Nicole’s Practice: Eleven Years With ALS

By the time I went to live with Nicole that year, it had been a few years since she had received her ALS diagnosis. She had gracefully adapted to her changing body. She had started taking T’ai Chi Chih classes at the Y. I went too. She practiced daily preferably outdoors. With great determination she would get up and do a standing practice. With the grounding, balancing effects of TCC, she began to rely less and less on her wheelchair. She moved for about three years without it.

Inevitably the disease progressed. The last three years of her life she was confined to a deluxe motorized wheelchair. Eventually only her right index finger responded to commands from her brain. She directed four plays a year, two in a minimum-security prison. She did not invoke pity. She’d wheel into a room and beam. She embodied joy.

Nicole continued her daily practice. She would recline in that chair, feet raised. She’d close her eyes and do the practice in her etheric body; she imagined herself going through the movements. Her face would take on a beatific smile and her feet would go from blue to pink. Energy follows thought. Form follows energy.

Eleven years after doctors gave her one year to live, she passed peacefully. She held on until we were all there: three best friends and all three children She had raised them to be strong and independent.

TCC supported Nicole’s healing, more strongly connecting her to spirit. Sometimes the ultimate healing is transition. Nicole was an inspiration to a wide circle of people. Everyone who met her shined a little brighter for having known her.