in white blood cells (telomerase can repair the shortened part of DNA during cell division, and this shortening process has been shown to be related to aging). The results showed that the telomerase activity of the subjects who received three months of meditation training was one-third higher than that of the subjects who did not participate in meditation training.

        Conclusion: Tai Chi with intention is a more advanced meditation, seeking tranquility in motion, which is far superior to ordinary meditation.