The Power of Tai Chi with Tim Sobo, LAc

Podcast Transcript

John Horton:

Hey there, and welcome to another Health Essentials Podcast. I'm John Horton, your host. When you think of exercise, some sort of go-go-go activity probably comes to mind. Today though, we're going to talk about dialing down your workout with tai chi. This ancient martial art uses slow and focused movements to build physical and mental strength, and it's becoming more popular than ever as a fitness routine, but can you really get that much benefit out of a slow motion activity? To answer that question and more, we're joined by Tim Sobo, a personal trainer and Chinese medicine specialist. He's one of the many experts at Cleveland Clinic who visit us weekly to explore wellness trends. So with that, let's ease into our exploration of tai chi.

Welcome to the podcast, Tim. I have had this chat circled on my calendar for a while because I am real curious about tai chi.

Tim Sobo:

Yeah, thank you for having me. I'll hopefully answer as many questions about it as I can and demystify some of it while we're at it.

John Horton:

Well that's what we're looking to do. But before we get there, I want to spend a minute talking about you and what kind of pulled you toward embracing elements of traditional Chinese medicine. What was the attraction?

Tim Sobo:

So I've been involved in martial arts since a very young age, and that kind went from taekwondo and karate into tai chi. And so I've practiced tai chi on and off for the better part of, probably close to 20 years now, and it's just a fascinating kind of system of exercise health system. The buzzword you hear is meditation in motion.

John Horton:

That is. I know. I like that.

Tim Sobo:

Yeah.

John Horton:

Yeah, it really is. And one of the things I think is interesting because tai chi, it's very slow moving and it just blows my mind that it's tied to a Chinese martial art and originally for combat.

Tim Sobo:

Yeah. So I'll give you the-

John Horton:

That's a big evolution.

Tim Sobo:

... The brief history of tai chi. I'll compress it to an extent. So original tai chi is Chen-style tai chi. The earliest evidence of that existing is the late 1600s in China, 1680, 1670, around that. We kind of have written proof that there is a person whose name was Chen Wangting, who started teaching this style of tai chi, and this tai chi, Chen-style tai chi, which is still done today is far more martial than what you're thinking. It has strong of powerful movements, it's not just this slow kind of moving thing. This is still very much a martial art.

John Horton:

Yeah. You look at the slow stuff and you go, "I'm not a combat person, but I think I could get around that."

Tim Sobo:

The one you're thinking of, probably the most famous tai chi style in the world is Yang-style tai chi. Yang-style tai chi is kind of founded in the early 1800s, 1820, 1830, around then by a student of Chen tai chi who decided that this is too much for a lot of people. This is very much martial still, let's make this a little less martial, more health-related. And that's when tai chi slowed down. The deep stances became a little less deep, the explosive outbursts of power went away and the whole thing just became smoother in movement. All of the martial aspects are still there, but it's not taught as a martial art anymore. Where Chen-style tai chi is still not exclusively taught as a martial art, but is the most obvious martial of the five major styles of tai chi that are taught. Chen being the original, Yang being the second, and the other three grew out of Yang-style tai chi, which is a Wu, a Hua, and a Sun. And I'm sorry if my Chinese is butchering all those pronunciations, but those are the five big styles of tai chi.

John Horton:

I'm glad you're saying them, and not me. Well, let's get into kind of what tai chi looks like, because I know I've got this image in my head that it's sort of like slow motion kung fu.

Tim Sobo:

Yeah.

John Horton:

I mean, is that kind of what we're talking about?

Tim Sobo:

Yeah, so if you watch a Yang-style tai chi, which I said is the most common one in the world, if you just Googled or YouTubed tai chi form, that's the ones you're going to find unless you really start delving into the weeds of it all. And those are those big slow controlled movements where your upper body and your lower body are all moving together.

John Horton:

So there's steps and arm motions kind of all at once, but it's a slow coordinated ...

Tim Sobo:

It's a coordinated thing. So each move has a name and the most common one, or not the most common, but the very first move in Yang-style tai chi is called parting the horse's mane. It's a move that involves your arm movements, you moving to one side and ending in a posture. And then there's another move that's a transition to a next move. So each movement has a name and it's a series of movements put together.

John Horton:

Parting the horse's mane. I love the name of that.

Tim Sobo:

So in no particular order, there's parts the horse's mane, man plays the loot, snake creeps down. Those are just the ones I could think of off the top of my head right now and the names. And they all have these poetic names to them that also then kind of explain what the movement looks like. So those watching on a video, playing the lute ends up with your hands in front of you as if you were playing the lute. Snake creeps down is where you're going all the way down to the ground in this smooth kind of motion that a snake would make. So it helps you remember what the move should look like and gives this poetic name to them as opposed to just move to the left, move to the right. Like in yoga, where the pose has a name. In tai chi, the movement has a name.

