WHAT MARTIAL ART IMPROVES BALANCE, GETS RID OF STRESS, FEELS LIKE DANCING AND HELPS CHANGE A HABIT? (ISSUE 72)

By Diane Gold

Okay, you knew. It’s tai chi, the system of movement that looks like rolling liquid that never stops. It teaches personal protection and awareness, creates relaxation of both mind and body (yeah, spirit, too, but there are too many discussions and interpretations on that subject that we won’t mention again in this piece), improves health, feels good and looks good.

In order to talk about how tai chi helps change a habit, let’s define the different aspects of the training, similar to what happens when someone joins the United State Military Service or a dance troupe.

According to Staff Seargent Curtis Osburn, USMC, San Diego,

“…from the minute recruits get off the bus, they are guided through physical challenges, mental challenges and moral challenges.”

So far, this sounds like any martial art. We get strong  of mind, body and moral fiber by going through the physical demands of the movement system. The physical regime prepares us to be flexible of mind as well as body.

According to New England Journal Medicine, Feb. 9, 2012, tai chi helped Parkinson’s patients with balance more than stretching and weight training.

But tai chi has other functions. There is scientific evidence that tai chi also improves flexibility, focus, respiration, muscle response, memory, mental attitude.

To the tai chi player (as the rest of the world says it), it feels similar to dancing or swimming because each movement is connected to the previous. I like to call it “air surfing.”

So, how can this change a habit?

Okay, remember that we build habits by receiving some signal (THE CUE) which leads us to do the same BEHAVIOR over and over to receive a REWARD. We eat 3 pieces of pie so we can say,

        “Yum.”

We take chemical or recreational risks because we like “the instant stimulation or rush” or because someone prescribed it. Sometimes we get stuck repeating the behaviors over and over again in a habit.

Where it used to be unusual for us to eat 3 pieces of cake, now it is normal to do so and seemingly impossible to stop. We crave it regularly.

Where it used to be occasional to drink champagne at New Year’s Eve, now it is normal to skip dinner and drink alcohol. It is seemingly impossible to stop. We crave it regularly.
The once exceptional event has become the standard way to act. Those brave souls among us who want to change a habit to support their lives in the best way possible want to reverse the process.

Tai chi can help. Here’s how.

In order to learn tai chi, we have to concentrate on the actual movement we are doing. We do the same movement over and over again until it becomes familiar to us. Sounds a little like a habit, right? It is different from jumping rope, doing a dance routine, going to the gym because every time we do it, it is different. Tai chi movement involves every single part of the body. And we are different of mind and body every day. That is why it is different. As with any martial art, the movement is a tool for training and changing the mind. However, the physical way we execute the motion is related to our mood at the moment, what we choose to express, how relaxed our body is and whether we are working on warding off a potential attacker. These factors affect the movement and make it unique in the world of movement arts.

The fact that tai chi involves mind, body and the way we live our lives, but all we have to do is watch our moving hand or foot to grasp our own attention is the very reason it can help change a habit. When we get the CUE, that urge, craving, onset of desire to behave habitually, we can

CHOOSE ANOTHER BEHAVIOR!

We just have to plan it!

I’m being a bit dramatic here because this statement is all we have to do, even though thinking about it may make it seem impossible. Of course, it may not be easy or we would have done it already. But it’s doable. I’m living proof many times over.

TAI CHI AS IT APPLIES TO CHANGE OF HABIT

Here’s where tai chi comes into play. And these are the sequential steps that allow us to change a habit using tai chi:

1) Tai chi teaches us to take our time with movement because understanding the movement takes time.

2) In order for us to be successful at tai chi, we learn patience.

3) This patience with learning tai chi, a martial arts system, translates to patience in our lives and more control over what we do, including our impulses and the cravings that appear out of nowhere and demand some type of behavior.

4) This control translates into having the strength to do a new behavior, different from the old one, that also creates some type of reward.

At the beginning, meaning for 3 to 4 weeks, if possible; it’s a good idea not to look at the new reward or evaluate it or compare it to the old reward. We have to remember it took lots of repetition to learn the old behavior, so give the new behavior some time to become beneficial to our lives before deciding to judge it. Otherwise the mind will play the old trick that the new behavior doesn’t work for us (which is. most of the time, a self-con so that we can go back to our old behavior).

