Free, Opensource Tai Chi Instruction Website for global health and wellness awareness

Vital Stats

Zachary K

Ashland, OR

people helped1000
People Doing It 10

The Problem

In summary, the problem is that we have a costly and ineffective infrastructure for teaching people preventative medicine and ways of taking care of themselves, so they do not fall victim to common disease and sickness, obesity, and the risks of sedentary lifestyle. Our solution is education in self-health care and illness & injury prevention training through digital archived media. Health is learned through experience, change, study, practice and life style review. Mind/body training and education is a remedy for excess spending in the trillion dollar industry of health care. Congressional stats confirm that life style compounded diseases account for 75% of all deaths. Sedentary lifestyle, diabesity and elder care relating to falls cost $19 billion a year. We also seek to create harmony in community through our public interactions, classes, seminars and introductions by uniting youth and elders in a healthy and positive framework of association. We need to create a youth led initiative to restore balance to society through the most popular media available today, Movies, in the most common delivery mechanism, the internet. "Passing Lineage Traditions" are defined by including many youth to "pass the torch to" to spread the medicine of health to society.

Plan of Action

Our Program offers a supportive structure of: Public Instruction, on-going practice classes, Teacher Trainings and a Digital Study course aimed at addressing health, healing and empowerment. Level 1 of Public classes addresses Elder care, fall reduction and physical recovery emphasizing affordable self care education. Level 2 in Public Education addresses dysfunctional patterns with receptive learning and the common symptoms of tension, stress and unnatural behaviors. Level 3 is Lineage level instruction, structured as the Mastery Level of change and personal transformation. Our online tutorial course, modeled after Khan Academy, offers continued educational support for all Mind/Body Instructors and their student base, as well as the general public.This model takes the first steps to unifying traditional sciences, Styles and Instructor discrepancies, and provides a best practice structure that distills and passes Lineage teachings compiled by Life Dedicated Instructors. While Tai Chi, Qigong and Yoga all share the same roots, it is difficult to find support and agreement among Instructors who come from different teachers or styles. This significant fact has impeded the need to scale programs for public benefit and has limited the common ground understanding as a result. Our archival website will seek out global science and medical-based research studies as a reference, foundations in principles, methods and best practices for study and refinement, information on supporting knowledge such as diet, seasonal changes, regulation, diagnosis, and discussion forums with life instructors for best standards in illness and injury prevention. The monthly newsletter, public classes, workshops and social networking will draw website interest, foster database tracking, and stimulate discussion forums. This collectively will provide specific metrics for measurement. In the course of 2 yrs. we will see a significant change in public self-health knowledge. As we have little to no funding and rely on open source software (Linux and Drupal) to get by, we are asking for a seed grant to buy a video editing computer that is capable of editing HD Video. We have already set up a production ready website and video set. We have acquired an HD Video Camera as well. The final part of our online project requires professional branding and editing efforts for our video clips (post-production work). We will start putting these videos online, on Youtube and Vimeo, and keep filming according to our massive curriculum (Tai Chi is a life practice) until the entire lineage knowledge set is freely available to anyone, anywhere, at any time. It will serve as a digital archive of health and wellness best practices. This is a youth led initiative, to film the Tai Chi lineage and put it online, for our own learning and study, as it suits our modern condition. However, we respect and understand our Elders and teachers, and they will be the primary teachers in our online videos and presentations for the time being. Eventually, the youth will carry this responsibility.