Dear World Tai Chi & Qigong Day Supporters,
Very exciting news! Our artist, Jenny Hahn, has just unveiled her NEW design for the World Tai Chi & Qigong Day logo, that will appear on the 2013 Official T-Shirts. It is both, more modern, flowing, and printer friendly to ensure a maximum quality of print on your
Official WTCQD T-Shirts.
This is the new image, and the approximate colors for the 2013 t-shirt. Front below, and back below that, with "One World ... One Breath" now in 34 languages, on the back. NOTE: International groups outside North America can license the
artwork for one year and print t-shirts locally, thereby supporting our work at WorldTaiChiDay.org, while saving shipping costs. We can make hardship arrangements on international artwork licensing, with groups, depending on your nation's economic situation.
Please make your Official T-Shirt orders as early as possible, as that will enable us to get started on global media campaigns to help your local work and tai chi and qigong's myriad benefits get the global media attention they deserve! Plus, it makes me and Angie's lives alot less stressful to get "early" t-shirt orders :-) As WTCQD draws closer everyone gets stressed out about making sure they get their t-shirts for their group in time. By ordering early, we can all relax and breathe easier on WTCQD 2013 :-)
100% cotton t-shirt is Saphire-Blue, with dark blue print/logo.
"One World ... One Breath" now in 34 LANGUAGES!
After reading this greeting message, please scroll down, to find an article on the new
Banner/Poster/Flyer Page at
www.WorldTaiChiDay.org's homepage, where you can get FREE artwork for tools to help you get the most from your coming World Tai Chi & Qigong Day event.
2013 Official WTCQD Poster Artwork image:
In the following, we've linked to and discussed some breaking research that is very exciting for our society, but also may show just how profoundly your part in the global family of Tai Chi and Qigong events has been, or can be, if this is your first year participating in World Tai Chi & Qigong Day.
Oregon's,
The Register-Guard Newspaper just published a very exciting and hopeful article, reporting that market research shows that more than 15 million Americans now take tai chi, yoga, and qigong, as opposed to only 4 million just 10 years ago. The number of Americans utilizing the mind body arts has nearly QUADRUPLED IN LESS THAN 10 YEARS.
WorldTaiChiDay.org has worked for 15 years with people like you to create the annual event of World Tai Chi & Qigong Day, held in hundreds of cities in over 70 nations now on the last Saturday of April. The health education impact of our efforts has been profound. We've gotten coverage of these events, and used that media attention to educate readers and viewers of those media events about the
mounting medical research on Tai Chi and Qigong and how it can help them with their lives, their health, their wellbeing, relationships, and their community.
We have also connected over ONE MILLION visitors to WorldTaiChiDay.org to local teachers, schools, and groups, to help them get their Tai Chi and Qigong journey started.
This quadrupling of interest in Tai Chi and Qigong we've seen in America, has also occurred worldwide, perhaps largely due to our efforts as a global Tai Chi and Qigong community
working together to partner with media around this global annual health education and media event.
This bodes well for society, as research shows that mind-body arts profoundly improve health and mental well-being, and can save our society trillions in future health costs when embraced by the mass population. They may also be reducing violence.
A recent study finding that in areas where lead based paints and fuels have declined worldwide, violent crime has lowered. This means that the state of the human mind translates into lowering crime rates. Research shows that Tai Chi and Qigong can calm practitioners, and make them more peaceful.
When I was invited to present a Tai Chi and Qigong program at Folsom Maximum Security Prison in California years ago by a Tai Chi Chih teacher named Judith Threthway, who'd organized the event, I discovered that they had had a program going at Folsom for 2 years prior to my visit, and that statistics showed that not only did the Qigong group's violent incident rate go down profoundly, but the entire prison's incident rates went down over those 2 years, indicating that the Qigong group's influence may have gone beyond their physical group to calm the entire prison. This resonates with TM research that showed meditators effect people beyond their meditation group in positive ways.
Folsom Maximum Security Prison in California (Johnny Cash's visit)
Chinese Tai Chi and Qigong masters have claimed for centuries that the Qi field one creates in meditation, resonates out beyond the physical body. New research on deep sea creatures has discovered one life form living in deep ocean in absolute darkness that operates based on a sense of "electromagnetic emissions." This creature was found to have the ability to sense electromagnetic emissions from other lifeforms from as far as 70 feet away.
When I studied with Master Jennifer Booth decades ago, we sometimes blindfolded a student after doing Sitting Qigong Meditation, and then had the class sit in a large circle with that person standing blindfolded in the center. The students would all pat the floor to cover up any footstep sounds, while one other student would raise their palms and send Qi or life energy from their hands toward the blindfolded student in the center, while moving around that student in a circle. At some point the student emitting their Qi to the blindfolded student would stop, and the patting would stop. The blindfolded student would then touch in to their "enlightened awareness" and see if they could "sense" energy. We weren't 100% accurate, but the instances when we'd point directly at, or very near the Qi emitting student, when we were the blindfolded one in the center, were far beyond mathematical probability.
Of course now, External Qigong, where nurses are trained in medical schools to "emit their energy" into patients, has been proven over and over to have a healing effect on patients. Many major American hospitals now employee Therapeutic Touch practitioners to treat patients to calm them, reduce swelling, and even boost immune function. Of course, Therapeutic Touch is just a clinical name for External Qigong.
So, we know from emerging research that mind-body internal arts have a healing and calming effect, not only on practitioners, but on those around them.
So, what effect does it have to wrap our world in a healing wave of Qi on the last Saturday of April each year, year after year, after year?
World Tai Chi & Qigong Day is a no nonsense, very practical, health education event where the hundreds of teach-ins, and mass exhibitions worldwide, give the public a taste of Tai Chi or Qigong in their communities. Of course our
Medical Research Library, and
Media Kits have enabled the global sisterhood of tai chi and qigong enthusiasts, teachers, schools, and organizations to educate millions by partnering with media.
But, this other research about human consciousness and the lessening of violence in not only practitioners of mind-body internal arts, but of the larger community's around them, points to the possibility that this global wave of calm and Qi may ripple out through society in ways that keep on giving beyond just this one day of "One World ... One Breath" World Tai Chi & Qigong Day activitities.
Sometimes we feel that we don't matter much in a crowded planet with over 7 billion people. However, if our mind-body internal arts practice not only makes us calmer and healthier, but echoes out to the communtiy around us, we may in fact, not be less significant in this crowded world, but actually more significant, more of a healing influence.
The Global Consciousness Project, which came out of preliminary research at Princeton University, has found that when masses of humans focus their awareness it actually physically affected their computer sensing stations around the planet. So, year after year when World Tai Chi & Qigong Day connects mass groups of people clarifying and centering their consciousness as Tai Chi and Qigong groups playing their arts, in a wave that begins in the earliest time zones of mass events in New Zealand ...
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| World Tai Chi Day Auckland 2011 |
... and then spreads time zone by time zone through hundreds of cities in over 70 nations ... what impact does this wave of Qi have on global society. If medical research is any indicator, it has a healing impact, and if cutting edge scientific energy and consciousness research is any indicator, we are having a profound impact that we may never fully understand, but may enjoy the results of ... and we contribute to the ongoing evolution of humanity.
"One World ... One Breath."
"Alone we can do so little ... together ... so much."
-- Helen Keller
Warmest regards,
Bill Douglas and Angela Wong-Douglas
Co-Founders of World Tai Chi & Qigong Day
"The best of men are like water.
Water is good; it benefits all things
and does not compete with them."
-- Lao Tzu
OFFICIAL 2013 T-SHIRTS ARE
NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER
(w/ pre-order discount prices, see bottom of email).
