Transform Stress into Vitality

First, the Hypothalamus response to the attack by sending a signal to the pituitary.

Pituitary then sends down to adrenal gland to pump the blood with adrenaline.
Heart and lungs increase their function to give more blood and oxygen for the fight or flight response.  In the case with the saber tooth tiger, his likely response would be flight.
At this instinctual level of dealing with threats, our body functions optimally.  Such stresses are periodical and not pervasive.But in our modern society, stresses are pervasive and chronic.  Some challenges and threats will remain and we can neither fight nor escape from them.For instance, an overtly aggressive boss, abusive boyfriends, husband or traffic jam, all these are challenges which stress our body and mind without giving us the real choice of fighting it or running away from it.
So what happen when there is chronic stress when we have to stay in the situation?  Scientists have found disturbing factors of damages to the brain, heart and kidney in animal experiments.Chronic sufferer of stresses has a lower level of immune response to fight off sickness.Long term abuses reduce the victims into a dejected state of utter helplessness. Their hippocampus within the brain shrinks to such constant distress.In this helpless state, scientists have found that most of the subjects showed a lower immune response to infection.  In other word, a chronic stressed victim will get sick easier and take a longer time to heal.

How does Taoist practice like Taiji Quan or Qigong transform stress into vitality?

As part of my college thesis, I conducted a long term two years study amongst college students.  The hypothesis of the experiment is very simple:since stress will increase in a normal college year with finals, and tests, students who practice a form of meditative exercises should able to reduce their stress level as compare to two other groups, the Crew Team who do strenuous competitive activities and the couch potatoes who just study without any regular or formal exercises.

After a two years monitoring with both interview and standardized stress questionnaires, I found that indeed there is a statistically significant difference between the stress level between the Taiji group as compare to the control groups, both the Crew Team and the Couch Potatoes.  The result indicates that as the initial stress started to increase, the Taiji group and the Crew Team were able to show significant reduction in their stress level while the Couch Potatoes showed sign of stress symptoms: anxiety, overeating and lower self images.  However, as the stress increase further with finals, the Crew Team started to also showed sign of anxiety which indicates that competitive exercises is useful initially for low level of stress but ineffective in dealing with intense level of distress.  While the Taiji group did also show increase level of anxiety but started to level off

For me personally, being a teacher of Tao is a privilege and great taste in the heart of living fully in each moment.  It is in living fully in each moment that spontaneous action rises up to deal with the stress and challenge at hand without the typical anxiety.  For fear only exists in the past and future, never in the present moment.For during a dangerous situation, most people are too busy to be scare.
 

A note of caution to the beginner.  Do not try to self help yourself.Rather, spend sometime to find a good teacher to guide you in finding the perfect meditative practice for your particular needs and profiles.I have personally received numerous emails about the harms to the beginners.  Some of the Qigong books in bookstore are dangerous especially the ones with esoteric claims of power and healing.The following is just one recent sample of an email.  I have deleted theperson’s identify and the author’s name in respect of their own privacy.