WOODSTOCK — Tai chi instructor Anne Bower walked her students through a series of exercises, one ending in a kick, during a recent morning at the Thompson Center in Woodstock.
The tai chi that Bower teaches is derived from a Chinese martial arts form. It combines slow and fast movements, from turns to kicks to punches.
“I do find as I’m getting older and older I can’t kick as high, but so what?” the 84-year-old Pomfret resident said to the seven women taking part in her class.
Tai chi can help older adults improve their balance and prevent falls, according to the National Council on Aging. The movements help participants increase “muscular strength, flexibility, balance, and stamina,” says the national nonprofit that advocates for older adults.
Participants put together a series of movements, known as forms, that are done slowly, one after the other. Tai chi also includes breath work and meditation, meant to ease the body as well as the mind, Bower said.
“Sometimes, it’s better than other times,” Bower told the three students who attended her beginner tai chi class at the Thompson late last month as they practiced balancing on one foot.
Most people, she said, have one leg that is stronger than the other and it’s important to do the moves with both legs, one at a time.
Aging together
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion recommends that older adults engage in aerobic exercise for 150 minutes per week and in muscle-strengthening activities twice a week to stay healthy.
Many community groups throughout the Upper Valley, including recreation departments and community centers offer exercise programs aimed at older adults to help them achieve those goals.
Often, the classes are taught by older adults themselves, ranging from those who are in their mid-60s and new to retirement to people in their eighth decade. Participants say having instructors and other participants around their age helps them stay motivated to exercise and builds a supportive community. Instructors at area senior centers say that men and women both participate in classes, but participants are most commonly women.
Janice Shattuck, of Bath, N.H., is 65 and leads chair yoga classes using a DVD program twice a week at Horse Meadow Senior Center in North Haverhill. Shattuck, a retired educator, said that even though she is considered a young senior and still has a decent amount of energy, she has noticed changes in her body, which she talks about with her students.
“We’re all part of this together and we’re all trying to achieve the same thing: We’re trying to keep our muscles limber, our bones strong,” Shattuck said in a phone interview.
A big draw of fitness classes is socialization. Lindgren attends classes two days a week and fills in for Shattuck, when she can’t make it.
Other chair yoga participants appreciate Shattuck’s enthusiasm. Janet Lindgren, an 82-year-old Bath, N.H., resident, described Shattuck — and her energy level — as “great.”
“I don’t consider her a senior though,” Lindgren said after an early August class. “She’s much more flexible than the rest of us.”
Lindgren has arthritis and the gentle stretching in chair yoga has made a difference. “It loosens my joints,” she said.
“It’s a good place to meet people,” Lindgren said. “As you get older, places to meet people diminish.”
Joyce Powers, of Wells River, Vt., has taken chair yoga since Shattuck started offering it at the senior center in December 2022. “It’s a thing to get out,” Powers, 86, said about the classes. An added benefit: “I just like that it keeps my muscles; my body in better shape.”
‘Not sitting on your butt is good’
Exercise plays an important role in the lives of older adults, said Dr. Serena Chao, chief of geriatric medicine at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon.
“The positives of group exercise are both the actual physical activity itself and being social with other people,” Chao said in a video interview this week.
Chao acknowledges the federal recommended guidelines can be overwhelming — particularly for older adults who haven’t exercised that much before. She urges those who are hesitant to start small and work their way up to more prolonged periods of exercise.
“The bottom line is anything that’s not sitting on your butt is good,” Chao said. “Realize it’s a process of building up your body’s capabilities and that starting just a little bit has benefits.”
Some older adults might believe they aren’t capable of exercising. Fitness instructors who are around their age could help with that. Chao, 53, said she could understand the appeal of older adults being drawn to classes being taught by people who are around the same age as them.
“If they see someone else appear doing those exercises, that makes them feel more capable,” she said. “Even if you can just exercise for five minutes and that’s all you can do … that’s five minutes more than you did before, and that’s good for your body.”
Then, people can work their way up to 10 minutes, adding a variety of exercises as they go. Fitness classes could help with that because they provide a supportive environment.
“Just having other people in that group, it’s good motivation to stick with it, right?” Chao said. “I think we always need a buddy to take on new change, right?”
The group aspect is something that Bower has emphasized during the nearly two decades she has spent teaching fall prevention tai chi classes, in addition to more advanced classes for students who wish to continue the practice, at the Thompson Center and the Bugbee Senior Center in White River Junction.
Bower’s class sizes vary, from a handful of students to a couple dozen. Students can drop in when they wish, versus registering for a weekslong program. Bower, a retired college professor, teaches for free and asks participants to make a $3 donation to the senior centers.