Just like with tai chi, the reward of a new behavior takes time to learn, time to appreciate, time before it becomes a habit.

PRACTICAL ACTION STEPS TO CHANGE A HABIT

So once we have decided that we have a habit that is not supporting our life, here are some simple suggestions to start moving toward success:

1) WRITE IT DOWN!

When you are not craving, urging, desiring your old behavior – which may only be for a quick minute at a time – get out a pen and paper and write down what new behavior you will do instead of the old one. This way, you are contracting with yourself.

2) GO TO THE MIRROR

Go to the mirror and tell yourself that, when you get your next cue, you will do your new behavior.

3) BE PHYSICAL

Consider doing something physically exerting for your new behavior, like walking around the closest building or house, so that using your physical body has a chance at calming down your urges through the release of new hormones or neurotransmitters that feel good to the body. to   so that It should be physical and in a different location from the one where you do the old behavior.

4) CHANGE LOCATIONS

Make sure that you go in the opposite direction from the place where you did your old behavior. Sometimes if you travel away from the source, you will be too lazy to go toward it, or, by the time you get part way toward the location of the old behavior, your urge will be gone.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

It’s simple distractions such as these that keep us focused on our new behaviors.

5) CALL SOMEONE

Find a friend, a stranger or an association where you can call and tell someone you are traveling away from the source, or you are walking around the building. You are more likely to talk yourself down (talk yourself out of falling back into the old behavior) if you have a supporter.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

If you don’t know who to call, call 211, option 3, to talk to someone. As of February, 2013, this free service is available in 50 states (39 of them with 100% coverage) and Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico (100% coverage).

CONCLUSION

Tai chi is a beautiful system of movement that makes our minds more flexible to succeed at our goals. That’s why it is so helpful when we want to change a habit. It’s also another alternative we can choose instead of our old behavior. We can write about it, do it in a mirror, it’s physical, we can do it far away from our old behavior location, and we can call someone else who does tai chi.

It’s a great preparer for life’s changes. We become rooted physically from the actual movement we learn as our legs gain strength. We begin to see a glimmer of understanding about why it’s called an art – because each of us creates our way of doing it. Our will power grows and can support us when we change a habit.

PUBLISHER’S DEDICATION

This article is dedicated to the art of tai chi and what it does for those who do it. It’s also a good place to announce WORLD TAI CHI AND CHI KUNG DAY, April 27, 2013, a free event where close to one million people all over the world do tai chi and chi kung in public events starting at 10 am local time in the first time zone and continue in most time zones across the globe to create a wave of peace and harmony.

As the organizer of the Boca Raton event, we welcome you to participate. It’s the 14th year for Boca. We’ll be in Sanborn Square, Boca Raton, Florida 33432 to celebrate. Details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/148699685298664.

If you are not local to Boca Raton (which most of you are not), we may be able to help you find an event in your city. Bottom line, If it sounds good, put it on the calendar. It’s free and fun. If you can’t make it, think tai chi at 10 am on April 27, 2013.

FEEDBACK

Please leave  a comment and LIKE.

DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Turning Habits Into Health, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert, dedicated mom, studying plant-based nutrition.

She has seen how tai chi helps change a habit. She has watched people balance their weight, their emotional state, their physical habit of falling, their appetite. She says,

“Tai chi gives us a foundation, a root, like the root of a tree. When we have this infrastructure, we can require of ourselves new behavior by using tai chi principle. While doing tai chi, we do tai chi. We don’t think of shopping, finances, family feuds. In this same way, when we get our cue which used to cause the old behavior, we can do the new behavior by not thinking about it. We will just do it. That’s how we do tai chi: we just do it.If we are thinking about it, we’re not doing it. So we don’t think about it when we’re doing it.

“Similar to the scientist who can apply the scientific theory anywhere in the universe, the tai chi principle of “just doing it,” with no thought or mind deliberation, can be applied to changing a habit or any situation in life.”

TEEN WEIGHT GAIN AND SUGARY DRINKS: A CLOSER LOOK (ISSUE 48)

By Diane Gold

A recent headline in weight studies was

Program To Reduce Teen Intake Of Sugary Drinks Has Promise

A study, published on Sept. 22, 2012 in the New England Journal of Medicine, looked at reducing the sugary drinks that teens drank for a year, using 224 teens. The study delivered non-caloric drinks to the homes of one-half of this teen group for a year, supplied coaching calls to parents, check-in visits and messaging with the participants. The other half just drank their sugary drinks, as usual.

