drug ankylosing spondylitis

a moving meditation for body, mind and spirit taoist tai chi, i would say that it basically is an exercise andmeditative practice rolled into one. so you're working andrelaxing the body as well as calming your mindand your spirit, together. it's a very profound exercise and itlooks gentle but it's quite intense. i think it's just a fantasticpractice for maintenance of the health, for improvement of the health. many people do start with serious injuries and illnesses

and they can benefit the most from it.and it's for everybody. if you consider yourself an activeathlete or you are in a wheelchair, it has something to offer toeverybody. it's a very gentle exercise.it's suitable for people of all ages, no matter what physical conditions you may have, no matter what disabilities you have. people can do tai chi in a wheelchair.it doesn't matter. it is a way to live everyday to thefullest, physically and mentally. it's an opportunity to relax your mind.it's a meditation process.

it seems no matter what you do,there is a meditative aspect to it. it is a path to our own cultivationof the body, mind and spirit. it's very calming and i feelgood when i do tai chi, and it's easy and it's fun. the body 'i can make myself stronger' my name is judit altenburger-olah.i come from sopron, hungary. and i have been doing taoist tai chi for twelve years now. my name is sylvia guitã© andi live in guelph, ontario.

i began doing taoist tai chi in 2003 and that was years after i wasdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis. i was diagnosed with mild osteoporosis so told 'find something to do,find some kind of exercise' and luckily i saw a demo of taoist tai chiand i said 'this is it, it's beautiful'. i started tai chi because i heard that itwould improve my balance and flexibility and it did that, it did that tremendously. i'm danny simmons,i live in toronto, ontario. hey, my name is tam flemming.i'm from nova scotia.

i started tai chi in 1988. i've been doing tai chi for a little over 10 years and i started because i wasquite sick with crohn's disease. i was quite weak and i was lookingfor a gentle exercise to get moving again. it was at that time i was havinga lot of trouble with stiffness. i have a condition calledankylosing spondylitis. which leads to fusion of myspine and hip involvement. when i started tai chi icouldn't walk very well. i was taking a drug and it killed the bonesin my hips so that they totally collapsed.

so in lieu of getting hip surgery,i started getting into tai chi. in fact that's really why iwas mostly doing tai chi, was too rehabilitate my hips and the sideeffect was that it helped my crohn's disease. right away i noticed it washelping my back. within a few months, there wasless pain in my back. i was able to sleep through the night. things like the don yus were helpingwith the stiffness in my hips. so just overall it was helping methat way, with my stiffness basically. my name is maggie langlinais

i am originally from louisiana but ilive in new york city, where i practice tai chi, which i've beendoing for about five years now. my name is kate campbell.i'm from buffalo, new york. i've been doing tai chi since 2007. and i originally got into it because i justwanted to try something meditative and i had a martial arts background so i thought that tai chi could be a good combination of those things. i was in a serious caraccident back in 2003 and fractured my t12 vertebrae, which is in your lower back,

and was in a lot of severe pain, every day andhad great difficulty walking most of the time. i have carpal tunnel syndrome and irealized very quickly that it helped a lot. i got a lot more circulation, myfingertips weren't numb anymore, and before i started practicing taoist tai chi,i was in some degree of pain all of the time and i'd been to a couple doctors about it andbasically their answer was "well you're young." "if you were older and it was more seriouswe'd give you surgery but deal with it," basically. my name is bruce mcfarlane. i live outside collingwood, ontario and i've beendoing taoist tai chi for about twenty years. i'm a family doctor working in ruralontario and in the arctic

and many of the people i seehave chronic health problems. problems for which western medicineusually doesn't have a full vigorous response, which is why theproblems are chronic. before i started tai chi, i just knew i had ms and the doctors didn't know whetheri'd be in a wheelchair next year, tomorrow, ten years from now. at the time i was diagnosed my nervous systemwould attack me and i would be paralyzed. usually when i was paralyzedit would stay for a few weeks, maybe three weeks, four weeks,and then it would start coming back

and when you've lost all movement,when you've lost every movement, like from one minute you can eat yourdinner and the next minute you can't, like 20 minutes later you can't moveyour hand, no matter what you do. that is the scariest thing that will ever happen to you. so people with parkinson's disease,people with multiple sclerosis, advanced arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, people who have had strokesor experience car injuries, traumas, even many years back, these are all situations and peoplefor which i didn't have a tool

or a response for their predicament. introducing them to taoist tai chihas proved remarkably helpful for people, allowing them to increase their flexibilityand their balance, their strength, their endurance, their senseof relaxation and enjoyment. with doing tai chi, i knowthat it will always come back. no, i don't know that it will always come back but i know that if it does come back, ican work at it and make myself stronger. so to come to taoist tai chi andlearn that i could have an active role in my own physical well-being was arevelation, it was an amazing discovery for me.

so i've been doing it ever since. it really changed a lot of theideas of what i thought about health. before i think i thoughthealth had more to do with how far you could run, liftingweights or various things like that but my idea of health really transformed to thingsthat involve better circulation in the body, more flexibility, more space, moreroom for things to move around internally. and i haven't been back for a re-check formany years but i feel very much more flexible. i feel that i am more straight.i have more balance. i have more endurance. i feel likemy bones are supporting me.

so i feel younger than idid maybe thirty years ago. everything about meis more vital i think. i feel more limber after a tai chi class. i feel stretched, not as tight.i'm more mobile and healthier. i'm a healthier individualsince doing tai chi. it has helped me a lot. i was able to get off takingpainkillers every day and now can walk fullyupright without any pain. but i found so much morewithin the society,

it ended up helping meemotionally and mentally in ways that i neverimagined were possible. the mind and spirit 'it helped me bring my soul back' the nature of these teachings is notjust about the body, but also about the mind and abouthow you interact with people. the physical benefits go beyond that toaffect, have profound effects on, your mind, your spirit, how you feel, how you look at things, how you feel about life.