She doesn’t mince words about getting older and is upfront about the way her body has changed over the years, from a pinkie finger that no longer straightens to joints that don’t bend quite like they used to. But to all that, Bower says “So what?”
“I don’t give a rat’s butt. Here I am, I’m 84, I’m teaching tai chi, I’m gardening, I’m traveling,” she said in a phone interview. “I’m proud of that. I want … to be a nice (role) model. I don’t hold back about my age. I’m old. So what?”
Bower took her first tai chi class in her late 40s as way to “get out of her head” when she was pursuing a doctorate in English literature.
“I just took to it. It felt like: ‘Oh this is what I’m supposed to do’,” Bower said. “I didn’t take any notes. I just let my body do the work. … it did exactly what I wanted it to do …. it wiped away all the scholarly stuff in my head. … It grounded me. It centered me.”
She found herself returning to the practice again and again, eventually training to become an instructor in 2005. The following year, Bower retired and moved to Vermont where she started teaching classes in Woodstock. She continues to take classes from other instructors, including from former students who are now instructors themselves and on Zoom.
“Sometimes, when an instructor is … 30 or 40 I think ‘that works for you baby, but not for me.’ It’s just different when you get older,” Bower said. “It’s not that you can’t do things, you just make adjustments.”
Shattuck, too, is open about her body. Last winter she had surgery, which required her to rest for a few weeks. During that time, she felt her muscle mass decline and when she was able to return to chair yoga, she talked to other participants about rebuilding her strength.
“You know … we all need help at times,” Shattuck said.
Peer support
Bower’s bluntness about embracing aging — a philosophy that focuses on what bodies can do rather than what they can’t — endears her to students.
Heidi Tucker, a Woodstock resident, started taking beginner tai chi classes around a year ago after a “less than optimal bone density scan.” She started taking exercise classes to strengthen her bones and improve her balance, including tai chi, as well as Bone Builders, a program meant to help those at risk for or who already have osteoporosis.
Tucker, 67, said that she struggles with her balance and that tai chi has helped.
“It’s getting better,” she said. “It’s not quite a big change, but it’s coming.”
Throughout the hour-long class, Bower encouraged Tucker and two other students in the beginner class that morning to work with their bodies to complete the different movements.
“Imagine your hips are level, whether they are or not,” she joked with the group. She repeated certain movements when students struggled, adding encouragingly, “It’s OK, don’t worry. It’s called learning.”
Tucker likes it when Bower pauses during class to check on students and asks for suggestions for which forms they want to practice.
“Somehow, it’s easier to relate to her knowing she’s closer to my age,” said Tucker, who worked as a mail carrier before retiring a couple years ago.
Libbet Downs, of Reading, Vt., has taken tai chi classes with Bower for more than eight years after being introduced to the exercise by her friend Jane Philpin, also of Reading, who has taken classes for more than a decade. Both agreed that taking a class from someone in their age group makes a difference.
“Younger people don’t understand how our bodies change and work,” Downs, 74, said. ” ‘It’s not going to happen to me.’ That’s how it was when I was younger,” she added about her attitude toward aging.
But then, inevitably, aging comes and the best thing to do is just go with it, Bower said.
“Usually people will say something like ‘I want to do this but I have this bad shoulder or my knee bothers me or I have vertigo’,” Bower said in an interview. “I basically say, ‘Look everybody in the room has something. None of us are spring chickens. Life goes along and things happen.’”
Bower also has taken an active role in recruiting — and training — the next generation of older tai chi instructors. In 2015, she co-founded Tai Chi Vermont, a nonprofit dedicated to training tai chi instructors, many of whom go on to teach at area senior and community centers.
“Almost all our instructors are older,” Bower said. “They’ve come to tai chi for various reasons but a lot of them are retired or approaching retirement, and they want to do something meaningful and here we are ready to offer it.”
Sue Rubel and Jo Bregnard, both of Springfield, Vt., have become certified tai chi instructors through Tai Chi Vermont. The two women, who travel to Woodstock for Bower’s advanced class, regularly teach classes in Springfield. They’ve also since joined Tai Chi Vermont’s governing board.
“I think it’s a great second act activity,” Bregnard, 58, who also is a yoga instructor, said after class. She sees it as a way to help others in the community as they age.
Rubel, 76, is a retired educator. Over the years, she has dealt with inner ear and balance challenges.
“My class knows it,” Rubel said. “I modify” the forms, she added. She encourages her students to do the same.
“I think it’s important for students to see that in their teacher,” Bregnard added. “There’s loads of little ways to make the practice your own.”