The origins of Smooth Move are from the developers 20 year study of Qigong and Tai Chi. This was initially for chronic shoulder pain, but after that was resolved study progressed to a goal of improving a long term spinal injury. Studying for the last 10 years with the Energy Arts school, and the depth of knowledge of the school's founder has given the development team an understanding of many the advanced technical components that make Qigong and Tai Chi work.
Combining a knowledge of how to learn Tai Chi, how to fix injuries with Tai Chi, and how the body works to achieve Tai Chi goals, led to the idea that the sensors in a smartphone could be adapted to help with this process.
Tai chi is known as a slow moving exercise method. One of the primary reasons why Tai Chi is practiced slowly is due to the very large number of subtle details in advanced Tai Chi which should be continuously maintained at a high level of accuracy. This is a major challenge for the conscious mind, but the better it is achieved the greater the benefits from Tai Chi practice.
To achieve an advanced level of Tai Chi skill, and unlock the advanced potentials of the body, takes dedicated practice and hard work. This is many hours per week, over many years, with skilled teachers to guide. It isn't easy. Lower skill levels of Tai Chi can still give worthwhile benefits, but the goal of Smooth Move was to use technology to give access to the advanced benefits, without the difficulty of traditional training methods.
The most advanced levels of Tai Chi are characterised by a smooth flow and integration of all aspects of the practitioners mind and body. From this the idea of Smooth Move originated. A smartphone sensor should be able to give a qualitative reading of the smooth flow of the basic physical body, but within this there would be information on how all the Tai Chi factors are performing.
The list of factors at only a basic level is already quite daunting. The muscles, nerves, ligaments, tendons, veins, fascia, blood, have complex interactions between themselves, and also with the mind that is supervising activity. Advanced Tai Chi is not a simple business.
The idea behind Smooth Move was that the quality of movement from the factors would be reflected in the sensor measured quality of basic physical movement. So then following simple exercises, any dips in the how the factors were performing would be measurable, and an audio signal could be generated to alert the practitioner.
This already solves one of the biggest hurdles in doing high quality Tai Chi. It isn't about just following a sequence of movements, but doing so in way that activates and integrates myriad factors within the body.
In high quality Tai Chi, a practitioner needs to be able to be sensitive to the accuracy of the factors affecting their movement, and know what to correct as they perceive necessary. This is as difficult as it sounds.
With Smooth Move this is all eliminated. A Smooth Move practitioner just has to move slowly and carefully, and when the audio feedback indicates the quality of movement is dipping, be mindful and apply a little extra care to how they are moving.
With this little extra care, the mind, body, and brain will automatically seek ways to adapt to move in a more precise way. A slight adjustment here, a fractional relaxation there. This replicates the high level Tai Chi practitioners approach, only without the years of practice and skilled teachers.
With only a few minutes per day of training, but day after day of practice, the adaptation will build to improve a Smooth Move practitioners ability to move in a high quality mindful way.
That was the idea, and after two years of development, two testing case studies, one for hand tremors, and one for neck / shoulder pain, confirm that Smooth Move is already meeting and surpassing the original goals outlined here.
Both the developer, and other advanced Tai Chi practioners can confirm that using Smooth Move replicates effortlessly the skills that normally take a decade or more to learn.