“Let’s gather. Let’s offer. Let’s receive. Let’s ground.”
This is how Jennifer Lenay, Simon Family JCC fitness instructor, guides students through gentle, breath-synced movement in Flowing Waters, an aquatic take on traditional tai chi.
Held Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon in the indoor therapy pool, the class combines slow, intentional movement with warm water, making it well-suited for people managing pain, injury, or limited mobility.
Movements are paired with steady inhalation and exhalation, creating a rhythm that participants carry through each motion. That connection between breath and movement helps shift the body out of stress responses.
“When we are stressed… we absorb those things,” Lenay explains. “Breathwork helps reset our nervous system, and it puts us back into a parasympathetic mode.” In this state, combined with the warm water, participants can fully work through pain points without accumulating further tension.
The class is a gamechanger for many of its participants who come with a variety of health concerns.
Sue Ellen Crounce, 78, for example, has been deeply involved in the JCC’s fitness community for years. Before discovering Flowing Waters, she was a regular at many JCC classes. Then life brought significant health challenges, including knee replacements and major heart surgery. Movements that once felt simple on land, such as stepping sideways, shifting weight, and maintaining balance, became difficult. When she tried Flowing Waters, she found that the therapy pool provided a safe container to work through those limitations.
Lenay echoes that sentiment, explaining the benefits of underwater exercise for older adults.
“With water, there is minimal impact, if not zero,” she says. “The strengthening is inevitable. Once that injury is under the water, you’re going to strengthen that area.”
Crounce is one of many seniors who have regained the confidence to strengthen vulnerable muscle groups without fear of injury. “I still feel safe,” she says. “But I can see what I need to work on.”
That sense of safety and feeling of stability extends beyond the class. “When I leave and go home after being in the therapy pool, I can sleep,” Crounce says. “I’m not achy.”
In fact, Crounce recalls nearly tripping over her rocking chair in the middle of the night and catching herself at the last moment using balance skills she developed in Flowing Waters. To her, the class is now a necessity.
“I need this,” she says.
Crounce describes the class as her sanctuary and advocates for its future. When enrollment was low earlier this year, she was among a group of participants who petitioned the JCC to keep the class running.
To reinforce the class’s mental and spiritual benefits, Lenay asks participants to choose a word to carry with them through the movements. On a recent afternoon, Crounce chose “joy.”
“I have to find joy,” she says. “Even with everything happening, we can still find it in our day. We have life. We can pray for other people and remain in joy.”
For Crounce and many of her classmates, Flowing Waters is more than an exercise class. It is a place to find balance in mind, body, and spirit that can be carried into life outside of the pool.
For information on Flowing Waters and other fitness classes at the Simon Family JCC, go to simonfamilyjcc.org.