HOW IT HEALS
The body knows far more than we do about healing. It only needs reminding.
What follows isn't theory. It's a mechanism. Physiological, observable, and ancient. Once you understand it, every healing modality you've ever encountered begins to make sense and you get to be behind the wheel of your recovery instead of being a passenger.
It is with great purpose and intentionality that this website does not hold back any "secrets" or have recurring monthly contract nonsense. All of that serves to invoke a response that is not in keeping with the healing principles I am trying to transmit. My prayer is that you will leave this site one step closer to optimizing your natural healing ability with or without further instruction from me. Blessings on your journey!
THE MECHINISUM
Why it works.
Your body heals via reconciled relationships: the mind with flesh; the soul with the divine; release and tension. When those connections fray, the nervous system locks into a defensive or stagnant state allowing dysfunction to permeate and thrive. Your job is to simply create a condition for those relationships to reconcile and to remember that every healthy relationship starts with good listening skills.
i.
The Vagus Nerve is stimulated
Resolving Cognitive Dissonance, having peace in your Spirit, and becoming a curious observer of your own Physiology as you actively release, all serve to stimulate, awaken, re-set, and optimize the Nervous system — your body's master brake on stress, inflammation, and the chronic "fight or flight" that keeps symptoms locked in.
ii.
The Parasympathetic & Sympathetic balance
Within moments of proper practice, your complex system of systems begins to naturally balance from hypo or hyper sympathetic and/or parasympathetic states to homeostasis where basic functions like rest-and-digest, heart rate, breath, immune function, and energy resume and optimize.
iii.
The Body self-regulates
Over time, the autonomic system recalibrates. The further you develop your "listening", the more you hear. What began as a daily practice becomes a baseline state that can be invoke with a thought at any time. The body no longer needs the "how to" reminder, it now has experience to draw from. Returning it to this state becomes intuitive and second nature. The Mind Body and Spirit are in harmony.
THE HEALING TRILOGY
Tai Chi isn't the answer.
It's an explanation.
The mechanism above doesn't belong to Tai Chi. It belongs to the body. Tai Chi is just one of many practices that serves to remind the body of what it already knows. Here are some perfectly good examples of modalities that engage with, and actively participate in, this phenomenon.
Acupuncture
ACCOMPANIED RELEASE
ACCOMPANIED RELEASE
Massage/Bone Setting
ACCOMPANIED RELEASE
Rolfing/ Tui Na
ACCOMPANIED RELEASE
Chiropractic
ACCOMPANIED RELEASE
Whim Hof
COLD - IMMUNOTHERAPY
Essential oils.
AROMA & CELLULAR THERAPY
Temazcal (Hot hut)
HEAT - IMMUNOTHERAPY
Somatic/Psychotherapy
RESOLVING COGNITIVE DISSONANCE
EMDR / TRE
TRAUMA RELEASE/ SYSTEM RESETS
Pharmaceuticals
CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE
Yoga/Chi Gong
GUIDED RELEASE
Diet/Fasting
NUTRITION
Prayer/Confession/Scripture
BEING IN ALIGHNMENT WITH GOD AND OTHERS
Breath Work
IMMEDIATE ACCESS TO THE ANS
Walking/Swimming
GENTAL EXERCISE
Slow Intentional Exposure
BUILDING RESISTANCE AND IMMUNITY
....and the list goes on.
"The genius of Tai Chi Practice is that YOU alone are providing your body with the necessary condition to do the work at its own pace - solidifying all progress in the process. "
A REPEATED THEME IN THE COURSE
Pharmaceuticals serve to remind, inhibit, or replace a natural function.
Less is more. Slow nudges, not shocks.
When you're drowning, a life preserver is the right tool. Medications can serve that role, keeping you afloat while you rebuild the strength to swim on your own. The mistake isn't using them. The mistake is treating the life preserver as the destination, instead of one part of the journey.
Tai chi practice helps the body turn its own functions up or down thereby administering and calibrating its own medicine. If you're working with a trusted doctor to reduce medication as your internal skill develops, do it only with their testing and approval. Never stop a prescribed medication cold turkey. That's dangerous and can leave your body stuck in the very reactive state you're trying to heal. When we start welcoming ALL stimuli as opportunities rather than threats, the mind shifts, and the body follows.
Tai chi can work alongside any modality you're using. Observe. Notice. Be with the body as it shifts. Once you can feel and record that shift, you can reproduce it at will and the modality may become more of a preference than a dependency.
This course isn't a replacement for your treatment. It's a complement that helps you listen in (聽, Ting) more closely. That closeness dissolves fear and opens the door to full acceptance, which puts mind, body, and spirit into a more optimized state for healing. Medicine works by reminding, inhibiting, or replacing the body's natural function, so why not get more intimate with those functions through tai chi practice?
The body's threat-detection system is faster than thought. A modality applied too aggressively, or by the wrong teacher, gets categorized as a threat and the body defends instead of receives, slowing the healing state while reinforcing the fight-or-flight response.
The path is peace with whatever modality resonates. Make slow present nudges toward your desired outcome and watch what happens. Once you understand how the body heals, every modality becomes an invitation into deeper insight. Tai chi as I have come to know, understand, and use it is one of the most direct invitations I've found but not the only one. After the free Mind and Spirit course, you'll have enough grounding to take this further in whatever direction fits your own mind/body/spirit connection. Healing is personal. Research all of the truth claims for yourself as I did. Don't force an effect or burden the process with expectations, that only gets in the way.