master moy talked about thedual cultivation of mind and body and certainly i've found just as many healthbenefits psychologically and mentally. i'm bob varley.i come from montgomery alabama. i started doing tai chi in 1998. i just noticed, i mean it wasa beautiful thing to watch, and i noticed that people seemed to be verycalm and relaxed when they were doing it. i had a very high stress job and ithought maybe that might help me relax and take care of someof the stress i had. and also i just thought it was just a beautifulthing to see and i thought 'wow, i'd like to do that.'

my name is kirosa. i've been doing taoist tai chifor five and a half years. how i found it was because i was very ill. i was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorderand panic disorder. with mental health,people don't talk about that. people do not understand a whole lot andeven family sometime is hard to understand. even myself did not knowwhat was going on at the time until i checked into a psychiatric ward hospital.

kia ora koutou katoa. my name is sue lightfootand i'm from new zealand. i've been doing taichi for twenty years and i guess i started becausei had a very serious accident, which incurred a very bad back injury but if you ask me what the benefits of doingtaoist tai chi were, after twenty years, i guess i would have to say that i'vereceived just as many health benefits mentally and psychologically from doingtaoist tai chi as from the physical benefits. within almost a monthof starting to do tai chi,

it really did sort of have a relaxingstress relief and the relaxation. we would quite often arrive atthe club rooms all hunched over and full of the stress of the day and within half an hour the instructorwould say 'open up and extend the spine' and i would go 'what day? i feel great to be walking and it's good to be able to do taoist tai chi.' i mean, i was still taking a beginner classbut i noticed that when i would go into class and we'd start thefirst move of tai chi, starts like this: lifting your armsup and putting them down, and i just noticed that i wouldjust do that and that was it.

no thoughts about anything that wasgoing on my life, the stress was gone. i was a lawyer, a trial lawyer.it's a very stressful kind of job. it was so wonderful to me to be able to comesomewhere do this and relax. and you can have all kindsstresses in your daily life. you come back out of work and don'tfeel like going to your class, but you come out of therejust relaxed and feeling well. through taoist tai chi i regained some ability to focus. what we offer first is the physical tai chi and from the very first class, for myself,

we were introduced to the factthat there was much more. fung loy kok is a tradition. it encompasses the practice of a veryspecial teaching of the 3 religions: buddhism, confucianism and taoism. it is not necessarily somethingthat has to be religious. it can be a way of life. it is exploring cultural perspectivesand it brings people together. you might just want to do the tai chibut there is so much more on offer. there are many other forms of the tai chi,the lok hup, the sword and sabre, the hsing-i.

there's chanting, there's meditation, there'sa whole temple aspect of fung loy kok. i find when i practice the meditation andthe chanting, that my tai chi is improved. they work really strongly together. those are not required activities. those are things that are availableto people who are interested and want to take the study of taoismand the taoist arts just a little bit further. i think this is something somepeople come to tai chi looking for, the spiritual aspect, andsome people come into it. it's there and it's available and you'remore than welcome to learn about it

but if not and you'd rather just stick with tai chi,you're totally welcome to do that as well. a genuine taoist master 'a very inspiring person' master moy was a genuine taoist masterso meeting him was always an experience. he was always present in the moment. you know, he was a very inspiring personso he would inspire you to do things and to go a little further than you may ordinarily do. and his ability to see who you wereand how you might like to be involved, or how you maybe needed to beinvolved, he was able to see that.

i can remember once doing tor yu and he said 'why are you so sad?' he said it's like offering a gift to somebody you hold very dear, and the gift you know will be valued andappreciated deeply by that person. so obviously if you have prepared a gift for somebody that you love, you do it with a certain quality. and so when he said 'why are you so sad?',that was the imagery he gave me for the tor yu. i was sad at that moment and sohe was able to address the spirit as he worked with your body,which is what taoist tai chi does. often he could tell that the problem was in your spirit,not in your body and he would speak to that. one of the first things master moy said to mewhen i first saw him was 'start instructing'.

i'd been doing tai chifor a year and a half then. he said 'start instructing, it will help you.' to me, being an instructor is a tremendousopportunity to share this art with other people and help them find the benefits that i,and many others, have found. i know that all theinstructors are accredited. i know they're all volunteer and unpaid so iknow that they do it because they believe in it and they enjoy people and are interestedin being of assistance to others. you become an instructor by having adesire to learn and continue learning. it's not even so much what you know it's,like master moy said, it's what's in your heart.

you don't have to be perfect butyou need to have a desire to improve. as a taoist tai chi instructor, i benefitfrom watching, engaging with students, watching their responses, hearing their reflections, so i am a student. i'm a student as i'm teaching and i need tobe a student at practicing my own tai chi, in order to deepen my understandingbecause it isn't book learning. it's experiential. a very profound exercise 'it helps in whatever way you need help' taoist tai chi is very muchabout how we treat people,

how we treat other peoplewith respect that is due. that is one of master moy's main lessons. fung loy kok institute of taoismreally helped me to bring my soul back. it's a very low impact exercise and yet you get a tremendousamount of physical benefit from doing this. it lifts my spirits, gives me asense of general well-being. i just feel much more comfortableabout being alive, through doing tai chi. it seems to me that it helps each person in the way thatthey need help and in whatever way they need help. to me, you've got to come to the taoisttai chi society if you want practice.

tai chi that really is goingto work for you. i would suggest to everyone: come and try. not just for one session, do the beginner's course. you need to give yourself at least3-4 months and then carry on. this is investing in your health, so anyone. available in 26 countries www.taoist.org