Hello Mind-Body students! And Happy 4th of July! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday with your loved ones.
We have a short announcement blog this holiday week. A study that I did with Dr. Wang and her colleagues at Tufts Medical Center has been recognized by three different scientific journals very recently! The study is called "Tai Chi Reduced Severity of Fibromyalgia Symptoms at 24 Weeks Compared with Aerobic Exercise".
In this study, we recruited 226 patients dealing with fibromyalgia, who had both widespread and intense pain symptoms. For the intervention, we led the group in 60-minute sessions of either Yang-style tai chi or aerobic exercise, once or twice a week, for 12 or 24 weeks. After the intervention was complete, we were able to see a dramatic difference between the patients treated with tai chi, versus the patients treated with aerobic exercise. Although both the groups showed improvement, the tai chi group showed significantly more improvement!
The first entity to recognize the study was the Journal of the American Medical Association. They featured our study in the Clinical Trials Update section of their recent issue.
The study was also acknowledged by the Annals of Internal Medicine at the same time.
The third place that the study was featured was the European Society of Integrative Medicine, who notified us that 50 studies had been submitted this year, and ours was in the top 5! This is an especially strong showing considering we we received the "Best Clinical Integrative Medicine award" from them a mere 2 years ago!
Tai chi and mind-body integrative medicine continues to grow and be recognized for it's life-changing (and scientifically proven!) effects! The future is very bright!
Happy stretching, deep breathing, empty your mind, strengthen your energetic system, and evoke your spirit!