Take your time. You are making progress.

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Join me on Saturday, April 25, 10am in your time zone. Stop. pay attention and breathe. Imagine and feel the connection with others who are stopping to breathe and connect with you. This wave of breathing and connecting our energy starts at 10am in New Zealand and Australia, then travels across the world in every time zone on earth. What a positive way to spread good will, spread our good energy and connect with others, a positive gesture of giving of our best selves and sharing a positive moment with no agenda and no personal gain.

Thousands, maybe millions will be joining us. Just to share energy and connect.

Join me and if you are outside, take time to enjoy the trees, the grass, the flowers, the birds.

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I love this time of year because it brings new energy, new possibilities, new ideas. We feel it in our bones. In Tai Chi classes we root our legs and feet into the ground, connect with the rich nutrients and energy of the soil and bring up that energy to nourish our bodies. Like the trees. Our arms are like the branches and our hands and fingers resemble the flowering, the new leaves that are the result of moving earth energy throughout the our entire body. It is refreshing, calming, and energizing at the same time.

This new energy resonates with me in a big way right now. I just submitted a completed manuscript to my publisher and had a first meeting with my project manager to discuss the process, the steps ahead to publish my new book. My new book!! How exciting to be at this point, about to make my words, my ideas come alive and go out into the world.

Details to unfold. I’ll keep you posted and share my progress. Spring — the perfect time of year to have a new project spring forth and flower!

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In this time of light and dark balance in our days, it is good for us to examine our own balance. Balance in our doing and being, in our waking and sleeping and increasing our resolve to keep our bodies and mind active and strong. It is the time for walking outside, enjoying the warmer heat from the sun, keeping our bodies healthy through our natural gift or walking. We can focus this time on walking to maintain and increase our balance, important at any age.

I’ve been thinking about walking a lot lately. One reason is social media has been filled with videos on walking, specifically on promoting Tai Chi Walking. Tai Chi Walking for Losing Belly Fat, or for building strong muscles or for weight loss in just 10 minutes a day. These are misleading and seem to be taking advantage of the “Tai Chi” name, known to have many benefits and is gentle, to draw people in, and in some cases take their money.

In February “The New York Times” published an article “The Very Real Benefits of Tai Chi Walking.” Why would a major newspaper see Tai Chi as newsworthy? It might be recognition of misinformation in the public arena about the quick and misleading claims about this practice. It is an accurate, well-researched article quoting professionals who gave accurate information about Tai Chi and the walking practice.

Several of my students asked me if I had seen the ads and videos. Yes, and I have looked at more. No disclaimers. No precautions for safety and wild claims that 5 or 10 minutes a day of their practice will change your life. We know better. For 27 years I have included Tai Chi walking as part of every class I have taught. It is personally important to me because I used Tai Chi walking to regain my strength and ability to walk when my legs were weak and not totally in my control from symptoms of MS. This was years before I started teaching. The key is to have proper body alignment, soft knees and focus on putting 100% of your weight on the standing leg before picking up the other one. This focused practice can increase leg strength, stability and balance, but it takes a long time, sometimes years.

Go get your walking shoes and get out the door, down the street, through a park, on the walkway by the lake. Pay attention to the sunshine warming temperatures and the celebrate your ability to walk.

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In these days of grey skies, cold temperatures and snow for those of us in northern U.S. climates , and for you in climates with sun and warmth, what gives you joy? Many of the non-political stories, music, ads, movies right now are light and play to our desire for cheer, friendship, traditions, baking seasonal treats, loving and feeling loved.

Hopefully, we are not so busy with our to-do lists that we miss the moments — twinkling lights, a grandchild’s performance, big, beautiful snowflakes, coffee with a friend, a colorful bird, working to provide meals for others.

Joy is often spontaneous, unexpected. We need to be open. If our minds are filled with lists, thinking about a past event that upset us, worrying how we will get everything done before company comes in a few days, we may miss our moment of joy. We need to take time to notice what is around us right now. Pay attention. Go look at the holiday lights. Be intentional.