John Horton:

All right, now so much of tai chi seems to kind of focus on harmonizing your body's energy and mind. And you had mentioned before it's often called meditation in motion. What does it do for your mental health if you kind of add tai chi to your routine?

Tim Sobo:

Yeah, so I mean the first part of it is learning the forms themselves gives you something to focus on learning. How do I move my body? How do I move my left leg, lift my right leg? How do I move my arm with my other arm? Because it's your entire body moving in unison as opposed to just going to the gym and isolating one muscle, this is an entire body movement. So in the beginning for mental health, it gets you sometimes out of your head and now you have to focus on this body being moved. And then once you have the choreography down, which can take a very long time to get good at, and you're always able to improve on that, you learn the move, but then you can get better and better and better at it. I tie it to people who are competitive dancers. I know how to do a basic ballroom dance, but I'm by no means as good as a ballroom competitor.

And so you can get better and better and better at moves with the more and more practice, which gets you sometimes out of your head and into your physical movement. And then once you know all of the routine, you can start focusing on the breathing aspects of it. Take a deep breath in now, exhale with this move, and it becomes this slow, just nice ... And eventually you're not thinking about your next move because you know the whole pattern so well that it just becomes what you're doing and you realize after a while you're not thinking about anything.

John Horton:

It sounds like it's rooted in a lot of the whole concept of mindfulness and just as a form of stress reduction.

Tim Sobo:

Yeah. You got to learn the movement and then you just do it and you're focused on that and the movements are relatively easy and your stress level can go down as you're just ... This movement feels nice and it's a nice easy kind of exercise. You step only as far as you can step, you bend only as far as you can bend, and you gradually work those muscles for exercise. You're out of your own kind of head just thinking about what you have to do. And then once you learn how to do it, you're just kind in that moment, not thinking about the movement, but just doing the movement and existing right then and not worried about what's for dinner, what I'm doing for work tomorrow? You're not thinking of any of that. You're just right here on that moment.

John Horton:

Well, and I've seen what we're doing, this has even been tied to where it can help maybe relieve depression. You mentioned improved mood. I even saw things where it said it could help address brain function and Parkinson's, higher level of thinking skills. I mean, is there all kind of evidence so so some of that evidence that up?

Tim Sobo:

Yeah, yeah. Sorry to cut you off. But yeah, some of that evidence is anecdotal and some of it is reinforced with study. So some of it is exercise has been shown to improve mood, to help kind of your brain reestablish new pathways through its natural neuroplasticity. And tai chi is at its most basic level, a structured, organized exercise. So you're now going to move your arm, you're going to move your leg. So Parkinson's or arthritis or things like that, slowly take away the ability to do that. And then tai chi kind of, no, push it as comfortably as you can and keep going. And then as you do more and more of it, that joint loosens up, that muscle gets stronger, that brain gets a little rewired. So you can now do a little bit more. And it's not going to obviously cure Parkinson's by any means, but it's going to help underlying muscle strength, underlying muscle health, underlying joint health as you go through all of these motions because it's a full range of motion exercise and it's a full body exercise as you're doing that form.

John Horton:

Do you really get that much out of it? Because when you talk about this slow moving activity, I mean it seems so tame? But is this the sort of thing where you can really kind of build strength and get some physical perks out of it? A body boost?

Tim Sobo:

Yeah. So I mean, if you have the chance to stand up slightly, bend your knees and stand there for 30 seconds and you'll feel your legs, muscles get sore and tired. So tai chi is an exercise that's entirely body weight. You're bending, you're standing, you're doing body weight squats over and over again, you're holding your arm out, you're bringing your arm up, you're bringing your arm over. All of those motions over and over again are range of motion exercises, body squats, balance exercises because you've got to have parts where you're standing on one foot as you step out. Then you're going to pick your leg up as you kick. And you work on all those balance things. So you get work on balance, you get to work on stability, you get to work on muscle strength, you get to work on joint health, all without this intensive kind of thing of, "All right, go do 20 body squats," because it's something more engaging than staying there in the gym and going up and down, all right, here, I'm going to squat 10 times. You do this pattern of movement, which is fun.

Not that going to the gym isn't fun, but it's this choreographed move that you can do with groups of other people. And you're all doing these moves together in unison. And there's this nice social feeling of joining a tai chi school or a tai chi gym. And you can do it that all together and then by yourself at home. It's not just, "All right, I'm going to do this 30 times." It's, "Oh, I'm going to do this routine." And it takes 15 minutes to sometimes do the whole routine depending on which version of the form you're doing, how slow you can go, how fast you're going. And yeah, you'll feel your leg muscles kind of sore, you'll feel your back get sore in that I used my muscle kind of way.