The study resulted in the group given non-caloric drinks and privy to coaching services, weighed, on average, 4 pounds less than the control group, after one year.

When we do studies, in order to validate them, we have to break down the parameters to make sure our measurements don’t overlap other factors. It’s very tricky to do. In this study, calories were measured but not what types of food groups they came from, coaching for parents existed with no measure of what parents believed at the onset or what they were economically able to comply with in terms of no sugary drinks in the house at the end of the study, and periodic messaging existed for participants but no mention of what it accomplished. The limitations in this study are common because we are so complex as human beings and every new stipulation we use costs more time which is money.

Take away something without replacing it with something else in our lives and a gaping hole exists. To remove sugary drinks, we need to put something else there that will offer a reward of some kind. Otherwise, the emptiness becomes very uncomfortable.

Picture what happens when a hole is dug for a swimming pool but the pool never gets built. The big, gaping hole is damaging to the peace of mind of the yard, symbolic of the removal of our friend, the sugary drink, and can be painful. Pain causes old behavior.

How much nicer it is when the hole is filled with something meaningful, like water for a refreshing swim, symbolic of water to drink.

Here are some facts to think about.

THE LARGEST SINGLE SOURCE OF CALORIES

Let’s start with the surprising fact that “sugar intake from sugar-sweetened beverages alone, which are the largest single caloric food source in the United States, approaches 15% of the daily caloric intake … in several population groups” (Sonia Caprio, MD cites black and Mexican boys in her editorial, New England Journal Of Medicine online, quoting YC Wang in Pediatrics, 2008, and Nhanes III & Nhanes in Journal of Food Composition & Analysis, 2004).

When we are young, we require constant energy replenishment. In our consumeristic society, we are sold on the benefis of sugary drinks are from a very young age. What if we figured out a financially viable way to spend as much advertising capital on the merits of water or if we spent as much on packaging eye-appealing, reusable, collapsible water bottles as on sugary drinks? How would this affect our drinking habits and teen weight gain?

CONSIDER THESE 6 QUESTIONS

1)    Is it the sugar in liquid form that causes weight gain due to its ease of absorption?

FACT

Another study in the New England Journal Of Medicine found that cutting out soda from
teens’ diets resulted in a more dramatic weight loss than was shown with any other food.

2)    Are we craving drinking sweet liquid because we enjoy the way it feels, tastes or looks?

3)    Are we subliminally seduced to sugary drinks because we have been programmed to like them?

4)    Did the coached half of the 224 study participants crave the human interaction of ongoing messaging and check-in visits and that’s why they gained 4 pounds less?

ACCOUNTABILITY

Does the will to be accountable to someone else drive us to succeed? What if we could get an accountability partner for free? Would we do it?

There’s a new bulletin board at www.accountabilitypartnerfree.com where you can post a need and get a partner.

HUMAN CONTACT

What if we just crave the human contact from a mentor or coach? How do we translate that into getting that human interaction from our friends, our parents, ourselves?

NOTE: The mission of www.WarriorsOfWeight.com is to offer techniques and tools so that each of us can be independent enough to have resolve in ourselves and have enough strength to put our hands out to others.

PARENT COACHING

5)    Did the coaching with parents cause the attitude change in the teens? Did this coaching cause superficial changes in the parents for that year alone?

We do know that, after the study year was over, during the follow up year, for the most part, parents went back to buying sugary drinks for the home, and teens went back to drinking sugary drinks at school or on their way home from school.

ECONOMICS

6)    Is the consumption of sugary drinks caused by the need for teenage fuel and the inability to afford designer drinks that are healthier? Is this same economic factor why teens don’t buy crystal clear water for snack?

Would the answers to these questions shed a different light on the results of this study or any study?

ENVIRONMENT VS. MINDSET

Dr. David Ludwig, senior author of the teen weight gain study, said of the fact that the teens gained weight after the study year and went back to drinking sugary drinks in the follow up year, “Permanent environmental changes are necessary for permanent weight loss.” True, if there were no sugary drinks in the school and no commercial propaganda on visual devices from an early age, there would be change.

