T'ai Chi and health benefits

It is taking me ages to get these up on here, apologies. This is everything I have for now, I will add more as they arrive. Please send links to anything else you feel is relevant. I have also added links about haptic sense decline, the legacy of frictionless surfaces and screen time meaning people can't use real objects finely any more...

Thankyou to Michael, Janet R and Hamid especially for the links.

After reading, go practice!

General synopsis of Taichi health benefits So good I will quote it here directly.

'OBJECTIVE:

To summarize the evidence on the health benefits of tai chi.

SOURCES OF INFORMATION:

A literature review was conducted on the benefits of tai chi for 25 specific conditions, as well as for general health and fitness, to update a 2014 review of systematic reviews. Systematic reviews and recent clinical trials were assessed and organized into 5 different groups: evidence of benefit as excellent, good, fair, or preliminary, or evidence of no direct benefit.

MAIN MESSAGE:

During the past 45 years more than 500 trials and 120 systematic reviews have been published on the health benefits of tai chi. Systematic reviews of tai chi for specific conditions indicate excellent evidence of benefit for preventing falls, osteoarthritis, Parkinson disease, rehabilitation for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and improving cognitive capacity in older adults. There is good evidence of benefit for depression, cardiac and stroke rehabilitation, and dementia. There is fair evidence of benefit for improving quality of life for cancer patients, fibromyalgia, hypertension, and osteoporosis. Current evidence indicates no direct benefit for diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, or chronic heart failure. Systematic reviews of general health and fitness benefits show excellent evidence of benefit for improving balance and aerobic capacity in those with poor fitness. There is good evidence for increased strength in the lower limbs. There is fair evidence for increased well-being and improved sleep. There were no studies that found tai chi worsened a condition. A recent systematic review on the safety of tai chi found adverse events were typically minor and primarily musculoskeletal; no intervention-related serious adverse events have been reported.

CONCLUSION:

There is abundant evidence on the health and fitness effects of tai chi. Based on this, physicians can now offer evidence-based recommendations to their patients, noting that tai chi is still an area of active research, and patients should continue to receive medical follow-up for any clinical conditions.

Copyright© the College of Family Physicians of Canada.'

Postural stability in patients with Parkinson's

Fall reductions in older people

Taichi benefits and cognitive control in older people.

Benefits of QiGong and Taichi (scroll to bottom for comprehensive list of outcomes)

If so inclined, Janet Rickard suggest you can search published reports here for related papers.

Students of surgery lack basic dexterity for lack of touch.
I also have the report from the 'Thinking Hands' symposium about this from St Martins in 2014, for those who are interested, get in touch.