Finding zen in a Lafayette strip mall
Every Tuesday afternoon, Kathy Rudick, Cal Cranfield, Kay Simmons and Janet King meet at The Dance Collective Studio. After some chatter, they set their intentions, they breathe deeply and they start “silk reeling.”
I joined the group at the local studio to get a taste for tai chi, a centuries old Chinese martial art also described as “meditation in motion,” that combines slow flowing movements, breathing techniques and focused mental concentration to promote physical health, balance and inner harmony.
After years of training with heavy weights, for example, Cranfield is looking to soothe his joints. “This makes you feel a whole lot smoother,” he says.
The instructor is Eugene Kwarteng. Sporting grey athleisure and an expression of near unshakeable calm, the Texas native looks more like an extremely zen defensive end than the ponytailed senior in a linen two-piece you might expect to lead a tai chi class.
Born in Ghana but raised in Texas from a very young age, Kwarteng came to Lafayette to play football at UL in 2002. Training for a career in pro football took a lot out of him. “I wanted to exhaust whatever I had,” he tells me.
Off the field, he was working and working out at Red Lerille’s Health and Racquet Club, right next door to where he now leads moving meditations once a week.
After graduating with a degree in computer animation, and with jobs in the field in short supply in 2006, he became a personal trainer at Red’s. He had no formal training and instead used methods from his football conditioning. He quickly learned they weren’t a fit for everyone.
Most people he trained had not done conditioning exercises before. They did not know how to load and squat a bar, do box jumps, agility jumps or plot their progress metrics. He was a college athlete trying to give rookies the full football experience. “Thankfully,” Kwarteng says, “nobody got severely hurt.”
“I just assumed that’s how everybody trained at that point at the time,” he remembers. But, “you can’t really necessarily push a person who’s not prepared for these types of things that I’d already been through.”
To overcome his lack of expertise, he began collecting certifications. In 2009, he received his personal trainer certification through the American Council on Exercise, which was followed by Level 1 and Level 2 Russian Kettlebell Certifications through StrongFirst. He also tried various training styles like CrossFit and Olympic powerlifting, which he practiced from ages 29 to 36.
By 35, his priorities began to shift, as he navigated changes in his physical ability. He was more fatigued than normal, and began having slower recovery periods.
“I was emotionally in a tough place in my life as well, which is why I was kind of pouring myself into the CrossFit,” he says. “It was a good relief valve for me to deal with everything, but that became not enough.”
He needed something that was going to be gentle on his body and help with psychological clarity. He had been curious about tai chi for years, after walking through a Barnes & Noble and noticing a book about it. He took it as a sign for him to start practicing tai chi and began integrating it into his morning routine, using the book for guidance.
“The biggest light bulb moment for me was whenever I noticed that I was recovering a little faster from my CrossFit workouts. I learned to breathe better. I guess you could say I learned how to relax sooner,” says Kwarteng.
He taught himself for three years until he randomly received a flyer from a friend in 2019 to attend a tai chi class at Bourgeois Hall, UL Lafayette’s athletic center, with Bob Bacher, a former chiropractor turned tai chi master.
Kwarteng began studying under Bacher, who by then had nearly 50 years of training and learned from Grandmaster Wang Xian, one of the “Four Tigers” of Chenjiagou.
Chenjiagou is the birthplace of the oldest form of tai chi, called Chen style, developed in the 16th-century and characterized by low rooted stances, “spiraling” body movements and explosive power generation, intended for defense and deep psychological conditioning.
Bacher was given Wang’s blessing and encouragement to spread his knowledge in the West. Now, Kwarteng is following in his footsteps to keep the art alive in Lafayette.
As low-intensity exercises like yoga and pilates are taking over studios across the country, the effects on mental clarity, flexibility, stress and chronic pain, and sleep quality have become just as much of a selling point as improved physical fitness. (Just the one class I took helped me out with some neck pain.)
The slow, deliberate movements may make tai chi appear easy, but according to Kwarteng, that’s a misconception. In traditional Chen-style tai chi, there’s little room for altering the techniques and students are forced to slow down.
Kwarteng compares it to looking through a window when driving through a forest: “The trees, if you go fast, they just look like a blur, right? But if you slow down to the right speed, you actually be able to see what’s behind the trees and beyond.”
When done right, tai chi helps practitioners regulate their emotions and release stress or trauma in their bodies. It also promotes heightened awareness, and teaches the body to control tension and relax systematically.
“It’s not easy,” says Kwarteng. “But [for] anything that creates benefit, there has to be some type of struggle.”
https://thecurrentla.com/2026/finding-zen-in-a-lafayette-strip-mall/