T'ai Chi for Seniors?

A while ago, a friend of mine who was in her mid 70’s had a mild stroke. (This was before I started OTA school and had clear knowledge about what happens during a stroke and how rehab helps these patients recover.) I remember her telling me that part of her rehab was to do T’ai Chi regularly. At the time I was left feeling puzzled...I didn’t know anything about T’ai Chi and my mind went to the memory of a trip I took to Seattle. There I passed a park where multiple people were doing what looked like martial arts in slow motion hmmmm. I remember thinking “what in the world?” Since then I have learned that what I saw was T’ai Chi, but when my friend mentioned it, I had a hard time imagining her doing that. Was T’ai Chi really for seniors, don’t you need to be limber and have good balance to be able to do that?

I soon learned that like yoga, which doesn’t require that you have strength and flexibility to do, but will help you develop those things, T’ai Chi also helps develop strength, flexibility, balance and coordination. That translates into less falls and more ease of movement for seniors.

So what does T’ai Chi look like? According to my main source: http://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/guide/tai-chi-health it involves, “a series of gentle, flowing postures that create a kind of synchronized dance”. It seems to me that it is hard to beat an exercise that virtually anyone who can stand can do, that has all these health benefits and requires no special equipment. My friend claimed to have benefitted enormously physically from the activity, but the most noticeable affect that it had on her was, in her words, “it was so totally relaxing”. That leads me to the other part of T’ai Chi, which is the concentration/meditative quality of the exercise that invariably produces a calming effect and becomes a stress reliever. We know for a fact that stress itself can have detrimental effects on our health no matter what age, and it is becoming apparent that stress is one of our biggest health problems in America. So since T’ai Chi is ageless, I am definitely going to try it so that I can see for myself and possibly recommend it to my future clients.