I am a working mom with three school-age kids. Like many people, my life can sometimes feel like an endless timeline of calendars, schedules, projects, and responsibilities.
Over the years, I have tried many ways to make life more manageable—time-management tools, productivity techniques, ideas about work-life balance, even the FIRE movement. Some of them helped. But despite all my efforts to become more efficient, I often still felt lost, overwhelmed, and burned out.
Something began to change when I started to understand Tai Chi—not just as a sequence of movements to follow, but as a way of experiencing movement.
One of the fundamental ideas in Tai Chi is weight shifting.
Imagine standing with your weight completely on your right leg. To move forward, you don’t simply jump from one position to another. You first reach the left foot out, establish a new place to stand, and then gradually shift your weight from the right leg to the left until the transition is complete. Only then are you ready to move the right leg forward again.
The movement is continuous, but it is not rushed.
This simple physical experience made me think about how we move through life.
When we have to move from one project, responsibility, or stage of life to another, do we simply jump from one to the next?
Perhaps not.
We can first make sure our foundation is solid—recognizing the strengths and resources we already have. Then we can reach toward something new, just slightly beyond our current comfort zone. We test the ground. If it feels right, we gradually shift our weight.
And when the transition is complete, we are ready to take the next step.
I began to see this principle in many parts of my own life.
Tai Chi didn’t suddenly make my life easier. I still have busy days. I still have uncertainty, difficult decisions, and periods when I feel tired or overwhelmed. There are also many things I cannot control.
But my relationship with those things has changed.
I have become more aware of where I am standing before I rush toward the next thing. I have learned to pause, establish my foundation, and allow transitions to happen gradually rather than constantly pushing myself to move faster.
There is a sense of steadiness that I didn’t fully appreciate before.
And perhaps this is one of the things I find most meaningful about Tai Chi: something that begins as a physical practice can gradually change the way we pay attention to our lives.
At some point, I realized that I wanted to share this experience with other people who, like me, are living busy lives in a modern world and are searching for a little more balance, awareness, and peace.
That is one of the reasons I teach Tai Chi.
Not because I have figured out how to live a perfectly balanced life.
Quite the opposite.
I teach Tai Chi because I am still learning how to move through life—and Tai Chi has given me a different way to learn.
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