Thanks Shock for starting this thread. And to the responses from Todd, Fresh, Big (did I miss anyone?)
Fresh, yeah, Tai Chi is really good. I agree with you that it has much of the aspects that Todd discussed. It's very much in the moment - no other way to be, when doing Tai Chi - or any other slow moving physical /mental technique. The slow moving stuff has been great for me over many years. For many, I notice that they want and need to do fairly hard exercise. I totally understand how good that is, for any of us, I just can't do it. Buggered lungs and so forth.
Re SMART - I went to my very first meeting (a tiny group) last Friday. It was great! In that, it was very relaxed, the facilitator - a guy - was cool with helping us (all three of us) to just talk about Life, both with and without alcohol. We ended up having an amazing talk about, mostly, the thing about acceptance and hope, and the bits in between.
As has been noted here and elsewhere, though, the SMART f2f meetings are often few and far between, depending on where you live. I haven't tried the online ones in recent times, though I vaguely recall from some years back that what Big mentioned might be the case: nowhere near as much active engagement and discussion as we get on a site like SR.
It's a bit annoying, frankly. Especially given that alternatives like SMART / LifeRing / Women for Sobriety (called New Life Programme here in Aus) and such like are hardly super-new kids on the block. Here in Aus, well Melbourne/ southern Aus, where I am now, I've found that if I mention such things very rarely to even staff in rehab or AA members, I almost always just get a blank look. I get that too even when I mention SR!!!! Which itself has been around for quite some years now....
Anyway, thanks again Shock for starting this thread, so that the general principles and people's experiences can simply be discussed.