By Rebecca Wiessmann
Foresight TV runs on momentum. Conversations move fast, ideas stack up, and senior living leaders show up with one recurring problem — the work keeps accelerating while the humans inside it do not.
In this episode, Denise Boudreau fills in for Steve as host and invites viewers into a very different kind of leadership conversation. Her guest is Dr. Gary Irwin-Kenyon — a gerontologist, author of “Pathways to Stillness,” and the creator of Seated Tai Chi — and his central argument is simple, borderline subversive: slowing down may be the most powerful move senior living leaders can make.
Not as a luxury. Not as a “self-care add-on.” As strategy.
Narrative Care Starts With A Different Question
When Denise asks how he introduces himself, Dr. Gary starts where gerontology often gets stuck: people hear “study of aging” and immediately ask for the fix. The secret. The hack.
His work turns the question sideways.
Instead of treating aging primarily as a matter of physical decline, he describes a subfield he helped pioneer: narrative gerontology, which views life as a story — and care as the practice of understanding what’s meaningful within that story.
In a care context, that shift matters. Narrative care, as he describes it, is less about a professional “interpreting” someone and more about honoring that it’s their world, not the caregiver’s. The goal is not clinical insight. It’s connection.
He shares a phrase from a colleague that lands like a thesis statement: narrative care is “core care.” When someone feels truly listened to and understood, they may tolerate a lot of the other inconveniences that inevitably come with a care setting.
The Quiet Center Behind The Disease
The conversation turns toward dementia, and Dr. Gary pushes back on an old framing — that a person with dementia is primarily a story of decline.
A narrative perspective argues something else is still present: a “quiet center.” A stillness that remains accessible, even when cognitive abilities change.
Stillness, in this framing, isn’t passive. It’s a way of reaching what is still intact.
And that’s where Seated Tai Chi enters the picture.
What Tai Chi Really Is
Denise pauses the conversation to define Tai Chi for viewers who haven’t encountered it. Dr. Gary describes it as a slow, soft “moving meditation,” developed in China, designed to calm what he calls the “monkey mind” — or, as Denise offers, the hamster wheel.
The test for whether it’s working is refreshingly untechnical: if people feel more relaxed when they leave than when they arrived, it’s working. Don’t worry about the rest yet.
It can be a martial art, he notes, but for most modern practice it’s a healing art — adaptable for nearly anyone, especially as people age. In his programs, the movements are designed for residents who are seated.
A Surprise In The Dementia Village
One of the most striking moments comes when Dr. Gary describes teaching Tai Chi in a dementia neighborhood. Staff weren’t expecting much. He wasn’t either.
Then something happened: people who typically wander and rarely sit still became quiet during the class. A staff member told him, flat out, “These people are not quiet.” Yet for the duration of the session, they were.
Dr. Gary describes it as a game-changer — evidence that stillness-based practices can “go past the disease” temporarily. And if that’s true, it raises a question the senior living industry doesn’t ask often enough:
Who is still there, underneath the symptoms?
Systems Run On Doing — Humans Need Being
Denise connects the dots to senior living’s operating reality: schedules, regulations, care plans, pressure. The system is built on structure.
Dr. Gary agrees — and says that is exactly why stillness matters. He frames it through two modes:
- Doing mode: productivity, speed, tasks, hustle
- Being mode: nurturing, kindness, compassion, rest, acceptance
American culture is biased toward the doing mode, and in senior living, that bias becomes a burnout engine. People try to do more and more, less and less effectively, because they are human beings — not machines.
Stillness practices, including Tai Chi, come from a being mode. And the being mode is where teams recover.
Small Moments Beat Grand Gestures
Denise shares a story from her own nursing home leadership experience: a resident who constantly complained, radiated negativity, and wore staff down. When her life story was recorded, the narrative revealed repeated trauma — and when asked if there was anything good she wanted to share, she said no.
That one detail reframes everything. Denise admits it likely wasn’t literally true, but the fact she experienced life that way changed how staff saw her — and increased compassion.
This is where the conversation quietly challenges a familiar senior living habit: celebrating the grand gestures (the Disney trip, the big event) while missing the everyday moments that actually make up a person’s life.
Dr. Gary offers an example from his own class — a man who couldn’t speak, could barely move a finger, but attended every session. One day, he looked unusually sad. Dr. Gary noticed, stopped, and asked if he wanted to sit in the front. The man squeezed his hand. They moved him. He smiled. The day changed.
That wasn’t a program. It was awareness.
And awareness requires slowing down.
A Practical Pathway Leaders Can Actually Use
The episode doesn’t leave stillness in the clouds. Dr. Gary explains a structured course offered through Person-Centred Universe — designed for professional caregivers (and informal caregivers too). It blends self-directed learning with live sessions, teaching seated Tai Chi movements and how to lead sessions for residents or colleagues.
The value is twofold: participants experience stillness themselves, and they learn how to share it inside their workplaces — a train-the-trainer model that spreads without requiring a massive operational overhaul.
But he’s clear that formal programs aren’t the only path. Gardening, music, reading, the creative arts — they can all contain stillness. The key is that stillness pulls people into the present moment.
And in the present moment, he argues, there is no anxiety or depression — only “just there.”
Ten Minutes Is Enough To Start
As the conversation winds down, Denise asks the question every busy leader is thinking: What if someone doesn’t have 30 minutes? What if they have 10?
Dr. Gary’s answer is merciful: start anywhere. Even two minutes. Go to a corner, focus on breathing, do a few movements, interrupt the doing mode long enough to remember there is another mode available.
He adds an important truth: you can’t think your way to stillness. That’s what turns people off. Stillness isn’t something to “achieve” or be perfect at. It’s something to practice — and the struggle is often proof that the monkey mind has been running the show.
The Leadership Takeaway
Denise closes by describing her own meditation journey, which began during COVID, and how the ripple effects show up everywhere — even in an airport, even in a TSA line.
That’s the quiet invitation of this episode: stillness is not a retreat from leadership. It’s a return to it.
In a sector defined by urgency, stillness becomes an act of courage — and maybe the most practical form of person-centered care senior living leaders can model.