John Horton:

And it seems so approachable, and I imagine this is something that is particularly good as people age. And maybe you don't want to hit the gym and be trying to put as many weights as you can on a bar. You just kind of work these through. And like I said, hitting those issues like balance and stability as you get older, those are critical.

Tim Sobo:

So tai chi is going to teach you, here's how you stand for your best balance. When you go to walk, you're going to move all your weight this way and then pick your foot up and move all your weight that way. And it's slow and it's controlled and you're not moving weight around, you're just moving yourself and you're always moving yourself. So if you can kind of work through what's the best way to move myself from a health standpoint, that'll also be better.

John Horton:

A lot of times, removing myself feels like a lot of weight. So that happens. Other things I've seen it tied to with physical benefits are pain relief, easing arthritis, even COPD. I mean, is this all ways it can make an impact?

Tim Sobo:

Yeah. So we'll start with the COPD one. That just has to do with the movements themselves. Take a deep breath in for a count of three or four while you're doing this movement as opposed to just your standard room breathing, tai chi has built into it ...

John Horton:

It's structured breathing, yeah.

Tim Sobo:

... As you're doing something. So you have a structured five-second inhale followed by a five-second exhale, which will help strengthen your lungs. The arthritis. Joints are designed to move. Once arthritis sets in, and we typically want to move less and less because it hurts, tai chi again is a simple prescribed exercise that you can kind of work through to slowly start moving. You just take it to your comfort level. You're not worried about doing a deep squat, you're just worried about bend your knees comfortably, up and up and bend and then move. And as you do it more and more, you'll strengthen those muscles, you'll lubricate up that joint and you'll notice, "Hey, I'm going down a little bit farther. I'm standing up a little bit quicker," as those muscles get stronger.

John Horton:

And it goes back, we have a chiropractor who comes on all the time, Dr. Bang. He loves to say, "Motion is lotion."

Tim Sobo:

Yeah.

John Horton:

And it sounds like this falls in that same category.

Tim Sobo:

Same category, yeah. Joints are designed to move and once you don't move them, they just kind deteriorate.

John Horton:

They rust up. Yeah, they rust up. You're the Tin Man after the rain. Yeah.

Tim Sobo:

Or if you don't drive your car for six months, the belts in your engine aren't quite as good because they dry out. They're meant to move.

John Horton:

Well, you've given a pretty good sales pitch for tai chi as far as what it can do for you on the mental side and kind of what you can get out of it physically. So it's hard. I mean, what else could you ask for? It seems like everything's there.

Tim Sobo:

Yeah, it's a nice prescribed exercise to do that is fun to do, relatively simple to learn the choreography of, and you can spend forever getting better and better and better at it.

John Horton:

Well, and that's why I've seen despite ... In addition to all the things that we've already mentioned, it's affordable because like I said, you don't really need anything. You can Google some of these things or there's classes. It's very low impact, it's accessible to just about everybody that you can go do. So it's kind of out there and just waiting for you to try it.

Tim Sobo:

That's exactly right. Yeah. We have videos the clinic put online of doing tai chi. I made them during the early on COVID pandemic. So I'm sure if you Google Cleveland Clinic tai chi, you'll find me running through a very basic series of five movements. YouTube has hundreds of thousands of hours of instruction, or you can find a local tai chi school and go and take classes, get the community around it and build a relationship with people as you're exercising for a social aspect of mental health.

John Horton:

We'll find those links and make sure we put them with the videos and with everything so people can find them. I was going to say, if somebody does want to start doing tai chi, you just mentioned some ways, but are there any other tips you have as how you can get going with it?

Tim Sobo:

I mean, yeah, so the most easy, accessible way is just go online and find a YouTube video with good instruction and they exist and then you can start doing them very gently at home. Most bigger cities and towns probably have tai chi offered at the community center or the YMCA usually bring them in because they are low impact, affordable, and good for health overall. And then some places have legitimate standalone tai chi schools where they'll go into so much more than tai chi, just the exercise habits of it. But you'll go into the Chinese medicine aspect of it, the partnership aspect and the drills you can do with partners about it and things like that.

John Horton:

How often can you do tai chi a week? Is this a daily thing?

Tim Sobo:

You can do it every single day, yeah.

John Horton:

You can do it every day, just depending on the intensity I guess?

