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Wearing black spandex leggings and a form-fitting, long-sleeved black shirt with her jet-black hair pulled into a loose bun, tai chi master Bahieh Wilkinson, 60, moves silently, deliberately and gracefully. Like a kung-fu ballerina in slow motion.
The only sound is the music playing through two large speakers, filling the Senior Friendship Center with piano melodies and occasional loon calls and cricket chirping.
A group of 27 shoeless seniors mimic Wilkinson for 20 minutes in a silent game of Simon Says.
A spin. A plié. A kick.
A few minutes later, Wilkinson and the group step together and face forward, dropping their arms to their sides, standing motionless for a moment. Then Wilkinson nods, the group disassembles and begins chatting.
Wilkinson has been teaching the Chinese “soft” martial art, pronounced tie-chee, at the center in Winona since 1986.
It’s taken about 20 years for it to catch on. The growth has been slow and steady, “like tai chi itself,” Wilkinson said, her accent revealing her Middle Eastern heritage.
Mike Meeker, 65, said he tends to push himself too hard in other sports, such as skiing.
“It’s hard to over-do tai chi,” he said.
Tai chi’s movements might be gentle, but they are potent.
“We are not just dancing and prancing around,” Wilkinson said.
Tai chi yields health benefits similar to traditional exercises — improved bone density, cardiovascular fitness and balance — but without the wear and tear on joints and ligaments. It also relaxes the nervous system and, Wilkinson said, helps keep the mind sharp.
Studies have shown positive effects on balance and strength and a reduction in falling.
Researchers in San Francisco, funded by the National Institutes of Health, studied seniors who participated in hour-long tai chi classes three times per week for 12 weeks. The results showed improved balance, muscular strength, endurance and flexibility.
“If playing chess is mental gymnastics, tai chi is whole-self gymnastics,” Wilkinson said.
After a 15-minute break, the class reassembles. This time, Wilkinson picks up the pace, flowing through the sequence five times faster.
And this time Wilkinson speaks instructions in a calm, even voice.
“Carry tiger to mountain.” “Play guitar.” “Snake creeps down.” “Golden pheasant stands on one leg.”
Most of the class struggles to keep up. They turn the wrong direction, reach with the wrong arm and begin laughing at themselves.
As they giggle and flail, Wilkinson instructs them, calm as ever, “Just keep moving … and … shifting … and … relaxing.”
The sequence is over in 3 minutes. Everyone applauds.
Wilkinson said it is gratifying teaching seniors because “they regain what they thought they’d never get back, what they thought was gone forever.”
Joyce Boyle, 74, began tai chi after undergoing heart bypass surgery in 2000.
“It’s a wonderful form of exercise,” Boyle said. “It keeps you limber and moving easier, more flexible and in control, more confident ... it’s keeping me more alive.”
Tai chi’s Indian cousin, yoga, also holds appeal for aging populations or those on the mend.
While tai chi is “meditation in motion,” yoga emphasizes holding specific postures, sometimes for minutes, with meticulous attention to alignment. Often, the same posture is repeated, each time going deeper into the pose, gradually increasing a stretch.
On Monday nights, Francie Ricks teaches Yoga Over 50 at the Winona Yoga Center.
Ricks, 59, has studied yoga with gurus in India and has been teaching yoga since 1979. She started the Over 50 class out of demand. Now, it’s the center’s most popular class.
The stretch and strength combination, which uses the body’s full range of motion, can slow the aging process by re-creating lost flexibility and decreasing pain, Ricks said.
Iyengar yoga, the type of yoga Ricks teaches, is particularly well-suited for older people because of its adaptive methods and use of props.
Inside Ricks’ yoga center, multi-colored, woven blankets line the shelves along with firm, oblong “bolster” pillows, assorted wooden and green foam blocks, and thin, purple foam “sticky” mats. Ropes hang from the shelving and belt-like straps fill two wicker baskets. A dozen or so green metal folding chairs are stacked neatly in a corner near the center’s entrance.
Though the class is taught in a group setting, Ricks spends the hour moving among the yogis, keeping a vigilant eye on individual alignment, pulling props from her arsenal when needed, creating custom pose variations.
Her students begin their class lying face-up on the purple mats, their legs extended up the wall in the aptly named “legs up the wall pose.”
In the far corner of the center, Mary Kohner, 83, stands patiently, waiting for Ricks to fetch her a mat.
“I’m not always enthused about going to class,” Kohner admitted. “But I always feel better when I walk out than when I walked in.”
Ricks has to physically put Kohner in some of the poses now, and often uses props to support Kohner’s body.
But yoga helps Kohner perform basic functions.
“The yoga keeps me much more flexible so I can lift my feet and arms and legs more easily and get up from sitting on the floor and get in and out of the car,” Kohner said.
Ricks taught Stan Pollock for 18 years. Now, Pollock, 64, practices at his home.
“Francie’s always in my head. ‘Pull those knees up,’” Pollock said.
Pollock, an avid cyclist, appreciates that yoga has allowed him to continue cycling — he biked nearly 2,000 miles last year.
Yoga has helped Pollock through difficult times as well, as he suffered through tongue cancer, radiation treatments and surgery.
“I don’t know if you ‘beat’ cancer — you beat it back. I’ve it beat back. Yoga’s given me the internal strength,” he said.
Pollock said it is hard to imagine what life would be like if he didn’t practice yoga.
“Without yoga, I would be a stiff, cranky, old man; now I’m just a flexible, cranky, old man,” he said.
Tai chi for seniors with Bahieh Wilkinson
Where: Winona Senior Friendship Center, corner of Fifth and Main streets
When: 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Tuesday through Friday
Cost: $3 per class for Senior Center members, $3.50 for non-members
Call: (507) 454-5212
Yoga Over 50 with Francie Ricks
Where: Winona Yoga Center, 686 W. Fifth St.
When: 4 to 5:15 p.m. Mondays
Cost: $60 per eight-week session
Call: (507) 453-0233
