Jim: good point. plus what does chi and spiritual beliefs got to do with kata as it relates to claimed healing properties?
to the thread:
I think everyone would agree that moving around each day is healthier than sitting on a couch all day, correct?
so of course kata (which qualifies into the category of 'moving around'), is more beneficial to your health than using that same time to sit on a park bench and smoke cigars.
no one could possibly disagree with that using any reasonable level of common sense. The question then becomes which type of 'moving around' gives the most amount of health benefit.
The only way you could objectively measure something like that is by compairing statistics. anyone have the stats showing that kata or tai chi practitioners live longer and healthier than someone who swims in a pool every day?
If it was definitively shown that swimming for 30 minutes per day has the equal long term health benefit as 2 hours of kata practice a day, would people THEN associate magical healing properties to tredding water? No, they wouldn't. which illustrates the bias of the human psyche thinking 'A' is better than 'B' just because they want it to be true.
it's really a non-argument of biased opinions unless people start bringing credible statistics to the table in these types of threads.