Health Benefits of Tai Chi and Qigong

What are tai chi and qigong?
Tai chi is an ancient Chinese exercise that seeks to harmonise the mind and body. Commonly described as “meditation in motion, practising tai chi involves going through a series of movements slowly and consciously.

Tai Chi has aspects of the physical, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual. Qigong is taken from the Tai Chi form. In both, we focus on finding our centre of balance and circulating our vital energy.

Tai chi and qigong use the physical form to practice balance, the spiritual awareness to connect ourselves to the world, the emotional feelings to quiet our fears, and the intellectual understanding to learn to relax.

What has research on tai chi or qigong and breast cancer shown?
Researchers are studying the impact of tai chi on breast cancer in particular. While this is an emerging area of study, initial results are promising. For example, here are the findings of four randomised control trial studies:

1. Chen and colleagues found that qigong increased the wellbeing of women undergoing radiation for breast cancer. Those who did qigong showed less depression and fatigue.

2. Mustian and colleagues studied the difference between tai chi chuan and psychosocial support groups for women diagnosed with breast cancer. They found that women in the tai chi group showed improved health-related quality of life and self-esteem, while women in the psychosocial support group showed a decline in these areas.

3. Larkey and colleagues found that qigong/tai chi led to decreases in survivors’ fatigue, depression and sleep dysfunction.
Irwin and colleagues studied the impact of tai chi and cognitive behavioural therapy on cellular inflammation for breast cancer survivors with insomnia. They found that tai chi reduced cellular inflammatory responses, demonstrating a likely pathway for the benefits seen in other studies.

References:

Chen, Zhen, Zhiqiang Meng, Kathrin Milbury, Wenying Bei, Ying Zhang, Bob Thorton, Zhongxing Liao, Qi Wei, Jiayi Chen, Xiaoma Guo, Luming Liu, Jennifer McQuade, Clemens Kirschbaum, and Lorenzo Cohn. 2013. “Qigong Improves Quality of Life in Women Undergoing Radiotherapy for Breast Cancer: Results of a Randomized Control Trial.” Cancer. 119(9):16.

Irwin, Michael, Richard Olmstead, Elizabeth C. Breen, Tuff Witarama, Carmen Carillo, Nina Sadeghi, Jesusa M. G. Arevalo, Jeffery Ma, Perry Niassio, Patricia A. Ganz, Julienne E. Bower, and Steve Cole. 2014. “Tai Chi, Cellular Inflammation, and Transcriptome Dynamics in Breast Cancer Survivors with Insomnia: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” JNCI Monographs. 2014(50):295-301.

Larkey, Linda K., Denise J. Roe, Karen L. Weihs, Roger Jahnke, Ana Maria Lopez, Carol E. Rogers, Byeongsang Oh, and Jose Guillen-Rodriguez. “Randomized Control Trial of Qigong/Tai Chi Easy on Cancer-Related Fatigue in Breast Cancer Survivors.” Annals of Behavioral Medicine. 49(2):165-76.