They ‘play tai chi’: Stimulation, socialization keep seniors involved in martial arts

Rain or shine — or even a little snow — chances are a group of Shoals residents are meeting down by the river at McFarland Park in Florence to practice tai chi, a low-impact, ancient Chinese martial art that combines meditation and exercise.

“First of all, it’s really wonderful to be outside,” said Jan Post, a regular attendant to the tai chi sessions. “We all voted to be outside in the cold, in the heat, because when you’re out here and you look up, you’re not looking at the ceiling. It’s like you’re one with the universe.”

The exercise sessions weren’t always held outdoors, though. Several members of the group started meeting at Trinity Episcopal Church in 2018 after Tang Soo Do Grandmaster Bill Strong, a longtime practitioner of martial arts, held a qigong demonstration at the Kennedy Douglas Center for the Arts.

Tai chi is a form of qigong, pronounced “chi gong,” which involves the use of exercise to optimize energy within the body, mind and spirit.

“Spiritual, but not in the sense of religion,” said Deryll Banning, who has been attending the Florence sessions since they began about seven years ago. “Spirit as in ‘your spirit.’ It’s kind of hard to separate those two words (spiritual and religion) in English.”

“At the end of a workout session, there’s a tremendous feeling of calm, particularly in this setting,” Dennis Balch added just after the group had finished one of its weekly sessions in June at the park.

Balch, a colleague of Strong’s from their time teaching at the University of North Alabama, was also introduced to tai chi and qigong at the demonstration held at the Kennedy Douglas Center.

When enough people showed interest in practicing the workout together, the group was formed and began to use the church as its regular meeting place until the COVID pandemic halted those indoor sessions.

“During the pandemic, we moved outside,” Balch said. “Then we made a conscious decision once lockdown ended to stay outside.”

The move to McFarland Park not only enhanced the experience for the tai chi practitioners, who say deep breathing is a key component of the exercises, but being outside in the public space also helped the group grow their numbers.

Balch and Strong said the sessions are free to attend, and it’s not uncommon for curious passersby to pause and take part in the class if they have the time.

“I think most people find out about us by word of mouth or by accident,” Balch said. “Some have been here since the beginning. Some, like Maria Killen, have been here about a year. We do have rank beginners who show up and get integrated into the group, and we try to accommodate that.”

Balch said that many of the motions in the exercise are easy to pick up for first timers, but even the most experienced still benefit from the sessions.

“You can take the same motion and you can make that motion arbitrarily difficult by flexing the knees more deeply, by tensing the muscles tighter,” Balch said. “The same class going through exactly the same set of exercises can accommodate people on very different levels of difficulty.”

George Makowski, another of Strong’s and Balch’s colleagues, said he began practicing tai chi as a graduate student in 1982. At 68, he said he is still discovering new benefits to the art.

“One of the things that happens over time is that the tai chi and qigong movements, in my experience, tend to bring up all those little muscles that you didn’t know you had,” he said. “They start responding, and they start getting stronger. So, you get a vocabulary of these movements. Say my knees get sore. OK, I can choose movements that are going to make my knees feel better. I can choose movements that are going to make my sore back feel better. It’s being able to choose how to serve or help different parts of your body as you learn more and more about it.”

In the year that Killen has been involved with the group in Florence, she said her energy levels, range of motion and balance have all improved since she started meeting at the park every week.

Post, who leads a session at the park from time to time, said she also reaped many health benefits from practicing tai chi.

“I was diagnosed with osteoporosis of the hip, which was surprising because I’d always been active,” Post said. “I had gotten into tai chi, and when I went back to be tested, I tested out of osteoporosis. You don’t do that very often.”

A.W. Hargett said tai chi played a major role in his healing after he showed up for a session with the group just weeks after undergoing open-heart surgery. He got involved with the group about a year ago. He said he’s also seen improvements in his balance and overall endurance.

Roger Bigbie, another dedicated member of the group, said he was encouraged to get involved by Banning because of the mental benefits in addition to the physical fitness aspects of the practice.

“He told me when I first started, there are three specific reasons, and I always look back on that,” Bigbie said.

Banning explained those three reasons he began exploring tai chi and Tang Soo Do stem from a pattern of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia he’s noticed runs in his family.

“Research says that socialization, physical and mental puzzles, and physical fitness are things that you can do to stave off dementia,” Banning said. “As I was walking around the (YMCA), I saw people doing Tang Soo Do, and I said, ‘People I don’t know, speaking in a language I don’t understand, doing something I don’t know how to do. Okay, sign me up!’”

Post said she also enjoys the mental stimulation and socialization that tai chi provides.

“We’re all like-minded. We all know why we’re here,” she said. “Everybody is just joking, laughing, and supporting one another. It’s my favorite activity to go to on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

While Strong typically leads the sessions at McFarland on Thursdays, Balch began leading sessions at the UNA East Campus in Florence on Tuesdays during the spring and fall semesters of UNA’s Institute for Learning in Retirement (ILR) program.

“It’s kind of an offshoot from this class,” Balch said, adding that the ILR sessions host many of the same participants in the Thursday sessions, but those members are also affiliated with ILR.

Makowski and Banning also lead the tai chi sessions sometimes, especially if Grandmaster Strong is engaged in other Tang Soo Do or tai chi trainings and clinics.

“I don’t know of any other group like this, certainly not in Alabama, but possibly in the country that has people attend so regularly,” Makowski said. “We’re very fortunate to have someone who is a grandmaster of one of the great martial arts, teaching without cost and using it as a place to develop his thinking about tai chi.”

Though the tai chi members are serious about their devotion to the sessions, Makowski said the workouts aren’t too serious.

“We’ve got here the philosophy of Tang Soo Do, and Bill shares that with us and has incredible patience for all our funny moves and tripping over our own two feet,” he said with a laugh. “The translation of what we would say in English, ‘do tai chi,’ in Chinese is to ‘play tai chi.’ We try to emphasize to everyone not to take it too seriously so that people enjoy it and feel that there’s a sense of play in it.”

Makowski said the fun isn’t exclusive to members of the group only. He invites anyone from seasoned martial artists to the curious and skeptics to join a session, held at 8:30 a.m. on Thursdays at Shelter 2 in McFarland Park.

“The best way to learn about something is to do it,” he said. “The door is always open.”