A wise man once said that aging is the gradual acceleration of comfort-seeking, and Englishman Lew Burja, who’s 92 and still practices kung fu and tai chi, certainly seems to think so.
A grandfather with three grandkids, decades of remaining spry has ensured he can keep up with the little ones, and keep up a diet rich in the best kinds of delicious foods like oven roasts and chocolate.
“At my age, I have friends dying all around me and [tai chi] has kept me going,” said Burja. “It’s really important to keep moving—which is lucky because I can’t stand still.”
He found tai chi in his 50s after suffering from repeat chest infections and a bad back. He had already done sports most of his life, which included rugby, weightlifting, track, Judo, and English football, but had never done tai chi before.
Captivated by watching a tai chi demo at a fair he attended, he decided to give it a go and started weekly two-hour sessions, also including a half-hour of kung fu.
Tai chi is an internal Chinese martial art practiced for health, known for its slow, intentional movements, while kung fu refers to any skill achieved through hard work in a general sense, and doesn’t specifically refer to martial arts.
“I was fit and healthy. But these chest infections just kept coming back just a few months after I stopped antibiotics,” he said. For some reason, I was really attracted to the slow movement and deep breathing of the tai chi.”
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“There’s a specific sequence of movements you can do to manage certain health conditions. That’s how I stopped getting chest infections. I’d often had colds before starting tai chi and they stopped too.”
Burja, from Leeds, can still walk up to seven miles a day and he says running is no problem. He is also training to become a thriller writer to keep his mind sharp.
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“Plenty of exercise is what keeps you going, and it also gives you a really positive outlook on life,” said Burja on this point. “And it’s kept me fully compos mentis. I’m training to be a thriller writer.”
“I don’t fight in kung fu anymore but I can still do the hits and kicks.”
WATCH Lew in action below…
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