Tai Chi Journal

It's Not Just Me: Proprioception and Tai Chi

Earlier, in this post giving my first impressions of Tai Chi, I spoke of two particular challenges I'm experiencing as a Tai Chi newbie: poor physical ability to keep my balance, and poor "body awareness." The latter I illustrated as a failure to be aware of my actual posture with respect to keeping my shoulders right over my hips, thereby provoking lower-back discomfort.

It turns out that the two issues, balance and body awareness, are more closely related than I knew, or so a book I have bought tells me.

I went to the bookstore the other day and got four books that illustrate Yang-style Tai Chi notably well, one of which is (I'm almost ashamed to admit), T'ai Chi for Dummies. Early on, it talks about how Tai Chi improves folks' ability to balance. It mentions the problem of "weak ankles or weak lower legs," and I thought, "That's me all over!"

Tai Chi fixes that. Says the book, "The improvements happen because of training better proprioception of the nerves and muscles of the lower legs. Loosely translated, proprioception is sort of like tickling the nerves and muscles to improve the muscle sense of the body's position in space." That, in turn, improves the balance. "With better balance, you don't wobble as much or turn your ankles as often."

So balance depends on proprioception. And propriocepetion, kinesthetic awareness, and body awareness are very close to one another in concept, says "Training for Proprioception & Function," an online article here. They all have to do with "understanding how the body communicates with itself."

So when I complain of back discomfort and labored breathing associated with not keeping my shoulders, hips, and knees in proper relation, thereby arcing my back and over-tensing my diaphragm, I'm talking about a paucity of proprioception on my part, a lack of kinesthetic awareness, a deficit in terms of how my body communicates with itself.

For all of which, Tai Chi is my chosen antidote!

What's more, it's therapeutic just to read in this book that poor proprioception is a common malady. It's not just me! What a relief to know that!

posted by eric @ 8:01 AM