Local Tai Chi-Gong Practitioner Helps South Suburban Seniors Reclaim Their Balance

Tai Chi-Gong Practitioner Brain Thompson. Photo courtesy Tony V. Martin, The Times
Tai Chi-Gong Practitioner Brain Thompson. Photo courtesy Tony V. Martin, The Times

Local Tai Chi-Gong Practitioner Helps South Suburban Seniors Reclaim Their Balance

By: Gabrielle Pickens

For twenty years, Brian Thompson has stood in senior centers and library meeting rooms across the South Suburbs — Park Forest, Lansing, Richton Park, Calumet City — leading residents through slow, deliberate movement many had never tried before. Tai Chi-Gong. And before every session, Brian begins each class the same way, asking participants a simple but profound question: “How do you want to feel?”

That question carries more weight than it sounds like it should, Thompson says. Underneath it is a freedom a lot of people in the Black community don’t realize they have — the freedom to choose how you feel instead of allowing the body to choose for you.

"Losing your balance isn't something you have to accept," Thompson says.    "It's a skill that can be retrained, at almost any age, with the right kind of practice."

One of the men Thompson has worked with, a 93-year-old participant at one of his community sessions, had used a cane for years. Eighteen months into practicing with Thompson's program, he stopped using it entirely. Not because his body got younger, Thompson explains, but because his nervous system relearned how to communicate with it.

"That's not a miracle," he says. "That's what consistent, low-impact movement does when we give it the chance."

Thompson, founder of BNEW4LIFE LLC in Dolton, has spent two decades bringing his practice into the rooms where South Suburban elders already gather — senior centers, libraries, memory cafés — including Rich Township Senior Center, the Memory Café at Matteson Public Library, and libraries across Lansing, Park Forest, Calumet City, Richton Park, and Chicago Ridge.

"Too often, mobility support and preventive wellness aren't things anyone tells us are available, let alone free, or down the street at the library," Thompson says. "Access isn't just about whether a program exists. It's about whether anyone thought to bring it to your neighborhood."

His advice for residents caring for an aging parent, or noticing changes in their own balance: it's not too late, and it's not just genetics. Fifteen minutes of slow, intentional movement a day, he says, does more for long-term independence than most people have been told.

"We deserve to age on our own terms, standing on our own feet, in our own homes, for as long as possible," Thompson says. "That's not a small thing. That's generational wealth too."

Brian Thompson is the founder of BNEW4LIFE LLC, a Chicago-based Tai Chi-Gong and movement therapy practice serving senior centers, libraries, and community organizations across the South Suburbs. Learn more at bnew4life.netlify.app.

 


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