HEALING FROM TRAUMA
Tai Chi Moving Mindfulness Meditation and Resilience Training
Designed to Access Healing in the Spaces of a Busy Life
This unique program was developed by Master Tai Chi Instructor and retired police officer Dan Jones. Dan combines twenty-five years of law enforcement, eight years of executive protection and over forty years of Tai Chi and Qigong experience into a program specifically designed to help manage and heal from PTSD. He successfully applied the training and techniques from this program during his entire career. The mindful, relaxed, fluid movements of Tai Chi, and the coordinated breathing patterns of qigong, help develop an active calm that is more easily transferable to the demands of daily life.
Why Tai Chi?
Every technique, pattern and aspect of the program incorporates mind, body and breath. Easy-to-learn modified Tai Chi movements and small patterns help the mind, body and emotions remain calm prior to, during and after traumatic events and memories. This helps develop resistance and resilience to different types of traumas.
Dan is currently the Tai Chi Research Consultant for Johns Hopkins Medical Center. Working with a team of researchers, he completed an online study, teaching TCMMMRT as an intervention for first responders diagnosed with PTSD. Data gathered and analyzed from this study showed successful and encouraging results. This study is currently under peer review.
The Medical Perspective:
By Dr. Cody Weston, MD, PhD
Clinical Assistant Professor, Dept. of Psychiatry, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. (Formerly Doctor at Johns Hopkins Medical Center, Baltimore.)
“Post-Traumatic Stress is among the most severe anxiety-related disorders. Because of the extreme emotions that are often experienced by people with PTSD, creating a comfortable therapeutic mindset can be difficult. Preliminary work elsewhere has shown that Tai Chi is well-tolerated and indeed enjoyed by patients with PTSD and shows promise for reducing several of the target symptoms of PTSD including distressing intrusive thoughts and concentration difficulties.
The role of mindfulness-based strategies to enhance the care of these patients is only beginning to be explored, but preliminary evidence indicates that they are effective in improving a variety of symptoms in a dose-dependent fashion. Building on this, integrating moving meditation principles derived from Tai Chi is intended to use a more engaging physical experience to encourage the patient to re-anchor him- or herself in the present moment. It also yields additional health benefits including improved pain tolerance, lowered blood pressure, reduced fall risk, improved sleep quality, and cardiovascular health to name a few. It’s also been shown to serve as an effective intervention when used in a seated position for people who use wheelchairs.
Although this program is being developed to target PTSD, it shows promise that it will prove useful in managing anxiety and psychological distress in other contexts.”