When movement became a challenge

In my late thirties, pain in my knees and feet became so severe that I lost the ability to walk normally. I was raising two young children, running a dance company, directing performance groups, and teaching dance from a stool with a microphone. The stress and physical challenges were overwhelming.

I signed up for a workshop with Lynn, visiting from New York at Decidedly Jazz Danceworks in Calgary. Her exploration of movement patterns introduced me to a name I had never heard before: Touch for Health. Then she shared words that stopped me: “I have the gifts of my injuries.”

How could the pain that had taken so much from me be a gift? Yet Lynn’s perspective opened a new possibility. Perhaps I could learn to understand my body differently instead of seeing only what I could no longer do.

Finding Touch for Health

This was before Google. It took nearly a year of searching to find a teacher. I first discovered training in Malibu, California, but I lived in Alberta. Eventually I found Greg Webb in Calgary, where I could attend classes and receive private sessions. As I explored Touch for Health® Levels 1–4, I began rebuilding my relationship with movement and discovering how actively I could participate in my own well-being.

When I thought my family might move, I decided to pursue instructor training while it was available. But I was terrified. I doubted that I knew enough or deserved to be there. So I called Lynn in New York, reminded her of her Calgary workshop, and told her about my fears.

Her reply was simple: “Dear, everything you need to know is already inside you.”

Those words gave me the confidence to attend eight intensive days of Touch for Health® instructor training. That experience transformed my understanding of possibility, intention, and the body’s capacity for change. I have never looked back.

A shared passion for movement at every age

I am delighted to see Lynn continuing to teach and share her work at 83, including movement opportunities for older adults through dance. My own path now includes seated and standing Tai Chi, where we explore balance, coordination, flexibility, confidence, and the joy of moving well. Different movement languages can share the same belief: our age or challenges need not define our possibilities.

Three years of Movement and Music

Over the past three years, I have created Movement and Music programs that bring together my lifelong passion for dance, music, and the arts through the power and artistry of Tai Chi movements. Each exploration invites participants to discover new relationships between movement, intention, rhythm, breath, and personal awareness.

Touch for Health® knowledge and techniques remain at the core of these movement explorations. The framework that Lynn helped me discover continues to guide how I invite people to observe their own movement, notice change, and explore possibilities without being limited by a single prescribed outcome.

These programs, including recordings and resources for exploring at your own pace, can be found in the Greenwell Center shop. They are a celebration of everything I love about dance, music, Tai Chi, and BioEnergetic Wellness.

From one dance workshop to a university program

Perhaps the most extraordinary ripple effect is the new BioEnergetic Wellness program being developed at Akamai University International, within the College of Integrative Health. As Department Chair of BioEnergetic Wellness, I am helping shape an educational pathway that recognizes whole-person development, movement literacy, reflective learning, and the potential within each student.

I can trace the courage to take on this new challenge back to Lynn’s encouragement. Her belief that the knowledge and potential we need can be discovered within ourselves gave me confidence first to become a Touch for Health® instructor, and now to help create opportunities for a new generation of learners and facilitators.

Congratulations, Lynn Simonson, on your 2026 Dance Teacher Award! Thank you for showing me the gifts within my injuries and helping me trust the possibilities within myself. Your influence continues to move through every class, program, and educational vision I create.

Read Lynn’s Dance Teacher award profile and explore the Movement and Music offerings in our shop.

The post The Gifts of Our Injuries: Celebrating Lynn Simonson and a Lifetime of Movement first appeared on Greenwell Center for Holistic Health.

At the Greenwell Center for Holistic Health, our fall programs invite you to think differently about healthy habits. Rather than adding another list of things you should do, we are creating opportunities to notice how movement, energy, attention, creativity and everyday choices can become part of a living wellness practice.

Two Ways to Build a Weekly Wellness Habit

This fall, two 12-week experiential programs offer complementary ways to explore what it means to create greater vitality, flow and awareness: Tai Chi Skill Building and BioEnergetic Habits: a Qi YINtegration program.

Tai Chi Skill Building: Exploring the Movement Behind the Movement

What happens when we move beyond remembering the Tai Chi sequence and begin to understand what each movement is asking the body to do?

Expanding from our Movement and Music and Symphony of Radiance programs, Tai Chi Skill Building explores the metaphors within the Tai Chi set and what those movements can mean for wellness. We will slow movements down, investigate structural alignment, weight transfer, spiraling actions and whole-body integration, and then bring those discoveries back into the flowing set.

We will also explore how integrated whole-body movement creates gentle compression, expansion and rotation through the torso, bringing awareness to the internal movement and massaging of the organs. The goal is not simply to perform Tai Chi better, but to develop greater movement literacy and internal awareness.

The experience is enriched by intuitive musicians Brenda Bowen Cox and Donna Hutchison and intuitive painter Marian Egan. Music, rhythm, co lour and visual expression become part of the exploration, helping us hear, see and feel familiar movements in new ways.

12-week class dates: September 8, 15, 22 and 29; October 6 and 27; November 3, 10, 17 and 24; December 1 and 8.

BioEnergetic Habits: A Qi YINtegration Exploration

Our second fall exploration begins with a simple question: What are we doing every day that energizes us, creates flow, contributes to stagnation or depletes us?

BioEnergetic Habits takes Qi YINtegration into the landscape of everyday living. Across 12 weeks, we will become curious about the energetic patterns hidden within the way we breathe, move, eat, rest, think, focus, interact and respond to our surroundings.

We will explore posture and structural organization, breath and rhythm, nourishment and hydration, movement, emotional patterns, attention and mental load, relationships and environments, Five Element habits, creativity, joy, rest and renewal. Movement, Figure 8 patterns, biofield awareness, sound, co lour, nature, art, tea and intention become practical ways to experiment with how small changes can influence the experience of the day.

This is not about la-belling habits as good or bad. It is about developing the ability to notice. What gives you energy? What uses it? Where does your energy seem to move easily? Where might you be repeatedly creating conditions for depletion or stagnation? Most importantly, what small shift could help you renew?

Healthy Habits Do Not Have to Mean Doing More

One of the most valuable things we can do for ourselves this fall may be to reserve one hour each week for curiosity, movement and discovery. A weekly class creates an anchor in the calendar—a place to return to the body, notice what has changed, explore something new and carry one small discovery back into daily life.

Over time, those small experiences can begin to layer together. Better awareness of posture may change the way we sit at a desk. A movement explored in Tai Chi may appear while we are gardening or walking. A moment of intentional breathing may interrupt a demanding afternoon. Music may shift our mood. A Figure 8 may help us rediscover flow. Rest may become something we intentionally create rather than something we wait for when we are exhausted.

This is the invitation for fall: do not simply organize your schedule—organize your schedule to support the person you want to become.

Whether you choose to deepen your Tai Chi through movement, metaphor, music and art, or explore the energetic ecology of your everyday habits through Qi YINtegration, give yourself a consistent place for well-being this season.

Let this be the fall when wellness becomes part of how you live—not simply another thing you hope to find time for.

The post Organize Your Fall for Wellness: Two 12-Week Explorations for Healthy Habits first appeared on Greenwell Center for Holistic Health.