The Qi or energy state of seniors may be one of deficiency due to age, illnesses and their lifestyle.
Wellbeing For Seniors
Qi Gong can help increase energy and make seniors stronger. With stronger energy, blood circulation improves nourishing the skin and muscles while helping the internal organs function well.
Circulation and Wellbeing
If you think about blood circulation, blood as fluid tends to flow down due to gravity. We need our circulation to go up to nourish the brain, eyes, hearing and our teeth.
When we get older, we tend to be energy deficient and our circulation doesn’t pump the fluid as efficiently. This can lead to reading problems with our eyes, problems with our teeth and can also affect the brain with memory issues.
Without good blood circulation to the brain, brain cells can then die very quickly reducing the size of the brain. This leads to a loss of brain function which may include dementia and even stroke.
Qi Gong Helps Reduce Inflammation
Throughout our life’s journey, we build up stagnation (Chinese Traditional Medicine), or inflammation (Western Medicine). Inflammation occurs when our body fights sickness —infections, toxins, injuries or stress. This may lead to heart disease, diabetes, cancer and more. Stagnation is a sickness. For example, if you have dementia your brain cells stagnate and they die or they shrink. Cancer is stagnation, so is arthritis —where your body is not working properly.
When your whole body stagnates your life is finished because movement and breathing become difficult and you don’t have warmth— you don’t have energy.
Qi Gong can help.
Increasing Your Energy
You’ll have increased energy helping to fend off the stagnation or inflammation. Your organs will be stronger, circulation better and tend to live longer. You will move better and be more flexible and active, leading to a better quality of life.
We should encourage seniors to use their Dan Tian (their energy centre) for walking and standing upright as much as they can. When they walk we recommend that they try to put their heel down, otherwise they shuffle, as when we age we take smaller steps and use less Dan Tian.
We encourage seniors to walk early morning using their Dan Tian to be proud of their body and to visualize putting down the heel down first and if you can, and more difficult, putting your five toes down evenly. That takes concentration. If you can encourage them, safely, to take larger steps they will use your Dan Tian. steps became smaller.
