Teacher Letter: Loretta Shiver

I have just finished teaching my first 8-week class for children. It was a wonderful experience and I plan to teach two more classes in January. I had five students ranging in age from 7 to 10. We ran two 30 minute sessions weekly for 8 eight weeks. I considered extending it to 9 or even 10 weeks, but found it was not needed. Two of the children had some motor problems, one quite severe. While they were not able to really master the movements, they were able to perform all the movements to some degree and could remember them all by the end of the 8 weeks. The mother of one of these children told me that her daughter’s Occupational Therapist had remarked on her improvement. I felt so happy and so successful and it helped me to remember that one need not do T’ai Chi Chih beautifully or perfectly or precisely. One needs only to do T’ai Chi Chih to receive the benefit.

Children of today live with so much stress and face such an uncertain future. Making T’ai Chi Chih a part of their education will greatly improve the probability of happy lives and a sane future.

I found remarkable joy in teaching T’ai Chi Chih to these children. They have such clear eyes and clean faces and they taught me so many details and gave me so many insights into other movements. I’m grateful all over again for the opportunity to share the Chi!

– Loretta Shiver
Albuquerque, NM