Jennifer Silverston is a health coach, a Tai Chi instructor in Michigan who has been practicing tai-chi for 25 years. Jennifer Silverston talks about overcoming a severe spinal injury in 2001 after western medicine wasn’t working, how a Chinese kung-fu master has helped her accelerate her healing, teaching Tai Chi and Qi Gong, what Tai Chi is and its benefits and comparisons between Eastern and Western therapy practices.
Episode Highlights:
- Host Blake Bowman introduces Jennifer Silverston.
- Jennifer talks about her background in Tai Chi and Qi Gong.
- Jennifer Silverston taught tai-chi at Northern Michigan University for five years
- Jennifer provides an overview of what Tai Chi is.
- Yin is considered the closed Earth energy, or the water, and Yang is considered the open sky energy, or the sun.
- Is vitality synonymous with chi?
- What is the list of benefits of Tai Chi from a western perspective?
- Do traditional meditation and breathing techniques have similar benefits with Tai hi?
- What are the benefits to Tai Chi that you don’t get from meditation?
- Blake Bowman talks about a study that looked into how postures affect hormones.
- Jennifer Silverston shares her story of the injury that propelled her toward Tai Chi for healing.
- What was the trajectory for going from practicing Tai Chi to teaching it and the healing of her lumbar?
- The east is better than western medication for treating the body as a whole.
- Jennifer talks about teaching Tai Chi to entrepreneurs called Quantum Calm.
- Daniel
3 Key Points:
- Jennifer Silverston defines Tai Chi as a soft style martial art that is slow with fluid, graceful movement that is very circular and is considered an internal practice, coupled with meditation for health and wellness.
- Tai Chi literally translates to ‘the supreme ultimate,’ which can apply to the supreme ultimate forms and movements and the world as the ancient people saw it as the supreme ultimate mystery of how life is happening.
- The benefits of Tai Chi include: activating relaxation, it is the best exercise for balance, it reduces joint pain, increases mobility, and assists with Parkinson’s, PTSD, and anxiety.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “I taught at Northern Michigan University for five years, teaching Tai Chi and Qi Gong to undergraduates.” - Jennifer Silverston
- “In 2015, I moved back home to help take care of my mom who was very sick and started my own little side business called Tai Chi with Jennifer and that is what I have been doing ever since.” - Jennifer Silverston
- “When we can organize the whole body as one: the body, the breath, and the mind, then we become more powerful. It is like we become integrated.” - Jennifer Silverston
- “Harvard Medical School actually calls Tai Chi and Qi Gong ‘medication in motion’ because it provides so much benefit to so many different ailments.” - Jennifer Silverston
- “Meditation and breathing techniques are very hard for us to get into nowadays because the mind is so busy that when we ask somebody to sit down and concentrate on their breathing, they’re like, what do you mean?” - Jennifer Silverston
- “Eastern (therapy) is more like a whole-body tonic so it is like working with the shoulders, working with the legs, working with the postural alignment and then doing these sort of dynamic physical movements.” - Jennifer Silverston
Resources Mentioned:
