Pam Towne takes T’ai Chi Chih on the road

This year is Pam Towne’s 20th anniversary of being an accredited T’ai Chi Chih teacher. For the past two years, Pam, along with Sandy McAlister, has been a national teacher trainer. Her love of T’ai Chi Chih and her love of traveling combine to make this an ideal life for her. On the road a great deal these days, Pam was in Phoenix finishing up an Intensive when she took a break to talk about where she came from and where she is going.

Pam: Something that most people don’t know about me is that I was educated to be a teacher. I have a lifetime secondary teaching credential. When I got my credential, I did not want to teach in a regular classroom. I was scared to death to stand up in front of 30 people. So I went into individualized study, and taught in an adult school. I set up a study lab where I could work one-on-one with my students. It was an individualized study lab where people could come back and work on classes for their high school diploma at their own pace.

VFJ: Are you still that way with TCC? Do you prefer one-on-one with that, too?

Pam: Now I enjoy working both with groups and one-on-one. In fact, the largest workshop I ever led had 200 people. That was in 1987.

VFJ: You’ve been doing this for a while, obviously.

Pam: I was accredited in November 1984 by Justin in Santa Barbara.

VFJ: He remembers you back then. He still talks about that.

Pam: Yeah, he does. I did TCC really badly. He used me as an example of how NOT to do Pulling Taffy. I was a mess. Well, I hadn’t been doing TCC very long—just a few months—and in those days, anybody that basically knew the movements and had the time and the money and wanted to hang out with Justin could go to teacher training. There were no prerequisites, really, except that you had some familiarity with the movements.

VFJ: Was he then like he is now, kind of demanding, curt, you know…?

Pam: He’s actually mellowed over the years.

VFJ: [Laughter] I can’t imagine. He had me in tears once.

Pam: Oh, me, too.

VFJ: I guess we wouldn’t be the only ones.

Pam: He said he really didn’t have any hope for me the way I moved, until…. I gave my presentation. Then he saw that I had an understanding of the spiritual nature of TCC, and that my movements would catch up with my understanding eventually, ha, and that I would be a good teacher.

VFJ: Nowadays, I’ve heard him say, “First you need to do the moves correctly.” He says that a lot. It appears that back then it was the reverse? You understood the spiritual nature of TCC before you did the moves well?

Pam: Yes. But one of the gifts of TCC in my life has been its gentleness. The gentle movements have nourished my soul—body, mind, and soul. And, it has helped me be more gentle and loving, and accepting with myself, as well as with other people. I was for most of my life critical of myself, and of other people. TCC has really helped to shift that.

VFJ: That’s already an enormous accomplishment.

Pam: Oh, yes. There’s so much that I have received from TCC, and that’s why I wanted to teach it. I wanted to share the benefits with other people. And the truth is, I’m a teacher at heart. I knew that I wanted to be a teacher when I was a young girl, but I didn’t know what I wanted to teach. And when I found the TCC, I found my niche, what I wanted to teach, what I wanted to share with people.

VFJ: And you really haven’t moved away from that since 1984. It’s passed the test of time.

Pam: It has. It’s amazing to me sometimes that I have stayed with the TCC because I’m a Sagittarian sun sign. I love variety and freedom and always tried new and different things, and I’ve never stayed with anything this long.

VFJ: So it’s never gotten old or stale, or you’ve never burned out?

Pam: Well, yeah, it has, but it’s been renewed.

VFJ: Does it happen in spite of you, or because… ?

Pam: [laughter]

VFJ: When you say renewed, it’s like an external force comes in and then shakes you to renew?

Pam: Or something shifts internally.

VFJ: So you always knew, already from childhood, that you would be a teacher. Were you always spiritual?

Pam: No, I don’t think so. Well, actually, yes. Nature was my church. I felt very close to nature and to animals. Church was something you did on Sunday, but being out in nature, watching a beautiful sunset, or listening to the sound of the breeze in the trees, I would just get these chills going up my spine. And now I know it was the flow of the chi. I didn’t know it then. Nature and music have always moved me that way.

VFJ: What kind of music?

