T'ai Chi or Hai Ti, the Seniors have it all

May 15, 1998
The New Milford Times
G O L D E N YEARS
T’ai Chi or Hai Ti, the Seniors have it all
BY TERRI ANDERSEN Contributing Writer
To prove to myself that I wasn’t going to vegetate once I retired, I decided to try some things I never tried before. After I finished the line dance class at the senior center awhile ago, I decided to enroll in the T’ai Chi class to see what that was all about. The first thing the instructor told us was that we had to breathe properly (from the stomach). Hmmm, I said to myself, this should be interesting. After breathing for over 60 years, I thought I was pretty good at that already, but I found that I had a few things to learn after all. As we did our first move, the instructor intoned “Inhale,” and just as I finished exhaling, he said, “Ex-hale.” I hurried up and took a quick inhale to catch up with everybody else’s exhale, but the instructor said that wasn’t necessary. It took a few tries for me to get the hang of it, but I did manage to breathe naturally when I did my movements. I think it was that “from your stomach” bit that threw me off in the beginning. The next thing to learn was balance and how to move gracefully. I thought I already knew that, too, considering how much dancing I did in my lifetime. Well, you guessed it, I had another surprise in store. When the instructor balanced on his left leg to do the “over the fence” move with his right leg, he was gracefulness personified. When I lifted my right leg the few inches necessary to do the move and tried to balance on the other leg, I was like a tightrope walker about to topple. And while the instructor's foot came down without a sound, mine came down with a loud thud, just quick enough to keep me from falling. After I went home the first week, determined to practice what I learned in class, I couldn’t remember a single thing other than “raise hands, lower hands,” and I was so disgusted with myself. But when I went back the following week, it turned out that everybody else in the class had forgotten, too, so our very patient instructor just went over it again until we “got it” (such a nice young man). One day after class, when a fellow student asked me if I was going to the high tea the senior center had scheduled for later in the week, with a dazed look I asked if that was another form of Chinese discipline. (After spending an hour on T’ai Chi, my mind automatically spelled High Tea as Hai Ti.) I guess I was disoriented (forgive me). Seriously, though, T'ai Chi is a beautiful experience when done correctly. Like everything else in life, it takes practice to get it right, and the teacher at the New Milford Senior Center is excellent. If you want to learn how to relax and benefit your mind as well as your body, you might want to look into T'ai Chi. (We even got some acupressure tips along the way.)

She enjoyed thought-provoking article? (On Forgetfulness-in case you forgot - ha ha)
To the Editor:
I enjoyed the thought-provoking article by Terri Andersen [in last week’s New Milford Times]. I do
hope she will appear in your paper often.
– T. Virginia Johnson New Milford