Dear World Tai Chi & Qigong Day Supporters,
PLEASE, take 5 SECONDS to visit the incoming Obama Admin's website and "VOTE UP" our call to incorporate mind/body tools into public education in order to give our children life tools they desperately need, and to save our nation and world trillions in future health costs.
If our below call is voted on enough by visitors like yourself and all your friends who support mind/body health sciences like Tai Chi, Qigong, Yoga, and TM, it will be placed in a briefing book for the new incoming President, to be delivered to him after the inauguration.
Go to the below link, and simply click on the "Vote Up" button. It only takes a couple seconds to do it, and then PLEASE take a few minutes to forward this message on to all you know who understand the need for mind/body education in these stressful modern times.
GO TO:
http://citizensbriefingbook.change.gov/ideas/viewIdea.apexp?id=0878000000057DC
and select "VOTE UP"
Thank you for playing a role in changing our world for the better,
Bill Douglas, World Tai Chi & Qigong Day, www.worldtaichiday.org
BELOW IS THE MESSAGE YOU WILL
VOTE ON AT THE ABOVE LINK:
Incorporate Mind/Body Tools into Public Education to Save Trillions in Future Health Costs
Dear President Obama, Secretary of Health & Human Services, Tom Daschle; Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan; and Surgeon General, Dr. Sanjay Gupta,
We urge the new administration to embrace a national effort to incorporate mind/body techniques into public education from K through university, in age appropriate ways.
WHY?
Besides Tai Chi being proven in a University of Miami study to effectively reduce Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder in adolescents, which could help reduce the alarming increase in the prescription of psychotropic drugs in American youth, ...
According to a 20 year study by Kaiser Permenente, 70 to 85% of all illness sending patients to their doctors were caused by stress. Not just aggravated by stress, but CAUSED by stress.
According to Forbes.com, US health-care costs are projected to exceed $4 trillion by 2016.
Conclusion: The United States is now spending at least 70% of our annual health-care spending on illness caused by stress, and that will increase to $3 trillion annually in coming years, if our people are not trained in effective stress management techniques.
STRESS SOLUTIONS
There are several highly effective mind/body stress management systems that have been developed over several hundred, or several thousand years of research, which are now widely available in America, and modern medical research has validated the efficacy of in many respected studies at major universities and health institutions.
These ancient systems include Tai Chi, Qigong (Chi Kung), Yoga, and Transcendental Meditation. Each of these is proven in study after study to dramatically reduce stress damage in practitioners. In fact these are much more effective than standard exercise in deeply cleansing accumulated stress issues in the mind and body, while some also offer the typical benefits of more standard exercises most are familiar with.
It would take many pages to just describe the multi-faceted benefits of Tai Chi alone, so rather than do so, I refer you to a Medical Research site. However, it is worth noting the aforementioned study from the University School of Medicine which found that Tai Chi dramatically reduced the symptoms of teenagers diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder). This alone should be cause to enact the below program, for several reasons. See: WorldTaiChiDay.org/WTCQDHlthBenft.html
WHY IS STRESS AN INCREASING PROBLEM?
Bill Joy, the Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems estimates that the speed of change is doubling exponentially every 18 months, and the speed of change will only increase in coming months, years, and decades. Change is stressful, even good change.
The change we have faced is daunting, but nothing compared to the next generation’s challenges of managing the stress of accelerating change.
It is in our interest to provide stress management achieving mind/body tools to adults, but particularly to the new generation(s), because their accumulating unmanaged stress of today, will translate into trillions of dollars of health costs in years to come.
HOW CAN THE UNITED STATES IMPLEMENT SUCH A NATIONAL MOVEMENT TOWARD PROVIDING MIND/BODY TOOLS TO ADULTS AND STUDENTS?
A few years ago the National Council on the Aging assembled leading experts on Tai Chi to create a guide to help local senior centers and professionals initiate an effective Tai Chi program for seniors, using local teachers.
Today, there are a plethora of Tai Chi and Qigong teachers in most cities and towns throughout the United States. However, we need to educate educators about Tai Chi, Qigong, Yoga, and TM, so that educators can begin working with mind/body professionals in their area.
The first step would be to bring together some of the leading Tai Chi, Qigong, Yoga, and Transcendental Meditation experts from the country to a national conference, in order to use, but also expand on the National Council on the Aging's early national Tai Chi guidelines work. I would recommend Dr. Roger Jahnke, Dr. Yang Yang, and Dr. Shin Lin, and who were integral in organizing the National Council on the Aging program at a major university, as potential organizers for this event.
This conference could help map out how these mind/body tools could be taught in age appropriate ways for each grade level. Educators from around the nation who have some knowledge of mind/body tools, or perhaps practice them themselves, could be part of this national conference to work out a national guideline for programs.
Once a national program is designed, then educators locally can be encouraged to reach out to local mind/body experts including Tai Chi, Qigong, Yoga, and TM experts to interview them and begin arranging for potential instructors.
National trainings could then occur, where those chosen local teachers could be brought in to learn how to closely follow the guidelines so that the most effective age appropriate teaching could take place. This doesn’t mean each teacher will be uniform, as there are many different styles of Tai Chi, Qigong, and Yoga, however each can provide very similar benefits if the teacher’s intentions are similar.
So, our goal would not be teaching students the fighting arts of Tai Chi or Qigong for example, but rather focusing on the meditative, stress management, health & healing aspects of Tai Chi and Qigong. Local teachers would be advised to seek out teachers whose focus is on the healing aspects, and the national training would emphasize the stress management, health & healing training.
Thank you for considering this exciting possibility to revolutionize health care in America for both financial and well-being benefits for our nation. Together we can make a reality the visionary goal of our new president:
"We will have a health care system,
not a disease care system."
-- Barack Obama
