"It shows how infinitely plastic a lot of the nervous really is. The thinking was you were born with a certain brain and a certain spinal cord and certain peripheral nerves. They were relatively unchanged over time," Laurito said. But as people develop different skills, different areas of the brain will become more active. "And it's very hard to think that someone who has had chronic, persistent pain doesn't have a different appreciation for pain that is reflected in a functional MRI."

There does seem to be a great deal of mind-body interaction in IBS and fibromyalgia, and these are diseases that have not been studied well enough yet so that we really understand them, he said.

Some of his patients complain of pain only when they are under stress, he said, for example from children or a bad day at work. Some have reported improvement after finding some new meaning in their lives. In fact, Laurito said, he wouldn't be surprised if the key were not tai chi by itself but any exercise that one entered into with intent.

That is what Dr. Luke Fortney sees. He is an assistant professor of family and integrative medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.