Tim Sobo:

Yeah, I mean it depends on your kind of structural health. How many times a day can you do those motions? If you ever vacation to China, you'll see people at every park every day, there'll be hundreds of people doing tai chi first thing in the morning, there'll be doing it at night, people do it during the day. Yeah, so you can do it multiple times a day, once a day, once a week, twice a week. It's just like any other exercise program.

John Horton:

Now, can anyone practice tai chi? Are there some individuals who should avoid it for health or safety reasons? Are there any medical concerns that might prevent somebody from doing it?

Tim Sobo:

So the only real safety concern would be people with severe balance issues. If you can't stand, don't do tai chi without an assistance of some kind, whether it is the scooter right next to you or a chair right nearby, something without wheels that won't move, something you can grab onto if you feel like you're going off balance. But beyond that, there isn't really any reason why a person couldn't try it.

John Horton:

I take it, and if you have some more serious health concerns, probably talk to your providers to make sure.

Tim Sobo:

Providers and make sure you can do it, but typically it's fine to do because it's not intensive cardiovascular, you're not going to get a heart rate spike typically while doing it. Your heart rate is not going to go up like it is when you jog or swim or something like that. So typically your heart rate will stay roughly where yours normally is. It'll go up a bit because you're now physically exerting yourself, but you're not running, you're not sprinting. All your movements are slow. So typically there isn't a contraindication for it, but check balance, check your overall kind of health. Can you lift your legs? Can you stand on your own? And things like that.

John Horton:

Yeah, and I'd imagine with some of that, with the heart rate, I mean you said if you're working on your breathing and things like that, I could even see where it helps bring it down a little bit as you're doing the activity.

Tim Sobo:

And then there are times and places where, no do it, do the motion sitting. I mean you can do tai chi just upper body in a chair I'm kind of doing right now, and you can just ... I'm not going to fall, you can focus on breathing and you can work on shoulder range of motion, keeping your back up straight and just rotating at your waist in the chair.

John Horton:

I get the sense, is it a little like yoga? Because I know I've done some yoga where to be honest, I've fallen asleep and then I've done other types of yoga where it has practically killed me.

Tim Sobo:

Yeah.

John Horton:

I can barely move.

Tim Sobo:

You can go through that range similarly with tai chi. You can do tai chi, unlike yoga, you're not holding a pose like you do in yoga. You'll hold downward dog for 30 seconds. You're not doing that in tai chi. You never stop moving in tai chi.

John Horton:

It's a constant moving.

Tim Sobo:

You're moving from one posture and then right to the next, so you don't have that same chance to fall asleep like you do if you're holding a child's pose or downward dog or something like that, because tai chi is always moving. But you can move enough where you get a really big kind of exhaustion from doing a big workout. Or you can take it a lot slower and not quite as deep with your stances and things like that. And you don't feel the same kind of intensity that you would just like a yoga class. You can take it to more extreme or you can take it to a much more beginner level and both are effective and both will help for different reasons.

John Horton:

All right, well we've covered a ton of ground here. So to kind of bring things to a close, what would you say to someone who's on the fence about giving tai chi a try and wondering if it's worth doing?

Tim Sobo:

Yeah, to piggyback what Dr. Bang said, "Motion is lotion." So give it a shot. I mean, find a place you can try it at home in your house with a good YouTube video. You don't have to worry about doing the whole form. Learn one or two moves and just start doing them till you're comfortable with it and then try a third move, a fourth move. Nothing says you have to learn the entire 24 form move on day one. Learn one move, do that for a couple of days, feel comfortable with it, then learn a second move, then learn a third move, go find a school to teach it to you because they'll teach you so much more about movement and how to balance and move yourself around than you ever thought was possible. And it's great, it's a lot of fun too.

John Horton:

Look, I got to say, the whole movement and everything, it just looks so rhythmic and like I said, it looks strong, it looks rhythmic, it looks relaxing. There's a lot to like about it. I guess you just got to have the courage to give it a shot.

Tim Sobo:

To go give it a shot, yeah.

John Horton:

All right, well hopefully this will convince everybody to do that. And I'm going to have to Google those videos of you and maybe work on a few poses.

Tim Sobo:

That be great.

John Horton:

All right, well Tim, thank you very much for giving us a little bit of time and just kind of introducing us to the world of tai chi.

Tim Sobo:

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

John Horton:

If you are in a rush to feel better physically and mentally, the solution may be to slow things down with tai chi. Consider it an exercise routine that can be both medication and meditation in motion. If you liked what you heard today, please hit the subscribe button and leave a comment to share your thoughts. Till next time, be well.

Speaker 3:

Thank you for listening to Health Essentials, brought to you by Cleveland Clinic and Cleveland Clinic Children's. To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or visit clevelandclinic.org/atpodcast. This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to replace the advice of your own physician.