Capturing the moon from a garage in Lyttelton

Wednesday, 21 January 2026

Communal tai chi practice in Wuhan, China - the gentlest of martial arts has lured Joe Bennett from out of his armchair and into the garage.

Joe Bennett is an award-winning Lyttelton-based writer, columnist and playwright. He is a regular contributor.

OPINION: I know this will disappoint a lot of you, but I’m not going to apply for the All Blacks coaching job. I have two reasons. One is that rugby has changed. Not tactically of course - I am confident the tactics that took my Christ’s College under-15c team to a memorable mid-table finish in 1991 still pertain. “Up the guts,” was the nub of it, “if in doubt, boys, up the guts”.

Time was when the All Blacks were up-the-gutsers, hardened by work on the farm. But not any more. Today they are sleek 25-year-old millionaires with agents and shaved legs. One gash to the scrotum, however minor, and they’re begging to be stretchered off for fear of losing their deodorant sponsorship.

My other reason is media scrutiny and in particular the ubiquity of cell phones. The bonding sessions that forged our Christchurch Football Club third grade team would not look good on the front page of a Monday morning. So I am not going to apply for the job and good luck to whoever does. Meanwhile I am continuing my search for a new form of exercise.

As a little boy my nickname was Podge, and it was well earned. Now that I’ve aged, my appetite for food and drink has not shrunk, but the range of games available to keep me in some sort of shape has. Rugby is long gone and my last game of cricket two summers ago was a six-hour-long exercise in humiliation. I still play a little squash against fellow pensioners but knee cartilage is in short supply amongst us and every game is played to a background track of bone on bone. Soon squash will go too.

Joe lasted three sessions of yoga before the farting got the better of him.

I will not join a gym for reasons of self-respect. And though I like to walk, if I do half an hour on the steep streets of Lyttelton the left knee has plenty to say in bed that night.

Five years ago, seeking gentler exercise and in defiance of all instincts, I signed up for a yoga class. Instincts exist for a reason. I lasted three sessions. The yoga was roughly as expected, but I hadn’t foreseen the farting.

At eight in the morning in any town in China the young and the old, the fit and the frail, will be taking communal exercise. A troupe of grandmothers wave swords above their heads, as if fending off an airship. A mixed-age mob with an elderly cassette deck do ballroom dancing. Most impressive of all are the practitioners of tai chi – absorbed, fluid, unhurried, balanced. And it is to tai chi that I have turned.

Apparently tai chi evolved as a martial art, though I can’t see what use it would be in a fight. It also comes with a quantity of spiritual guff about centring one’s consciousness that does not sit easily with this Western rationalist. But on YouTube there are as many styles of tai chi as there are practitioners and I gravitate towards those with their feet on the ground. Here in my study I watch one perform a movement then I step out into the garage to have a go.

The exercise is soft on the joints and mildly hypnotic, but what I like most is the language. Every movement comes with a metaphor. Unseen in my Lyttelton garage I have pushed the mountain, captured the moon, parted the mane of the great wild horse and lifted the leg of the golden rooster.

And then there’s the business of tai chi walking, where you keep your head up while feeling for the ground ahead with a weightless toe. The metaphor to describe it is crossing thin ice while surrounded by enemies. Which perhaps is not entirely dissimilar to coaching the All Blacks.