Coincidence? I Think Not

My teacher, Marie Dotts, always tells me that “the Chi has found you and you didn’t have a choice.” I think yes, I fit into our community pretty well and have found T’ai Chi Chih to be helpful to my physical and emotional health. Now I find myself saying the same thing to my new friend Trudi.

Last November, I was visiting a neighborhood Senior Living Community with my parents. On our visit we interacted with a couple that lived there, Trudi and Art. A few months after my parents moved in, my dad told me that Trudi did “T’ai Chi.” I told him that I doubted that she did T’ai Chi Chih and asked him to find out what form she practiced. A week later he said, “Trudi does T’ai Chi Chih.” My dad doesn’t always pronounce things correctly so I still had my doubts because Marie was the only teacher in Northern Colorado for a few years. Another week passed, and while I was having lunch with my parents, we ran into Trudi and Art. I asked Trudi what style of T’ai Chi she practiced. She said, “The same as you: T’ai Chi Chih.” She said she learned TCC by following Carmen Brocklehurst’s YouTube video. She had read the AARP article about TCC that was published in 2011 and tried to find a teacher, but at that time there weren’t any TCC teachers in Fort Collins, Colorado.

The next week we had a community practice in a city park so I invited Trudi to come with me. Sure enough, she knew all the moves and fit right in. Then I asked her to join me and some new teachers for a weekly practice at my house. On the first week, Trudi and Doriane Tippet realized that they knew each other from church. Six months after not coincidently finding Trudi (who had been practicing TCC for five years alone with her iPad), she has become a regular participant in our practices. She now comes to the weekly practice at my house, attends the new class that Doriane Tippet and Lisa Stroyan teach at their church, and just joined a Seijaku class that Marie started.

Yesterday, while having dinner with my parents, I ran into Trudi in the dining room. I asked if she could believe that she had gone from being the only person in Fort Collins doing TCC to attending three highly attended classes each week. The lovely 84-year-old woman smiled and shook her head. The Chi brought her into our community and it was no accident.