A recent Reuters about Yoga for Heart Failure Patients made a small mention of Tai Chi. It is easy why Tai Chi was also mentioned, as the two exercises work in similar manner. Too often we think of exercise as a heart-pounding, painful ordeal. But the theory behind yoga and tai chi is to relax and boost your body’s energy, rather than drain it. As both yoga and tai chi are both about tailoring the exercise to your own body’s capabilities, it is easy to see that people with low cardiac function or depressed immune systems would benefit from these exercises.

Goldberg, a professor of medicine at New York University, said heart failure patients often have trouble with exercise due to fatigue and shortness of breath caused by the heart’s reduced pumping ability.