Inspiration

I do a number of Tao Chi classes during the week. One of my favourites is the 2nd year beginners’ class because it allows one to smarten up and refine the moves. And there is an interesting and nice bunch of people in this class.

There are 2 very old ladies in the class; Woody (I am not sure of her proper name) and Mrs Ho. I know Mrs Ho is 91 because her daughter told me they celebrated her 90th birthday last year. And the class has made some fairly good guesses of Woody’s age; we think she could be anywhere between 85 and 93. These 2 old ladies pitch up most Tuesday and Thursday evenings regardless of weather. They wear little socks to compensate for the cold floor but otherwise stick to our Tai Chi “uniform” of black trousers and white T shirt.

There are over a 100 different moves in the short form we do and, depending on how slowly we do it, it can take anything from 10 minutes to half an hour to work through all the moves. And then there is also the straight sword form and that also has a lot of moves, and you have a sword to think about as well as what your body is doing!

The inspiration: These 2 old ladies keep up with the class. Occasionally they end up facing the wrong way but then so do some of the youngsters. They make a damn good effort to do everything including all the lunges, squats, touch their toes and they sometimes manage a really good balance on one leg whilst holding their swords above their heads. Amazing.