During the 1980s when I was caught up in the running/jogging frenzy – outfitted in my neon mesh shorts, tank tops, and terrycloth sweatbands – I made it my morning ritual to drive to our nearby City Park in New Orleans, which was a bow to all things majestic in nature. Its various pathways for runners, walkers, and cyclists were pardoned from the Deep South’s punishing heat by rows of ancient live oaks whose leafy branches, bent by age, formed canopies of shade. City Park’s lagoons with floating lilies, ponds graced by gliding swans, an early 20th century wooden carousel, and an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, framed a Rockwell painting come to life. Complementing it all was the silent surround of nature at peace.
During early morning hours each weekday, I largely ignored this lush urban woodland, which endured the stampede of those of us who considered sunrise aerobics as our savior.
After stretches, I laced up my Nikes, took off on my 6 a.m. run, and kept on schedule to be at my job in the newsroom by 8:30 to cover the day’s mayhem.
Along my run, I’d encounter tennis players pounding the courts, bodybuilders competing for the sequential fitness stations, and biking fanatics warming up with lunges and squats to endure long-distance rides. We suffered through it – “no pain, no gain,” as the trendy catchphrase went. Who didn’t envy a Jane Fonda body or an Arnold Schwarzenegger physique?
One morning, exhausted from heat, I came upon a group of middle-aged people in a grassy meadow participating in what appeared to be a mime class. They gracefully pushed against invisible walls. Then foot to knee, hold. Next, extend the heel to grass for a ridiculously long pause. And repeat.
How in the world could they get any health benefits from this charade, I thought. What was the point if you couldn’t get your heart rate up?
I tried to imagine what this class was trying to accomplish. Were they attempting to catch a hummingbird while balancing on one leg? Kneading bread under water? The move that killed me, though, was their slow-stepping like a cat sneaking up on a bird that already flew away, wings flapping in the air. Then napping at a 90-degree for what seemed like an eternity.
That evening over dinner with my husband, Paul, I reconstructed the whole scene. Paul, who’d been working toward his black belt in karate, immediately perked up.
“Tai chi! It’s called meditation in motion.”
“Motion may be an overstatement,” I said. “It looked more like minimalist animation.”
“It’s great for controlled breathing, balance, and stress relief. You should try it.”
“I’m not stressed,” I replied.
“Yes, you are. It could be enlightening.”
Just like that, my Type-A trial lawyer husband had become the Dalai Lama.
I cleared the table, washed the dishes, and cleaned up the kitchen. I had enough energy to paint the living room ceiling, but I called it a night.
Paul was a no-nonsense sleeper – head to pillow and see you in eight hours! I needed my mental decompression exercises to send me into slumberland. As I tried to shift into blissful autopilot, I imagined the trance-like detachment the group must have experienced earlier that day – the woman stretched taut like the Statue of Liberty; the man bent like Rodin’s The Thinker; and a gray-haired guy strutting like the Pink Panther with that nonchalant swagger, captured in freeze frame.
Maybe this mind-body consciousness thing could help me sleep. I turned Lady Liberty, The Thinker, and the Pink Panther into sheep – slowly, slowly, gently, gently, rolling down the green. And repeat. It took about 50 tries, but eventually – probably out of boredom – I tai chi’d myself to sleep.
In retrospect, I feel a little bad about my mischievous thoughts that day about cow-tip-pranking them just to watch them go down like dominoes in their dojo without borders. Pretty funny at the time since it all looked so cartoonish to me.
I’m still chuckling today at the newest iteration called tai chi walking, popularized on social media. Think Fred Astaire waltzing with an imaginary Ginger Rogers. Slow rhythmic movements integrated into a walking routine. The great thing, I am told, is that you can practice it anywhere – along your neighborhood sidewalk, transversing the crosswalk of a busy intersection, down the steps to your subway train. As long as you stay mindful of what you’re doing, and don’t become self-conscious, you’ll fit in like any urban nutcase.
But who am I to question the centuries-old wisdom of the Chinese who have derived legitimate long-term health benefits from their world of slow, low-impact movements?
Moving like a snail simply had no appeal to me; it was never going to give me the euphoria or cardiovascular intensity of a good run. And to master its complex movements takes patience – count me out on that.
If there was a lesson lost on me, it may have been that I overlooked tai chi’s teaching moments on staying centered in life and being mindful of the beauty surrounding us on this earth. I might have literally seen the forest for the trees if I had not been speeding by it all like the Nike Swoosh and bolting through life in general like a blur. I may have benefitted from some long-term meditative calm, had I appreciated those ancient live oaks that ached to be noticed, had I savored those swans drifting by like peace symbols, had I ridden the carousel.
Now, the memory of my late husband’s words, “it could be enlightening,” are soothing to me, as I employ tai chi – with a little wink and smile – as a nocturnal sport. Those human wood sprites in the park still become my little sheep sometimes, rolling gently, gently, down the green, filling the empty space beside me in bed, and accompanying me to sleep.
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Kathleen “Kat” Mulvihill is a former journalist who has reported in the Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Boston news markets in print and television. She’s put aside the serious news stuff and now pokes at politics and contemporary culture. Kat is a Massachusetts native who lives in the New Orleans area where she hibernates during the Big Easy’s tropical summers, emerging refreshed in fall and winter.
