Articles

Helping You to Heal Your Disabilities

Practitioners and patients in China practicing the new positive Tai Ji movements for people with severe physical and emotional challenges.

It is no secret that the body requires movement to assist with circulation for the muscles and organs.  Many people who are in wheelchairs or otherwise physically challenged believe that their disabilities cannot improve, and that they will be suffering for the remainder of their lives.

Dr. Zibin Guo, a trained medical anthropologist with many years of training and teaching experience with Tai Ji (or Tai Chi), a form of Chinese traditional healing arts had believed that a modified form of Tai Ji practice that could be effectively utilized by people with various physical and mental challenges. He had worked with many people in wheelchairs and knew the importance of movement to provide nourishment and healing for the body.

In 2005, Dr. Guo made a proposal of promoting wheelchair Tai Ji during the 2008 Beijing Paralympics to China Federation for People with Disabilities and the Beijing 2008 Paralympics Committee. The proposal was seen as a potentially effective way of improving the general physical and emotional health of such people. The two organizations invited Dr. Guo to Beijing in October 2006 to conduct the first wheelchair Tai Ji workshop for more than three dozen Tai Ji instructors and professionals from all over China who work in the organizations that provide services for people with disabilities.

This workshop was first of its kind in China and it intended to promote the wheelchair Tai Ji program that Dr. Guo had created. The feedback and support was immensely popular and health practitioners thought that for the first time in the country’s history, there was something that could actually work to improve the lives and physical capacity of those with disabilities. So in the spring of 2007, China Federation for People with Disabilities issued a policy statement to all provincial organizations responsible for providing services for people with disabilities to promote the wheelchair Tai Ji in their regions. The program has been met with tremendous enthusiasm and widespread growth.

Major medical studies through the years have shown that regular physical exercise is essential for people with severe physical disabilities to maintain their health for muscles and organs, and to be able to sometimes improve their health conditions. The same studies showed that people with disabilities were less likely to engage in regular moderate physical activity because of the following reasons:

1. the lack of suitable forms of exercise;
2. limited access and transportation to and from exercise facilities with appropriate exercise equipment;
3. lack of adequate personnel who are trained willing to work with more severe forms of physical challenges;
4. affordability; and
5. the lack of motivation due to the social isolation from their conditions.

Physical inactivity tends to make individuals with severe physical challenges more reliant on medications to deal with their health issues, and suffering from repeated bouts of additional related problems.   Rather than taking a proactive approach with their physical activities, they choose options that further deteriorate their general health condition and cause additional secondary health problems that can result in death.

Through the efforts of Dr. Guo and the practitioners who support his work, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has given $120,000 in grant money to Guo to spread his special wheelchair tai chi curriculum. He started in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and has expanded his class offerings to Murfreesboro.

This idea of going beyond prescriptions — and especially beyond opioids — in dealing with different sorts of pain and trauma has become a focus of the VA nationally.

In Tennessee, some 1/4th of all VA patients with an active medical prescription were on opioids in 2012. That number is now down to 15 percent, which is a very promising and inspiring number. The program is how being practiced in other states including Texas and Arizona, not only for the VA, but for all patients with severe physical and emotional challenges.