I acknowledge Dr. Ludwig’s statement. If we remove sugary drinks from schools and eateries and ads, the next generation will be influenced correctly from the start. I would still like to add “Permanent mindset change is necessary for permanent weight loss.”

In 1-Step Consulting, we teach the impermanence of environmental changes as a whole. Of course, should the family of teens have maintained no sugary drinks in the house from the time the study finished, the teens would have had a big head start on caloric intake from sugary drinks. However, if there is no mindset change that includes
new drinking habits for health, as soon as the teen steps out of the protected environment that caused the change, the old habit will come back.

WHAT WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAMS LEAVE OUT

What is not emphasized from day 1 in any weight loss programs
I have seen is this very important factor: pick and learn a new behavior to replace the old. Just going through the motions of acting out a new habit is not enough. Each of us
must methodically place the new behavior in place so that we have something to do instead of our old behavior and nurture it.

Take my friend, T., who weighed in excess of 300 pounds. He decided he would have no food in his house for a full 3-month period. He had all his meals delivered, and he lost over 100 pounds. Then, he went back to keeping food in the house, going out to his precious restaurants, and he gained the weight right back again.

What didn’t he do?

He changed his environment, but he didn’t change his mind.
He reverted to his old environment, but his mindset hadn’t changed.

Result: weight regain.

CONCLUSION – WHAT’S IMPORTANT

The most important thing, whether it comes out of research, need, experimentation, embarking on a new program is the result. It’s about changing the mind in the desired direction. In order for the program to work well, the set up is very important.

When a program talks about removing a substance or craving instead of adding pleasure with something new and awesome, whether drugs or sugary drinks, the program is talking about deprivation and pain instead of comfort and gratification.  Addition instead of subtraction calms and nourish the mind; positive vs. negative speech conjures happy images.  I am not saying to deny the goal or not to talk about it; but it’s more pleasurable to concentrate on adding than taking away. So why not use that tiny advantage!

Why do we have such a high recidivism (relapse) rate in rehab programs? The older models believe in strengthening through insult and confrontation or threat. The newer models cater to motivation, listening and empathy.

And what about the many programs that base their success on changing the environment? Such as:

Don’t hang out with those friends.
Don’t stop at the arcade/mall on the way home.
We’ll move to another city.
No more sugary drink ads.
No more sugary drinks allowed in school.

Although the removal of negative influences can be an immediate fix, the only way to create new behavior is to change the mind. Scientifically, it is known that once we learn a habit, it is always in the background. However, we can choose a new habit and stack the old habit on the shelf. The only way to do this is to make the new mind the primary focus of any technique.

It is said that drinking sugary drinks is not addicting. What this means is that the body does not have a dependence on them. Because of this, a little mind adjustment can make the change, improve health and slow down teen weight gain from sugary drinks.

ACTION STEPS

1)    Get a new glass just for this. (If money prevents, draw a design on your favorite glass you already have.)
2)    Fill the glass 1 quarter of the way with water.
3)    Put 2 ice cubes in it, if possible.
4)    Slush the ice cubes around in the water to spread the cold.
5)    Drink the water.
6)    Repeat this 2 more times in the day.
7)    Once you have accomplished this for 1 whole week every day, increase the water volume to 1 half the glass and repeat steps 3) to 6).
8)    Once you have accomplished this for 1 whole week every day, increase to 6 times a day total or 1 whole glass of water 3 X.
9)    Enjoy the water.

WarriorsofWeight Consulting
Click the image below for a helping hand.

If you need a hand, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Help is right here at http://warriorsofweight.com/2012/07/warriorsofweight-consulting .

FEEDBACK

Please leave a comment and LIKE.

DIANE GOLD, AUTHOR

Diane Gold, Founder of Warriors of Weight, Moms For Healthy Daughters, is a mentor in tai chi, kung fu and meditation, a music, fitness and stress expert and a dedicated mom.
She is confident that taking a small step now will change history. Diane says,

“Saying, “I can’t do anything; I don’t have money or power,” is easier than saying, “I can make a difference.” Even if we believe our small action will benefit no more than 1 person, even if it is ourselves, alone; take that action. Move ahead with that one step. If I take a step, then you take a similar step, then she takes a similar step; a movement is created. Let’s begin our movement with 1 step. ”

For help, check out 1-Step Consulting.