T'ai Chi in a Chair

Took a while, but finally I get why places like Rydal Park offer T'ai Chi but not yoga or meditation.  There is a book about doing it in a chair!  And now I have the book  - hip hip hooray!!

Once a week isn't much, but it's a spur to start a daily practice of your own, whether you're a teen or sixty-something or an oldster.  We only do motion meditation once a week at Sanctum, but it's my spur to get Robert Peng's video set, The Master Key, as a 25th anniversary present to the two of us, "from" our critters, inside & out - stuffies & kitties & squirrels & bunnies & ...  Once a week can have great power, when it's built on, expanded.

Am looking forward to getting thoroughly versed in the 15-minute routines offered in Cynthia Quarta's book and to doing an online search on similar routines, such as Movement Improvement T'ai Chi, a class out of Atlanta.

Taking my laughter yoga class started my looking at olders & movement in a whole new...  No, that's NOT true.  It didn't start my looking at olders & movement in a whole new light.  Maybe refreshed, but far from new.

See, I grew up with a grannie who, through all of her life, incorporating intentional movement into every day.  Mom is always  & forever the vision of what I want for ALL olders.  And she walked or moved her body FOR THE SAKE OF HER HEALTH every single day. 

I do not remember a time that she didn't do her sets of daily exercises, prescribed by her doctor when she was a newly wed to help with back problems.  She had to be mighty tired or flat out sick to miss a day. 

There were exercises she did in bed, flat on her back or on her side.  There were ones she did sitting on the bed, her feet on the floor.  There were standing up ones.  There was her daily walk.  None of it was accidental or incidental - all were intentional, with the goal of maintaining the greatest level of fitness she could, at whatever point in her life.  To her final days, she was still doing breathwork.

Breathwork - that was my great contribution to Mom's fitness regiment.  I was introduced to the power of breath work through the book, Jump Start Your Metabolism.   The concept was both revolutionary & "DUH! That makes so much sense!" ~ Mom took to it like a duck to water.  When she couldn't manage her old exercise routines, when even a dozen laps around the kitchen island were outside her abilities, she was able to sit in the big chair in the living room (the one Brenda always described as "in the Stickley style") & run through her breathwork exercises.  She was doing some of them right up to her last day.  She did them because she had been doing them all her life.  

A lot of older people never made intentional body movement part of their life.  Just because they're still physically active, getting in rounds of golf or sets of tennis or daily walks, doesn't translate into a pattern of daily, intentionally movement.  What do they do on the rainy day or in the dead of winter? 
Do they do daily exercise even when they feel tired & need to make a real effort?  That's what my Mom did, that's my model of intentional movement.

T'ai chi in a chair or movement meditation or laughter yoga is powerful when it becomes part of our daily regiment, as exercise was part of Mom's.  Maybe not every day, but every day should include some form of intentional physical movement.

My John walks every day - down in the den.  He's done that for as long as I've known him.  He might be bone tired, but it is such a part of his life pattern, he's down there, getting in his walks, alternating his strength training with doing steps.  Every day, practically without fail. He could have been my mother's son!  

It strikes me that the best way I can get more intentional movement into the lives of my older friends & grannie clients is to first make it part of my own.  

There is no reason I can't make laughter yoga part of my weekly/daily routine.  Just means spending part of every Monday morning at The Resiliency Center - two weeks a month for laughter yoga with Elizabeth Vennart, one for my appointment with Kim Vargas, one for a grannie client's appt with Kim.  I ultimately want to get my own certificate in laughter yoga, adapting it for older people ~ one of the few things that >I< want to do, not find someone else who does (although am looking for that rare person, too).

There is no reason I can't make regular exercise part of my daily routine.  The best way to send to message "it's never too late" is to model it.  John has been aching to help me do just that since we first fell in love.  

There is no reason I can't make breathwork - the very thing that I introduced Mom to - part of my daily routine.  And in doing that, I will be practicing a form of yoga.

To think this posting started with just wanting to share that I'd bought T'ai Chi in a Chair & to talk about my interest in bringing it into the lives of more older friends & grannie clients.  It's well known that we often end up specializing in the very thing we personally need the most.  Seems to have been the case when that book caught my eye & the idea my interest.

Where do I see myself in two years?  As someone who helps olders - with their doctor's & true fitness professionals' input - incorporate intentional movement routines, especially breathwork, into their daily lives.  My own intention didn't start with the book, but the book sure kicked me into actually getting moving!