Mind-Body Health and Tai Chi: Maximizing Health Benefits Through Eastern Medicine and Taoist Perspectives

Jacqueline C. Shin

Tai Chi-a thousand-year-old Chinese martial art-is garnering global attention as an inexpensive and easy-to-implement treatment for chronic disease, pain, mental health, and cognitive decline. In addition, because it involves gentle movements, Tai Chi can be practiced by people of all ages. Tai Chi health benefits have been explained primarily in terms of psychoneuroimmunological mechanisms that emphasize calm mental states and the advantages of aerobic exercise. I will discuss some limitations of this approach and propose an alternative approach that focuses on the use of Eastern Medicine and Taoist principles to analyze Tai Chi movements and its practice methods. Such an approach would complement Western medical theories in predicting Tai Chi health outcomes, facilitating the development of Tai Chi treatments tailored to specific health issues or target populations, and maximize the health benefits of existing Tai Chi routines.

Jacqueline C. Shin, Ph. D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Indiana State University. Her research interests include temporal skill in visual attention, temporal and sequence learning, life span development of skill learning, cognitive function in neurodegenerative diseases, and cognitive-motor coordination.

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Published on January 1, 2024