A very frustrating thing when practicing tai chi, especially when learning, is the space typically required. We take a step this way and lunge that way and turn and now we’ve kicked a bookcase. Add a sword, and it’s goodnight to the light fixtures at the very least.

While a popular suggestion may be “do it outside”, we do not all have the luxury of living in a suitable climate. We also may prefer to practice in private, with no pressing urge to have an audience.

Tsao’s book, therefore, is very welcome. But how does he do it? The very notion of constriction is antithetical to tai chi, after all.

He takes the traditional forms, keeps the movements mostly the same, and simply changes the order of them. This way, the practitioner revolves around a central point. Occasionally, a movement will become a smaller circle than it was, but never in any way that would constrict movement.

Of course, an obvious question for any such book is “can one learn this from a book?” and the answer is complex, but we would lean towards yes, and insofar as one can learn any physical art from a book, this one does a fine job. It helps that it builds up progressively, too.

All in all, this book is a great choice for anyone who’s interested in taking up tai chi, and/but would like to do so without leaving their home.

Check Out “Compact Tai Chi” on Amazon Today!

Sometimes it can seem that every new diet and/or exercise regime you want to try will change your life, if just you first max out your credit card on restocking your kitchen and refurbishing your home gym, not to mention buying all the best supplements, enjoying the latest medical gadgets, and so on and so forth.

And often… Most of those things genuinely are good! And it’s great that such things are becoming more accessible and available.

But… Wouldn’t it be nice to know how to have excellent strength and fitness without any of that, even if just as a “bare bones” protocol to fall back on? That’s what Manson provides in this book.

The writing style is casual and friendly; Manson is not exactly an academic, but he knows his stuff when it comes to what works. And a good general rule of thumb is: if it’s something that he can do in his jail cell, we can surely do it in the comfort of our homes.

Bottom line: if you want functional strength and fitness with zero gimmicks, this is the book for you (as an aside, it’s also simply an interesting and recommendable read, sociologically speaking, but that’s another matter entirely).

Click here to check out Solitary Fitness, and get good functional strength and fitness with nothing fancy!

Our author, Alexis Dupree, is herself in her 70s, and writing with more than three decades of experience of surviving multiple chronic diseases (in her case, Multiple Sclerosis, and then a dozen comorbidities that came with such).

She is not a doctor or a scientist, but for more than 30 years she’s been actively working to accumulate knowledge not just on her own conditions, but on the whole medical system, and what it means to be a “forever patient” without giving up hope.

She talks lived-experience “life management” strategies for living with chronic disease, and she talks—again from lived experience—about navigating the complexities of medical care; not on a legalistic “State regulations say…” level, because that kind of thing changes by the minute, but on a human level.

Perhaps most practically: how to advocate strongly for yourself while still treating medical professionals with the respect and frankly compassion that they deserve while doing their best in turn.

But also: how to change your attitude to that of a survivor, and yet also redefine your dreams. How to make a new game plan of life—while working to make life easier for yourself. How to deal, psychologically, with the likelihood that not only will you probably not get better, but also, you will probably get worse, while still never, ever, giving up.

After all, many things are easily treatable today that mere decades ago were death sentences, and science is progressing all the time. We just have to stay alive, and in as good a condition as we reasonably can, to benefit from those advances!

Bottom line: if you have a chronic disease, or if a loved one does, then this is an immensely valuable book to read.

Click here to check out Managing Major Chronic Diseases, and make life easier!