New Analysis Underscores Taiji’s Benefits to Balance and Mobility
Reported by Dr. Matthew F. Komelski, PhD
Taijiquan practitioners have long understood the value of Taiji training for balance and mobility. Yang Laoshi, for instance, provides a nice overview of the potential benefits of training in Chapter 7 of his book Taijiquan: The Art of Nurturing, the Science of Power. Most longtime practitioners have a very deep and nuanced understanding of how Taiji supports their well-being, and now medical science is starting to contribute to this conversation in its own way through the publication of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. These papers bring together high-quality studies from around the world to summarize and organize findings and recrunch the numbers. Below I will share the findings from a recent (2021) peer-reviewed meta-analysis (full text here) published in BMJ Open Sport and Exercise Medicine that focused on the benefits of Taiji for muscle strength, physical endurance, postural balance, and flexibility.
Christian Wehner from the Institute for Sports Medicine, Alpine Medicine and Health Tourism in Austria, along with his colleagues, searched the most up-to-date and respected medical databases for research on Taijiquan, which yielded thousands of studies. To summarize and re-analyze study results in a meta-analysis, the studies analyzed have to be similar enough in quality and in design. Two of the biggest challenges in this kind of work are finding studies that incorporate the same measures (so the results can be pooled and re-analyzed) and finding studies that use comparably challenging forms of Taiji. From the thousands of studies published, only 31 met the authors’ strict inclusion criteria, which included only gold-standard randomized controlled trials focused on the use of Taiji to improve physical performance outcomes—such as endurance, strength, balance, and flexibility—in participants 16 years old and older.
The authors’ analysis found significant improvements in functional walking capacity, spine flexibility, single-leg balance, and handgrip strength across studies of both healthy individuals and those with chronic conditions, such as osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, they saw a great deal of variability in findings related to knee strength and cardio-respiratory fitness, with some studies showing marked improvement and others not so much. The authors believe these differences may be related to differences in the study populations (it’s easier to show improvements in populations with performance decrements), and differences in the intensity and the difficulty of the various Taiji routines studied. This last point probably makes sense to many of you who have practiced a variety of Taiji styles; you know how much curriculum matters.
As Taiji practitioners and teachers, we may not be surprised by these findings. But they are still worth celebrating, as the weight of these “gold-standard” findings can give us more certainty that the time we are investing in ourselves and in our communities will pay off. At the same time, when talking to others about the benefits of Taiji, we should keep in mind a point that Yang Laoshi makes in his book: We should always view such findings as “potential” benefits. Ultimately, each of us has to seek and deliver these benefits to ourselves through the quality of our practice.
