Why working with elderly people is a great chance for IMA

[Quigga]

Many aspects of IMA body conditioning and the resulting mechanics are ideal for helping in physical aspects of care work.
Relaxing as an active process, weight shifting, balancing another person in different positions including lying and sitting via the hands.
Quickness in movement and increased bodily perception.
Feeling energetic fields of others and how emotion creates atmosphere in the room.
Dealing with sexuality and death. Oneself being the aid alongside sometimes seemingly hopeless agony.
Learning to be and let go, like people with broken and diminished minds; to be spontaneous, Zen, free, effortless in our body, heart, mind and spirit.
To regenerate tired and often emotionally disregulated workers.
You get the idea... Maybe I habe to give specific examples from work.


Take the chance and market to nurses and health facilities. Especially in Corona Times.

[yeniseri]

I have been doing this on and off for the past 2 decades but I do not use the IMA label.
The IMA label/designation is destructive so I do not go anyhwre near it when doing taiji of any kind for an elderly population!
My longest duration of "meditative taiji', meditative movement, tai chi, etc was 9 years (part time) working at a local park district. I began doing so as an Activity Therapist, Recreation Therapist Assistant at a nursing home/local VA Medical center then stopped for awhile when I canged careers to work in clinical research. I taught at a local community college (WInter session) and as an instructor teaching tai chi as part of "Introduction to Complementary/Alternative Medicine" for medical students at a medical university.

In previous communication, I have stated that 'older people' starting out with tai chi tend to have a hard time remembering form so over time i learned to do repetitive movement (brush knee, wave hands, grasping birds tail, etc) since they appeared to like those more. It was more of physical exercise for the body while incorporating some static postures now and then.

[wayne hansen]

T,here are plenty of people out there teaching appropriate exercise fro the elderly
Take your time to teach the youth
The internal arts are on their final legs
Most of the elderly have set their course by how they have conducted their lives
While I was training hard for decades they were giggling at the stupidity of my actions
Most are past it and lucky to get benefit from more basic chi Kung
If you need to do it do it for yourself

[wiesiek]

helping peoples is the good thing,
however is pointless in terms of preserving/developing Art.
so
wayne`s post summed it up .

.

[Quigga]

Yeah, you guys are right.

[Yeung]

Training elderly in "IMA" to be stronger and fighting fit proves the claim of Taijiquan that people at 70 or 80 years of age still can fight. And scientific researches show that elderly can maintain their eccentric strength up to 90 years of age (this was the age limit of subjects).

[yeniseri]

Training elderly in "IMA" to be stronger and fighting fit proves the claim of Taijiquan that people at 70 or 80 years of age still can fight. And scientific researches show that elderly can maintain their eccentric strength up to 90 years of age (this was the age limit of subjects).

Those who engage in senior sports, activities, and games (Senior Olympics participants) shows us that active participation involving 'muscle spindles' and their enaggement per specific sports enhanes quality of life, THis group of senior olympiams always do better then those half their age on most measures.
Though the attached source is about trauma and bodymind therapies, the attached information shows that posture (mechanical aspects) allows for sensory and muscle receptors to crosstalk with other 'signals' and if people keep themselves "engaged", they have a longer lease on quality of life

Source of below abstract: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4381623/

Posture, muscle tone, and breathing
Posture, muscle tone and breathing are closely interrelated. We choose here to discuss them together; to discuss them separately would add complexity to an already complex subject. The words “posture,” “attitude,” and “stance” can be used in multiple ways, as in: physical stance, emotional stance, cognitive stance. We believe this apparently metaphorical similarity points to the underlying reality of the intrinsic connection between posture, emotional attitude and cognitive attitude as hypothesized in the concept of PS.

Movement and posture
Preparation for movement involves the adoption of a posture. “Posture” here does not mean a completely static position, but a dynamic preparatory state involving small motions and changes in muscle tone. It may be distinguished from overt consummatory movements (such as running, reaching or eating). All behavior involves a continual shifting between preparatory and action phases.

Postural preparation underlies movement; and movement underlies life. Sperry has referred to the brain as a “motor brain” (Sperry, 1961). However the relation of motor function to affect and cognition remained relatively unexplored until the past decade (Downing, 2000). Proprioception refers to information coming to the brain about the position and movement of the body and is essential for coordinated movement (Sainburg et al., 1995; Riemann and Lephart, 2002). It comes principally from the muscle spindles and joint receptors, Pacinian corpuscles and free nerve endings in the connective tissue (Riemann and Lephart, 2002; van der Wal, 2009), and the vestibular apparatus. This information may be conscious or unconscious, and training can increase awareness of it (Hewett et al., 2002; Tsang and Hui-Chan, 2003). It has not received as much attention as interoception, but we suggest that it has an importance far beyond the mechanical coordination of the body.

