Zooming through Time & Space

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, our T’ai Chi Chih class in Pittsburg, California, was a community of isolated senior citizens. For my students, Carmen Brocklehurst was their TCC grandmother seen only on a YouTube video. Albuquerque was miles away; the journey was costly in terms of time and money. They stayed home while my partner, Jeannette Stotts, and I attended Carmen’s classes to deepen our TCC practice and to bring the learning home to them.

In the second month of the pandemic, when it looked like we would shelter in place indefinitely, we stopped waiting and start living. We consciously looked for blessings that the pandemic could bring. We discovered Zoom and the rest, as they say, is history.

The barriers of distance, time, space and money have all but disappeared today. Our community has grown as we have become connected to each other and the outside world.

No longer constrained by distance, my students and I practice TCC six times a week and I teach four mornings a week. We attend classes with Carmen and with Lisa Stroyan of Colorado. Meeting Carmen and other teachers inspired two of my students to attend a Zoom Intensive, just as intense as the one Jeannette and I attended in person two years ago. Those same two students have also begun practicing with Lorraine Lepine of Kansas, whom they met during the Intensive.

In the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic that threatens to shut down our world, we find new meaning in “social distancing” as we use Zoom to connect across time and space.