Exercise to promote mobility, strength, and flexibility for seniors

The Strictly Seated Chair Tai Chi for active seniors by Martin Mayes; 108 pp.

The Strictly Seated CHAIR TAI CHI For Active Seniors: Gentle Seated Flows to Strengthen Your Core, Improve Coordination, and Stay Active Without Stressing Your Joints by Martin Mayes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of the biggest challenges of aging is the loss of physical strength, limitations in mobility, and impaired balance. These challenges make several seniors scared of falling or getting injured and become immobile. Tai Chi is an ancient oriental exercise/ physical practice that helps strengthen core, improve coordination and balance without placing too much on the body. With more research into this practice in modern times there have been adaptations of the same.

Chair tai chi is the one adaptation that is becoming increasingly popular among seniors who are using this routine to regain strength, flexibility, and balance. Martin Mayes, a tai chi practitioner presents The Strictly Seated Chari Tai Chi for active seniors, a 108-page book that provides a great guide to this practice. “Chair Tai Chi is a practice that can transform the way you experience movement and vitality, allowing you to enhance your strength, balance, and confidence from the comfort of your favorite chair,” writes Mayes in the introduction. He further explains that with each movement practitioners can harness the power of tai chi to pump new life force into the body and mind. The goal of this book according to the author is to improve movement, confidence, breathing technique/ synchrony, and ultimately remain active even in senior years.

Neatly organized into nine information and illustration rich chapters, the book presents several concepts that challenge modern thinking about aging and accompanying physical limitations thereof. The approach in this book is not about exercise, rather it is about attaining harmony between body, mind, soul and nature, which will in turn promote wellness, vitality, and strength.

My favorite chapter is titled “the 28-day independence program” in which Mayes provides a blueprint to a slow but steady transformation. “When we decide to get healthier, it is tempting to try and do everything at once. We push too hard on the first day, get frustrated with the coordination, and quit by the third. This 28-day program is designed specifically to prevent that cycle,” explains Mayes emphasizing on following the program and not to hurry the process. In this chapter the author explains how by spending five to ten minutes daily on breathing, and exercise one can attain significant changes. The 28-day program is divided four parts – one for each week and acts as a good guide for those who like structure.

Summing up I think it is important for seniors to remain active during their later years of life and one way to improving physical conditioning, balance, and mobility is by practicing exercises like the program mentioned in this book. This guide is specially helpful to those who can’t run, walk, for long periods of time, the exercises described in this book are mainly done sitting in a comfortable chair and will work with most people.

View all my reviews