10,000 Cries for Justice and Speaking for the Voiceless

September 2022 No Comments

This year marks the 91st anniversary of the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War: 1931-1945, a war that resulted in approximately 25-30 million Chinese killed, millions of women and girls raped, and millions of innocent civilians slaughtered. Yet, many people in the world have no knowledge of what happened.  Furthermore, many people and their governments who were involved have been trying to deny what happened and trying to rewrite history.  We have almost passed the time when all the survivors of those atrocities are all gone from this world. Fortunately, there are people of different nationalities around the world who have not forgotten and are working hard to make sure that we learn the lessons from that part of history so that similar mistakes will not be repeated anywhere else in this world.

Two persons, one a Chinese citizen and one a Japanese citizen, have done the most to lead this movement so that justice can be restored and history will not be forgotten. These two remarkable people are Tong Zeng (童增) of China and Tamaki Matsuoka (松岡環) of Japan.  This article “10,000 Cries for Justice and Speaking for the Voiceless” is about Tong Zeng. [1] The other article “A Conversation with Tamaki Matsuoka: ‘The Conscience of Japan’” is about Tamaki Matsuoka, and was posted in the June 2022 issue of this website. [2] Read More »

Mindfulness and Taiji

September 2022 No Comments

Mindfulness and Taiji

September 2022 No Comments Edit

This article describes a clinical trial study that shows how Taiji can improve mindfulness, sleep quality, and overall well being of young adults in colleges. Mindfulness means that the mind is focused on the present task at hand, being aware of the environment but at least for that moment not overly anxious or worry by what is going on around us. Mindfulness can help a person concentrate on the current work, and not get distracted or overwhelmed by other events and the greater environment in which we live.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) was introduced more than 40 years ago by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and has become widely recognized and used since then, especially in the last 20 years to help reduce stress and improve overall health. Mindfulness is often associated with meditation and Taiji.

This paper reports on a clinical trial study using Taiji as the method to mindfulness. It compares an experimental group who practices Taiji (Chen-stype Taijiquan) twice a week and a Special Recreation control group who are involved in classes of a similar duration via lectures, discussion, and service learning. Both groups involve ccollege age male and female adults. Read More »

Evidence-Based Health Benefits of Taiji and Qigong

June 2022 No Comments

During the last decade or more, there has been a series of Scientific investigations conducting evidence-based scientific investigations of the health benefits of Taiji and Qigong. The objective is to do experiments that can be duplicated with results that are quantitative and explanations that may be understood to a scientific audience. Although the research findings may need to be repeated in more laboratories and with larger sample sizes, we think the evidence is pretty impressive and moving us in the direction that hopefully in another 20 years or so of more research, we will have a significantly better scientific explanation of the health benefits of Taiji and Gigong. Read More »

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