How to age well: tennis, dancing, massage and meditation keep Malaysian grandma happy and active at 78
- Marguerite Brodie became a salsa dance champion and avid tennis player, learned the healing art of Rolfing and ‘by chance’ took up Buddhism and Dharma practice
- Dharma, the application of Buddha’s teachings to one’s life, has taught Brodie patience and ‘the reassurance that everything will happen at the right time’
One of the striking things about Marguerite Brodie is her posture.
From her home in Kuala Lumpur, the grandmother of six reflects on how these elements came to gradually shape her life after tragedy struck in 1984.
The daughter of Eurasian parents with Chinese Hakka and British-Scottish roots, Brodie grew up on the island of Penang in Malaysia. She met her Malaysian Chinese husband in Kuala Lumpur in 1966 and they had five children together. When the youngest was a newborn, Brodie’s husband was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer.
As a devotee of Indian spiritual leader guru Sai Baba, he wanted to avoid an operation or any type of conventional medical treatment.
“But I was a young mother, afraid of losing him and I felt the intense pressure from his family, so he did end up getting an operation in the UK, where surgeons removed his spleen, a kidney and part of his pancreas,” says Brodie.