In my Tai Chi classes, I ask students to try to keep their attention in the room as much as possible. Why? Our minds wander; chatter fills our heads and can take us miles away from the classroom we are standing in. I focus our gentle Tai Chi moves on relaxing and focusing on the moment, paying attention to where we are standing, how we are standing, feeling our body alignment come to a center point. When our minds wander, we miss the paying attention and likely can miss a wonderful moment of calmness and relaxation. I think those moments of joy come when we stop, focus on the moment and take in the wonderful feeling of joy. Volunteering our time to help others, with transportation to a medical appointment, feeding those in need, visiting a homebound friend, all allow us to focus on the moment when we forget ourselves in order to help others.

I feel joy in the midst of moving my energy with my students through Tai Chi. We are freely sharing with each other bringing calm to the moment and each other. A gift for which I am grateful.

What gives us joy cannot be bought, bartered or manufactured. It comes to us, often unexpected. It’s an emotion and a gift that is part of the best of being human.

What has brought you joy recently?

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The hours of daylight are decreasing; the temperatures are cooler so we put on our jackets. And many of the trees show us vividly that we are in the midst of change.

These photos are from northern Minnesota a few weeks ago, in the early stages of change. It is so calming to stare at the trees doing their thing. Good for the soul. They remind me of being a child in northern Illinois, when we raked leaves into big piles. I would run and jump into the pile scattering the leaves. Mom let my brother, sister and gather leaves with our little rakes. She made it fun and we loved it. And we learned to pay attention and admire the fall leaves.

Today it’s fun to stop and look because the trees and their leaves don’t disappoint.

Don’t forget the wildflowers, with their little purple or yellow flowers doing their thing. Stop. Pay attention. Enjoy the remarkable changes nature is offering us free. If we just look

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Alex, a Northwestern University journalism and film student contacted me. He asked if I would be open to his filming one of my Tai Chi classes for his film class project. I immediately said yes because I really enjoy working with students, inviting them to film the visually appealing movements of Tai Chi. I always look forward to the nuggets they show as they film an hour of class and condense the film to five or six minutes. What did Alex see? Feel?

Take a look inside my class through Alex’s eyes and camera lens:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MKH8Ms90dNLHEG2-N35gzpmH7fOV-n68/view?usp=drivesdk

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I hope as adults we can generate that excitement for ourselves, for new activities and new learning. It should never get old.

NOW is a good time. A good time to commit to new learning. A good time to bring nourishment to our bodies and clear out all the clutter and chatter in our heads. I’m partial to saying “now” to Tai Chi because I know first-hand how beneficial it is for relaxing, managing anxiety, chronic health conditions and improving balance.

Why Tai Chi now? Because putting off, saying ‘maybe later’ could easily lead to doing nothing at all. Gear up and say ‘yes’. You don’t need any equipment nor special clothing, just youself and an open mind. I have classes you can join now, or, if you aren’t physically close, look for a class or start with a YouTube video.

You can join these students who have said already said ‘yes’. Recommend a class to a friend or come together. I’d like to hear from you.

I’m making my plea for action because I’m in my 26th year of teaching Tai Chi and I’m passionate about Tai Chi. As a teacher I know the distance can be very long from saying you want to take a Tai Chi class and getting out the door to go to a class. So many people say they are interested in learning how to relax, do something positive for their health, take a class and don’t because something else comes up. Don’t let that be you.

Tai Chi – NOW is your time. NOW is our time.

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What do you like the most? The freedom of walking out the door in shorts and sandals, taking binoculars and camera to watch and listen to the birds, relaxing outside with friends over a glass of wine. All good possibilities. We think mostly about “doing”, being active because we have a sense of freedom to move around and go places when we know it will be light well into the evening.

We are in the season of Yang energy – activity, blossoming trees and flowers, bright colors, heat, light. While we are out “doing” we want to pay attention, enjoy the moment. Take it all in.

Recently my sister and I went to Starved Rock State Park in northern Illinois. It’s amazing to drive across flat terrain, rich farmland filled with corn and soybeans and then. . . huge trees, winding roads going up, up, up to a natural filled park. Looking out over a panorama of green trees as far as our eyes could see, we listened to a variety of singing birds, felt a summer breeze, marveled at small red berries we happened to see because we were still and paying attention to everything around us.

The sun shining brightly highlighted the various shades of green on the thousands of leaves surrounding us. It was mesmerizing, the stillness and calm of those moments. The light outside and how nature took it in, made it beautiful and we, in our stillness took it all in and thoroughly enjoyed the moments.

What moments of summer have made you feel this way?

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