Report from Golden Door

The following letter is by Deborah Szekely, owner of The Golden Door in Escondido, CA and Rancho LaPuerta in Tecate, Mexico. The letter accompanies and introduces a videotape course in T’ai Chi as taught by Nikki Winston at the Golden Door. Ms. Szekely says that T’ai Chi quickly became the most popular class at the resort. Now Ms. Szekely offers T’ai Chi Chih as well–Mara Carrico teaches T’ai Chi Chih at Rancho La Puerta.

I became intensely aware of T’ai Chi on my trip to China in 1978. Everything was so new and so exciting. On my first morning, I awoke at 5:30 a.m. and felt secure and safe enough to go out alone, walking about in the half-light of the oncoming day.

Kitty-corner to my hotel was the regional post office with a huge parking lot. To my astonishment I discovered there thousands and thousands of people beginning the day with T’ai Chi, the only sound was the rustle of their garments. Continuing my walk I soon came upon a park. Two old ladies sat at the entrance collecting a few coins. Using sign language I managed to convey to them that I had no money with me. They in turn pointed to the entrance. By this time it was dawn. The air was pink with the new sun, and every tree, bush and shrub has a human shadow – more T’ai Chi.

It seems to me that T’ai Chi enables the billion-plus people of the Orient to survive in peace and orderliness. Five thousand people were practicing that morning in a square that would comfortably hold one thousand. Each person was in a world of his own. The daily T’ai Chi routine allows people to command their own space, to maintain balance and peace of mind.

Now psychiatrists tell us that the combination of outdoor activity and the early morning light does wondrous things for one’s internal biological clock. The orient intuited this long ago.

I have come to consider T’ai Chi the one indispensable antidote to the sedentary life. Long hours behind a desk, no matter how elegant the office or successful the job, make one feel compressed, closed in, uptight, stressed, cramped–add your own adjectives to the list.

If you’re like me, it’s home from the office much too late, much too weary for exercise and the subsequent shedding of tension…and your boxed-in feeling intensifies.

T’ai Chi is like an explosion. The walls tumble down. You become the flow and the oneness of nature. You are freed emotionally as well as physically.

I know of no substitute. There’s nothing you can do in fifteen to twenty minutes that can so revitalize and reconnect you to nature.