30 Day Experiment: Tai Chi and Meditation
A couple of weeks ago, someone asked me if I'd done any 30 day experiments lately and I realized that I'd fallen off from doing them. So, with 30 days left in May, today I started another one: daily tai chi and meditation.
My experiment parameters are to do 20 minutes of tai chi in the morning and 15 minutes of meditation in the evening. Initially, my tai chi is just the strength building exercises from my instructor, but will eventually be more form based.
My goals for this particular experiment are to feel more relaxed, sleep better, improve my stamina and flexibility and increase my ability to focus. Long term, I want to continue the drop in blood pressure and cholesterol that my 2005 diet brought. However, those are harder to measure on this timeframe.
My tracking method is going to be to write down my stress level, how well I slept and generally how I feel mentally/emotionally each day. The entries will be "write only" during the 30 days, so I can't easily see or be affected by the previous entries. Ideally, based on the cognitive psychology stuff I've been reading, I'd have something that randomly asks me how I'm feeling in each of these areas. That random questioning leads to better evaluations than the reflective kind that an end of day review does. So, I may write up something to pop up an interface randomly.
I chose these 2 methods of achieving the goals (before officially making it an experiment today) because the use of each has been shown in clinical studies to have positive benefits. I want to avoid anything which is peddled as beneficial, but can't repeat the benefits in controlled experimentation.
