Get video testimonials, and written testimonials of your student's health benefits.

Once you get a program going, and your students start to see health results, lower high blood pressure, loss of chronic pain, normalized blood sugar levels, less anxiety, depression, sleep disorder, etc. -- Shoot video testimonials of your students to create a youtube video proving the efficacy of your classes at the hospital.

If you or your students know video editing, you can create a short concise 4 or 5 minute video about your classes, titling it "Such-and-Such Hospital Patients See Big Health Gains from Such-and-Such Hospital's Tai Chi / QG Program."

Make the Tai Chi or QG program part of the hospital or health network, so that they see it as a source of pride, rather than competition to what they do. Everyone likes to be a drum-major, everyone likes to be cutting-edge and avant-garde. Tai Chi and QG are the new rising star in healthcare. Let your local hospitals find pride in being connected with the tools you offer patients to improve their lives.

If you do not know how to do video editing, check out Windows Movie Maker. It is a free program you can download off the internet, and it is easy to learn to use, and it can make pretty good videos.

Once you've created your video, you can use it as part of an advocacy project, trying to get a few minutes at various physicians' department meetings. See a few examples of some videos we created using a combination of our University of Kansas Hospital's Tai Chi Meditation Program, and medical research summaries will expand on below. Note that each video was created for a different department setting.

The top one (to your right, entitled "University of Kansas Hospital Tai Chi Meditation Class for Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson's Disease") was created for a presentation we did for a Midwest Multiple Sclerosis annual symposium held on the Kansas University Medical School campus.

The video below that was created for a presentation we were commissioned to do for the Kansas University professionals and some families dealith with dementia. Our presentation was viewed at hospitals throughout the state of Kansas via a closed circuit TV system.

Below we will detail how to approach hospital and health network departments in the hope of doing more in depth presentations later.

Educate your local health professionals, hospital departments about the emerging medical research on Tai Chi, Qigong, and Meditation.

Why? You might ask. There are many reasons:
1) Having them refer patients to your classes held at their hospital,
2) Possibly stumbling across grant funding to fund the classes (pay your salary) so that the classes can be free and open to the public.
3) Maybe connecting with a like minded physician or department who would like to do research on people in your classes to measure benefits.
4) Pass out your business cards or brochures with your contact info and make sure everyone in the room knows you are available to do more in depth presentations on the medical research on Tai Chi and/or Qigong and also to expose health professionals in their departments to the actual Tai Chi and Qigong experience.

Most hospital departments have regular meetings, and if you try you may be able to get 5 or 10 minutes to make a quick pitch to the gathered physicians to convince them why they should send patients to your/their hospital's Tai Chi and/or QG classes.

You will not have much time. So be prepared. Physicians are over-worked, over-strained, and out of time. You have to have a very succinct handout with research citings about their health field and how Tai Chi / QG can benefit their patients. You can have more verbous back up pages to go behind the summary page on top, but make that summary page clear, short and easy to read quickly.

Explain to physicians that research show that Tai Chi is much more than a physical exercise, even though it provides the cardio vascular benefit of moderate impact aerobics and burns as many calories as surfing. It is the lowest impact exercise their is and it is accessbile to anyone. Even those in wheel-chairs can do modified forms of Tai Chi. TELL THEM ABOUT THE "HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL GUIDE TO TAI CHI." In fact, lead with that. I think the biggest tool we ever had to pry open opportunities in hospitals and health networks is that Harvard Guide to Tai Chi. You, as a Tai Chi teacher can talk till your blue in the face and physicians may not react, but when Harvard Medical School talks, physicians often listen.

Testimonials on Tai Chi Meditation Classes at University of Kansas Hospital & KU Medical Center