Q&A with Senior TCC Teacher Kathy Grassel

Albuquerque, New Mexico | Accredited 1994

Editor’s Note: Kathy was the editor of The Vital Force from 2004-2006, was co-editor of the Albuquerque News with Connie Hyde for much longer, and also published four issues of Blooming the Flower with Ann Rutherford.

When and where were you accredited? By Justin? Paint a picture about the experience.

I was one of the “November Nine” in 1994. The May class was full, but with nine of us on a waiting list, Steve Ridley came back and did a second accreditation. We were a motley crew. Those were the days before Intensives and two teacher signatures, just a perfunctory teacher prep with no standards. One woman from Arizona who learned from watching a VHS tape attended.

Those were also the days when training consisted of five evenings after working all day. After a rocky couple of days, things smoothed out and somehow, we were all accredited. One night, Justin attended. None of us knew him really and when we went around the circle introducing ourselves, he said, “My name is Justin Stone, and I am a jazz musician.” That was it, typical Justin as we came to know.

How did you learn originally about TCC? Why did you become accredited?

I was working in 1991 at the UNM Cancer Center where one of the perks was a free class. I signed up for a genetics class to lend some insight into the etiology of cancer. To my surprise, my boss said no, that I was needed at that time to answer the phone. I was so mad that I ended up quitting that job, but for my free perk, I signed up for an evening class called Tai Chi Chih (TCC) led by Carmen Brocklehurst in the continuing education department — a kind of a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey choice just to get my free class. I had no particular feelings about the class when it ended; it had been kind of a filler before taking on geochemistry and aquatic toxicology. But something had clicked.

Some months later, I took another beginner class from Suny McHenry who spoke hardly a word and taught by moving. And later yet another beginner class from Ellen Tatje that stretched into months and then years. Three teachers with three quite different styles of teaching the same 19 movements and one pose. During those halcyon days, I was meeting other teachers and attending the occasional lecture by Justin Stone and thinking about accreditation, more to secure a place in this unique community than being rah-rah about teaching. But here I am, years later, with no breaks in teaching (except a Covid year off).

Tell a first-person story about Justin.

I went to his house to interview him for The Vital Force. That was in 2005 when he was 89 years old. I had done several interviews for The Vital Force by that time, and generally speaking, people answered the questions I asked. Not Justin. It was wild. After a fairly lengthy answer to an unasked question about the Uncarved Block, he said, “I think probably instead of getting into more of these very intricate details, which may be over the heads of people and who may not be interested, it would be good to go back and let you question me.” Haha, I tried, but we did get his fascinating life story even if some of the jumps in time spanned 40 years. He said at the end that we could start over and not cover any of the same material. That would be true.

How has teaching changed you?

The one consistent through-line of my life has been TCC. I’ve changed jobs, changed spouses, changed countries, changed obsessions, piled on 20 years of earning higher education degrees, but teaching TCC since 1994 has not changed. I guess how teaching has changed me is the realization that a consistent path stitching together the years is actually available to me. I’m still mystified.

How has your teaching changed over the years?

I went from teaching offenders at correction facilities who did some pretty terrible things to teaching retirees at gyms, offices, and churches who did some pretty wonderful things. So that was quite an adjustment. My average class size now is around 30. Recently I had 42. Another day 15. My classes have always been mixed-level ongoing, so a typical class might have regulars of 10 years next to a curious beginner whose personal trainer cancelled that day. My teaching changes daily depending on my audience. My learning changes at the same rate.

How do you incorporate instruction/lessons learned from Justin? 

I would estimate that 90 percent of my exposure to Justin came from Saturday night meditation at his house, so my lessons learned came from there. I worked full time so didn’t attend Tuesday teacher practice. These evenings were immersive in so many ways. When I would come in, others would be milling or chatting, and Justin would be playing the piano. I would sit and listen and sometimes cry at the deep peace of it.

At dinner after meditation, we would be all yakety-yak, and he would deliberately leave his hearing aids out. If someone asked, actually yelled, a question at him across the table, he would simply keep on eating. That was a lesson that we didn’t like.

Over the years we heard his life stories many times, and teachings were often deeply esoteric, but what stayed with me was watching him be a human. He had this heart for the working poor — never in words so much, but in quiet compassionate action. The couple that laundered and ironed his shirts, the owners of the Chinese restaurant, the nuns at the South Valley retreat center so poor that our meals might be largely Jell-O and canned peas — he quietly took care of them. There were many more examples.

Justin himself lived simply. You’d never spot him as the wealthy man he was. (Well, maybe except for his affinity for high-end fast cars. You didn’t want to be a passenger with Justin at the wheel unless you were an adrenaline junkie.)

Share an “aha” moment from your teaching.

“Aha” moments are every day. Something about TCC — always new, always fresh … but here’s one. I always resisted that directive to “stiffen” the back leg while yinning and yanging. Anything “stiff” in TCC seemed oxymoronic. Justin must have intended some other word, I thought. He did, after all, have multiple ways of explaining yinning and yanging, both verbal and in writing. Then one day, experimenting on myself as I’m fond of doing, I did the stiffen-the-back-leg thing and it changed everything. The effect was getting that tan t’ien right out there front and center.

Share an innovative teaching method that you have developed or learned from another teacher. 

From Sandy, a take on the Goldilocks and the Three Bears game of opposites: too cold and too hot, too hard and too soft, and too bouncy and too firm. We practice the opposites and feel out what is “just right” — the middle path, the Goldilocks Zone. This can create quite the pandemonium in a big class, but it’s a good pandemonium. Hilarious even.

What lasting lesson(s) have you learned from Justin and his teachings?

Doing TCC was the centerpiece of all of Justin’s teaching. Justin wanted us to go out and teach TCC as a service to humanity. He didn’t want us making it about him. He said this over and over again, year after year. It’s hard not to talk about Justin — such a unique individual and such a character. Very few people have followed so many different paths as he has. “The practice will go on forever; I will not,” he would say in different ways in so many words. I have honored that.

So I talk about Justin very little, per his command, except to relate those stories that are funny and teachy at the same time, like the time when the woman in an empty cafeteria approached Justin and said he was sitting in “her” spot.

Or the time Sri Dadubhai was here in Albuquerque fundraising for his foundation and Justin told one of the wealthier among us to write Dadubhai a check for a specific, several-thousand-dollar-amount right there in front of Sri Dadubhai.

Or the time at the end of a meditation retreat attended by teachers from all over the country that he expected them to have lost weight when he saw them again.

Justin often mentioned his observation of the flower growing out the rock as a manifestation of love. Another way to interpret that image, “When it’s your time, nothing can stop you.” Be the flower.