Can tai chi and qigong affect repetitive stress injuries (RSI)?

All repetitive stress arises when one or two anatomical spots take the full strain of whatever action you continually repeat to get a job done. For example, using a computer requires you to bend your wrists and move your fingers to strike keys and move a mouse, often at similar bad angles, millions and millions of times. Tai chi helps prevent repetitive stress injuries in three ways:

• Tai chi’s movements create more micro-variation motions than normal in the specific places that affect carpal tunnel. The practice also conditions you to relax and let go of any kind of internal resistance in your body.
• Tai chi movements constantly use a variety of different muscles so that various individual muscles don’t get overused and fatigued.
• Tai chi improves the motion of the joints with repeated, gentle turning of the fingers, palms, wrists, and elbows, shoulder rotations, and shoulder blade movements. These moves can restore the full range of motion to the joints and eliminate the possibility of repetitively the forming bad angles that cause RSI. For more details on tai chi and RSI see "Tai Chiⁱ: Health for Life."

The chi gung practices of Heaven and Earth and Dragon and Tiger restore motion and flexibility to the joints, which become tense and tight.