Effect of Tai Chi Exercise Program on Anxiety, Powerlessness, and Self-esteem in Elderly Women

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of Tai Chi exercise program (Sun style 12 forms) on anxiety, powerlessness, self-esteem in community-dwelling elderly women. Methods: With a quasi-experimental design, a nonequivalent control group pretest-post test was used. Elderly women who agreed to participate in the study were assigned into an experimental group (n=23), or a control group (n=23). The experimental group participated in Tai Chi exercise program for 50 minutes per session, 2 times a week for 11 weeks. Tai Chi exercise program consisted of 10 minutes for warm-up, 35 minutes for main session, and 5 minutes for cooling down exercises. Anxiety, powerlessness, and self-esteem were measured with questionnaires to evaluate the effect of Tai Chi exercise program. The data were analyzed by using Chi-square test, Fisher's exact test, and Mann-Whitney test by a SPSS WIN 12.0 program. Results: The experimental group showed significant improvement for self-esteem (z=-3.130, p=.002), powerlessness(z=-3.267, p=.001), and anxiety (z=-2.932, p=.003) when compared to control group, Conclusions: Tai chi exercise program may be an effective nursing intervention to improve self-esteem and to reduce powerlessness and anxiety in community-dwelling elderly women.