Letters from Students (Winter 1985-86)

Received by Lucy Hocking

This is my unsolicited letter of testimonial as to my personal experience with your T’ai Chi Chih classes. The first class, and several classes beyond the first one, I arrived late but found I was able to join in and follow the lovely, graceful movements. By the end of the class my mood had lightened and elevated from being grouchy and tired and resistant as I was at the beginning of the class to feeling really happy, relaxed and pleasant.

The next day, and frequently since then, I found myself uncharacteristically lighthearted and happy at work. I have twenty-some clerks assisting me in managing over one million county and superior court records and assisting litigants and attorneys and other employees of the Superior Court and City and County of San Francisco in working with these records. It’s a big job with lots of potential for stress, antagonism and anxiety – and this potential is often realized generously.

In order to manage all this, it often seems necessary for me to clam up, tense up, close down. Unfortunately, it’s not been easy to remember not to do so …until I discovered your wonderful classes in T’ai Chi Chih. Practicing T’ai Chi Chih seems to just naturally allow me to loosen up and let go and be myself again. I just feel so nice and clear-headed and okay with myself. Of course it’s great to find that things that ordinarily drive me up the wall don’t faze me when I’m keeping up with my T’ai Chi Chih. Thanks so much, Lucy. I just wish that you could set up a permanent class in the neighborhood so I could have a guaranteed class for the rest of my career. And my 78-year old mother shares my feelings. She and I find T’ai Chi Chih helps our arthritic joints and loosens them.

Sincerely,

– Judy E. Freeman
San Francisco, CA
(Student of Lucy Hocking)