About six months ago I started to take a tai chi class. I probably did it for less than noble reasons. One was so when my doctors asked if I exercised regularly, I could say, “Yes, at least twice a week.” I didn’t have to go into the fact that it was no-impact, non-cardio exercise.

In fact, it’s slow-motion exercise. So slow some people call it “meditation in motion.”

I thought this was something I could handle.

It starts off easy enough. Take a deep breath. Take another deep breath and move your left foot. While you’re taking a third deep breath, you bring your arms up, shift your weight to the left leg and turn your right foot. I figured I could handle that.

But then things got complicated. Both hands and both feet have to move in very prescribed manners. And you start doing things with strange names, such as White Crane Spreads Its Wings, Grasping the Sparrows Tail (both left and right), and the one we were working on last week: Snake Creeps Down, Golden Rooster Stands on Right Leg.

I don’t make a very good golden rooster; I kept falling off my right leg. Much like I fell off my left leg.

To make matters worse, the entire front wall of the classroom is a big mirror. I’ve finally learned not to look at it very much. 

Then there’s the fact that when Jude, our instructor, does the form, it’s done with the grace of a dancer. When most of us do it, it looks like we’re chopping wood with a dull ax. Jude keeps reminding us that he’s studied this, along with a number of other Eastern Disciplines for over 25 years, the inference being that in 25 years we might also have the grace of dancers. Looking around at the seniors in the class, I wondered how much comfort that was.

However, as poorly as I might be parting the wild horse’s mane or waving my hands like clouds, tai chi does seem to have some salutary effects for me. For instance, after an hour of tai chi my blood pressure, which my doctors seem to worry about, has dropped to low normal or below. My balance is improving with practice, and some of the scores that my doctors keep are improving, one of them for the first time in four years. Plus, it generally—and temporarily—improves my outlook.

But the thing that struck me the hardest is something that came to me in practice one day. It might even rise to the level of a life lesson. First, a little background.

From our very first year as we learn to walk, it’s a matter of falling forward and preventing our fall, step after step. Toddlers and very old people sometimes miss that second part. But it’s ingrained into us: go through life falling and preventing our fall.

Sometimes we translate that into other parts of our life. We land somewhere and immediately try to move on to something else, falling and preventing our fall. I spent a lot of years doing just that. I would learn to do something, then I’d want to do something else. It wasn’t a particularly bad way to live. In fact, it was pretty useful in my work; I knew a little bit about a lot of things. But I imagine that it added stress not only to my life but to those around me, those who cared for me and depended on me.

I would imagine that at times I looked like Harold Lloyd hanging from the hands of that giant clock. Would he fall? Or would he not? Most of the time I didn’t, but sometimes I did.

Which brings me back to tai chi. I discovered that a substantial part of my gracelessness in the tai chi forms was caused by my trying to transfer my traditional walking to a very slow, very precise, very thoughtful set of movements. To do the forms better, I had to establish the weight on the weight-bearing leg, leaving the other one to move as it was supposed to. If the supporting leg wasn’t working right, the move would not be graceful. So I started practicing that, and while I did, it occurred that life could be like that too, where you made certain that your foundation was set before you moved to the next thing.

I’ve always been fascinated with the next thing. Now, I’m concentrating on doing this thing correctly, and when that’s done, the next thing will still be there.

There’s a lot of what Jude says as he’s teaching us that I still have trouble getting my western mind around. It’s not that I disagree, it’s just that it’s not what I’ve lived with all these years. The flow of chi in the twelve meridians has been around for about 2,000 years, but for me, it’s still brand new. Sometimes my half-prayer hand ends up in the wrong place. I still have trouble visualizing the ball of energy that keeps shifting around as we go through the forms. And my Yin may not be harmonious with my Yang. But I’ll keep working on that.

But even if I don’t get it all, I think that moving from falling and preventing falling to balancing and carefully stepping is worth the time I spend.

And I still get to tell my doctors that I exercise regularly.