Tai chi is about subtraction — doing less so more can happen on its own via slow nudges. My course barely touches the Form, because "doing" it externally isn't where the power is. Without (內功 nèi gōng) internal movement, it's just an empty dance. Traditionally, Yang style is taught with two years of standing and body-opening practice before the form. My course focuses on those traditional openings (松功, sōng gōng) and a few simple movements from the form and qigong. That's all you need for the healing benefits. It's simplified and far easier to learn than the traditional form.
I credit my students' results to my guided explanatory teaching style, so in whatever modality you choose, make sure you resonate with the teacher as it makes all the difference.
WHY I TEACH THIS
I learned it the hard way.
OCTOBER 8, 2016 - DIAGNOSIS
After a lifetime of subtle chronic symptoms, (fatigue, yearly week-long recoveries from common colds, digestive issues, sensitivities to everything from gluten to allergens, heat intolerance, sudden bouts of syncope, joint and back pain) my family's long history of autoimmune disorders finally reached me at 43. Doctors warned that when dysautonomia surfaces this way in men my age, it typically only worsens and is a precursor to degenerative disorders leading to disability or eventual total autonomic failure. I was either partly functioning or bedridden.
A renowned Pennsylvania cardiologist administered my first tilt-table test that confirmed the diagnosis of what my family had carried for generations. The condition was rare enough that he offered to fly us to Italy to participate in a case study but we declined.
What followed is a path many will recognize: doctors across the country, experimental medications, symptoms that didn't improve and sometimes worsened, being treated as a puzzle to solve. I was missing work and when I made it in was often confined to a chair with my feet up or lying down.
MARCH 5, 2017 - THE MORNING EVERYTHING CHANGED
6 Months later, I had a healing experience that my doctors couldn't explain. It didn't fit their framework. It fit a different one entirely. It was a framework I'd been quietly building for years without even realizing what I was assembling involving ancient ideas that precisely lined up with what modern neuroscience now confirms. To top it off, my healing experience was totally backwards. I did not understand HOW to optimize healing until AFTER my healing experience and continue to use and teach what I've learned to this day.
Everything I teach is an attempt at the answer to a single question: How does the body actually do that and how can I duplicate it? Once I understood the basic mechanism, I had to teach it. Not because I think Tai Chi or my experience is the only path — but because I know firsthand what becomes possible when the body remembers it has the keys. Tai Chi is simply my modality of choice, best found explanation, and the easiest way I've found to transmit my acquired ability to optimize healing.
WHY TAI CHI SPECIFICALLY
Of all the modalities, this one is the most direct.
- ONE
It engages all three at once
Mind, spirit, and body don't take turns in my Tai Chi practice. They engage simultaneously. A thought calms the nervous system. The philosophy organizes the mind. The practice teaches the body. Most modalities work on one or two. Tai Chi allows work on all three Simultaneously.
- THREE
It teaches by listening
Tai Chi is a slow nudge by design. The pace is so deliberate that the body never has to register the practice as a threat and that's precisely why it can rewire the autonomic set point. You're not forcing or fighting the nervous system. You're inviting it.
- TWO
It's portable
You don't need a practitioner, a prescription, a studio, or equipment. Once you've learned a sequence, you carry the medicine with you for the rest of your life. The cost of practice approaches zero. The dose is unlimited.
- FOUR
It generalizes everywhere
Once you understand how to move with awareness and intention, you start doing it without thinking. While you wash dishes, while you walk, while you wait in line. Tai Chi stops being a thing you do and becomes a way of being. Not everyone will move onto the form or deeper study, but everyone in my course can understand and apply the principles for life.
GO DEEPER
Some of the works that shaped this work
For readers who want to follow the trail of research that informs some of what I teach.
MEDICAL TAI CHI
The Healer Within
Rodger Jahnke, OMD
PSYCHOLOGY
Healing is a Choice
Stephen Arterburn
MEDICAL TAI CHI
The Harvard Medical School Guide to Tai Chi
Peter M. Wayne, PhD, with Mark L. Fuerst
NEUROSCIENCE
The Body Keeps the Score
Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD
PSYCHOLOGY/NEUROSCIENCE
Wired for Healing
Annie Hopper
NEUROSCIENCE
Clinical Autonomic and Mitochondrial Disorders
Joseph Colombo, PhD, DNM, DHS & Nicolas L. DePace, MD
PSYCHOLOGY
Boundaries
Dr Henry Cloud & Dr John Townsend
PSYCHOLOGY
Running Scard
Edward T. Welch, PhD
SOMATIC EXPERIENCE
Waking the Tiger
Peter A. Levine, PhD
PSYCHOLOGY
The Road Less Traveled
M. Scott Peck, MD
PSYCHOLOGY
Complex PTSD
Peter Walker, MA, MFT
PSYCHOLOGY/NEUROSCIENCE
Research on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris
Using the Links above to purchase helps to support Autonomic Tai Chi :)
Now experience it.
You've read the mechanism. The next step is experiencing it for yourself. Parts I and II of the Healing Trilogy are free because the science & understanding should arrive before you choose the practice.