Developmental aspects of posture
Posture and movement have been shown to be crucial for the early development of personality. Movement and the sense of movement are among the first abilities to develop in the infant (Thelen, 1995). Disturbances at this phase of development may profoundly damage later affective and cognitive development (Thelen, 1995). An infant's first communication is gestural/postural animation. This forms the basis for the later acquisition of language (Sheets-Johnstone, 2011; Esteve-Gibert and Prieto, 2014). Newborn infants imitate the bodily movements of adults (Meltzoff and Moore, 1983); infant development comes about largely through physical engagement of movement in relation to caregivers (Smith and Gasser, 2005). This suggests a central role for movement and movement preparation. Haselager (Haselager et al., 2011) conjectures that awareness of movement forms the basis for the development of the sense of self. The simulation of bodily experienced states and actions are significantly involved in memory (Ross et al., 2007), understanding (Barsalou et al., 2003; Pulvermüller, 2005), interpersonal communication (Hostetter and Alibali, 2004), social interaction (Sebanz et al., 2006), and spatial perception (Tversky, 2003). This supports the idea that postural and bodily aspects of the PS are intrinsically linked other aspects such as expectation, affect, and awareness.

[Yeung]

The statement "if an elderly trains in the same way as a much younger person will achieve the same result" is simply not true except in eccentric strength.

[wayne hansen]

People who have skill at the internal into old age usually have 40 or 50 years ot training behind them
They are not new to the game
Not all older practicioner seven with a long training history and good instruction still have a functioning body

[Quigga]

Yeniseri, thanks for the interesting article.

Maybe in old age too many metabolic and genetic expression mistakes have happened, the organs are too weak for substantial change in structure and substance, belief systems are too ingrained...

At one of my old workplaces I saw a nice gymnastic group with an instructor who taught what looked like joint loosening exercises or what you can find in Pavel Tsatsouline's book on joints.

The group started 2 weeks after I began working there and I left thinking 'I did my job here already'. Ofc it may have nothing to do with me, haha.

When I opened this thread I was thinking more about teaching nurses and other health workers rather than old people. Constraints in belief could be avoided by clever marketing and basing terminology on more Western terms, but the time required and willingness to practice are the real problems... Nurses are a strange bunch of people in my limited experience.

Writing this for self learning via stream of thought:
While it's an admirable and potentially beneficial endevour to try to break down a system so certain groups of people have less of a barrier to enter practice... It bears the risk of veiling the ultimate purpose which are the different stages of enlightenment and immortality (on which I'm no expert). One could be seriously led astray if the intent and reason for practice are not clear enough...

Some say teaching is a way of practice itself. However, it's often tough to make a secure living from. Sometimes there are expectations from others of spreading a system. So, how to reliably provide for oneself and family via teaching? One solution I experienced (and have seen mentioned again on here by Trick) is to have one module for cash flow and one for what you actually want to teach. For example, kid's TKD or Karate for cash and the other stuff later on.

It feels a bit like ripping people off via belt exams, uniforms, gear they have to pay for... But hey, you give them what they want, right? A little break from parenting and some life lessons that are hopefully based on healthy masculinity and not macho values. As always, it's what you make out of something.

Then there are the private coaches who can state higher prices. But you have to reach more experience and credibility for this to become feasible.

Well, thanks for listening. I'll consider starting a diary. Maybe on here? Some forums have a practice diary section which could increase traffic to the site. Then again, public attention has a tendency to influence what you write down... But weren't communications between schools in olden times essentialy exchanging diary entries?
Who cares, it is what it is.

[Quigga]

People who have skill at the internal into old age usually have 40 or 50 years ot training behind them
They are not new to the game
Not all older practicioner seven with a long training history and good instruction still have a functioning body

Why do you think they don't have a good body anymore? Errors in practice or wrong practice or just genetics?

[wayne hansen]

The reasons are as varied as the practitioners
Some have bad instruction from the start
Some are tardy in their attention to detail
Others have bad habits that detract from the training
Many have done damage from a hard life both mental and physical
It can be just bad luck
I have met those who just can't comprehend the reasoning for right method