Tai Chi Makes A House Call

I was disappointed to learn the story of James Reston's appendectomy and acupuncture in China in 1971 was apocryphal, however much it is recited by devotees of Eastern medicine. Some describe it as the "tipping point" for traditional Chinese medicine in the West. After that report, people began to sit up and take notice. It turns out the article was not a description of his own anesthetization by acupuncture for his emergency appendectomy while visiting China with President Richard Nixon. He did have the appendectomy, but without the aid of acupuncture. With that said, the good news is that the benefits of another aspect of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) have been firmly established. Tai Chi has been proven to benefit people with Parkinson's and other chronic diseases. The New England Journal of Medicine has published a clinical study that clearly establishes Tai Chi has a beneficial effect on PD patients that exceeds those of both weight resistance and stretching exercises. As a practitioner of both in the interest of maintaining my independence, I pursued it further.

Tai Chi is known (albeit up to now, unscientifically) to have benefits to its practitioners, in stress reduction for example. I have been doing a bit of research, and am learning more with every hour I spend. I am spending my time as I usually do—reading about it, even watching a video clip or two. I'm doing this instead of living it, of course. I often read about life as a substitute for actually living it. But, there are some things you have no choice about. One of those is chronic disease. I'm living that one, just now (see Blog Archive on February 10, 2012, The Full Catastrophe).

Into the midst of my usual approach of developing knowledge without making the commitment of actually doing anything about it, strode a friend and a friend of a friend and a friend of that friend (Whew! That was clear, wasn't it?). Well, they did it; I am not making this up. At dinner my friend was listening to her friend describe the findings reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, and she mentioned my interest in the means to do battle with the effects of Parkinson's. They agreed they should put me in touch with a newly-trained Tai Chi Exercise Leader who had some interest in working with people with Parkinson's. So, e-mails were exchanged and we made contact. She, because she had trained for some hours to become an exercise leader and wanted to make use of it, and me because it was time to put up or shut up, so to speak.

Consequently, S__ and I agreed to meet at my home to talk about it—note, we could have "talked about it" over the phone, I knew it would involve some element of practice. It turns out I can be talked into all sorts of things by the right people. I needed a nudge to move from watching and reading to doing and S___ needed a "first victim" to teach. So here I am, my third session is now scheduled, and I am learning Tai Chi. It seems Tai Chi has come and got me—making a house call.

Reading and Writing

It's a remarkable world we live in (Oh God, I sound like my father). Oh well, I suppose some of my voice is really his. My brother said the other day that when he hears my voice on his voice mail that I sound like him, that is, the way he sounds to himself. I have learned that writing is a kind of voice too.

But back to this remarkable world—yesterday, a dear friend recommended a book to me, really an author. When I couldn't sleep tonight, I sampled and then downloaded the e-book, and the author, Marilynne Robinson, leaves me speechless (imagine that).

Now, I am sure we have all had books recommended to us in conversation, I know I have many times before. More often than not, I can never remember them when I am in a bookstore. It's almost as if a curtain is drawn across the part of my brain where such recommendations are stored. I hope the books I missed were not as remarkable as this one.

From the first line, the voice comes tumbling out. I only wish I could write like that—not just to have the words come tumbling out—but for the words to have the capacity to catch you off-guard, to startle you into full attention with their speed and something else, something I can't yet get my head around. I will probably have to read the rest in a day or two just to figure out where we (she and I, the reader) are going with this. The book is entitled Gilead, and won the Pulitzer in 2005.

But this is not about the book; it is about what has happened to that process of recommending a book to someone. Having started on this little adventure, I am starting to rethink the process of recommending a book for someone to read. When you do, the person you are recommending it to can now connect almost immediately. It can, for a dedicated reader, become a new language. With the ease the e-readers provide, a whole heart and mind full of ideas, feelings and thoughts can be sent along by adding the book to your message. Sending your friend a recommendation might be more powerful than you think.

In the days of Cultural Literacy, when we all had a common vocabulary of ideas drawn from our common cultural reading list, people probably used characters and events from those stories to paint on their conversational canvas. If you have a lot of time, pick up the book, Cultural Literacy, its author, E.D. Hirsch, provides a much better explanation. But that's not a recommendation now, just acknowledging the source. I am learning to be more careful about my recommendations.