Pam: The first I remember was “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” I got that same flood of chi through the body with tingles all over. And I’m not musically inclined, just so you know. When I was 10 in 5th grade we had an all-school chorus. We had to audition to see what part we were going to sing. My music teacher put me in the alto section because she thought I would do the least damage there. She said, “Just mouth the words, dear.” At the time I thought, “Oh, I better keep my mouth shut,” but I couldn’t. I loved the music so much that I sang anyway [laughter]. It wasn’t until many years later that I was taught how to listen and sing on key. It was a learned experience.

Back to 5th grade, we sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” with this all-school chorus. There was a whole gymnasium with bleachers from ceiling to floor covered with 5th graders singing. At one point I couldn’t sing anyway—tears were just flooding out of my eyes, my throat was choked up, I was feeling this incredible energy flowing through me. So, music and movement and nature have been the basis of my spirituality.

VFJ: I don’t know if you would need to get any more theological beyond that.

Pam: My first spiritual movement was swinging. I would feel that same kind of blissful feeling, swinging as a child, and then roller-skating. I still love roller-skating. It feels like being one with the flow of life.

VFJ: The Tao of Roller Skating, in the groove requiring no effort…

Pam: And Sufi dancing. I do that, too. It’s another of my spiritual practices.

VFJ: Could that also be considered aerobic?

Pam: No, no. Sufi dancing is like sacred circle dancing. It’s done in a circle, sometimes with a partner, sometimes not. It’s another form of moving meditation. It takes you beyond the judgments and thoughts of the mind to that still place within where you recognize that you are looking into the eyes of God as you look into your partner’s eyes. It’s God beholding God so that there is only One there.

VFJ: That’s beautiful.

Pam: I’m always left with this feeling of peace, love, and joy—well, just like I feel like after doing T’ai Chi Chih [laughing].

VFJ: It seems like your whole life revolves around these activities, like you don’t have to go do bookkeeping or the like in some boring office, you know?

Pam: I made the choice many years ago to teach T’ai Chi Chih as my path of service rather than do that—and this was a bone of contention with my former husband, which is why I’m no longer married to him [laughing], among other things. He really wanted me to go out and get what he called a real job and make $50 grand a year so we could live in a big house and have the kind of country-club life that he wanted. My choice was to live more simply in a rented two-bedroom duplex and do the work that I love.

VFJ: Many spouses may wish for their spouse to be more in that material groove because it enhances their status in life. If you just want to do T’ai Chi Chih in a two-bedroom duplex, maybe there is something “wrong” with you?

Pam: I don’t think so.

VFJ: How about him doing the whole thing?

Pam: He did support me financially for several years so that I could do the TCC. He was making good money as a textbook salesman, but when he left that to start his own business, and that didn’t work out, then we were in a very different financial place. Then the pressure was on to contribute, which I did, but not to the standard that he would have preferred. Now he is happily married to a nurse who works very hard, and they have a home on a golf course. I am very happy teaching T’ai Chi Chih. So these things work out.

VFJ: You are definitely traveling a lot.

Pam: And I love to travel. That’s another thing about Sagittarius; we love to travel. And I love T’ai Chi Chih, and when I can travel and teach T’ai Chi Chih, I am a very happy camper. And I have met such wonderful friends through TCC. I have friends all over the country.

VFJ: What was your first exposure to T’ai Chi Chih?

Pam: It was at Asilomar, a conference grounds on the Monterey peninsula. The Church of Religious Science has its annual conference there in August. It was there at a spiritual retreat in 1984 that I first learned TCC from Corinn Codye. I remember distinctly when the workshop leaders got up and did a two-minute introduction of what they were going to be doing during the week, Corinn got up and silently did Bass Drum. I was so moved by that. I could feel this incredible energy from that movement. I thought, “Oh, I would love to be able to move like that.” I couldn’t tell you what she said, but I still in my mind’s eye see her moving. So I went every day. We learned all the movements in five hours—one hour a day for five days. At that time there was no video. I bought the book and went home and kept doing it as best I could, which was very badly. But, I felt so peaceful during and after doing these movements that it just drew me to keep doing it.

VFJ: And you went to Teacher Training?

Pam: That would have been just three months later in November. Not that great, but apparently there was some broader design plan in all of this.

VFJ: People have an idea of what TCC is and what it has done for them. For you, is it something separate from anything else, or is it bound up with an earth-based spirituality, or would you call it a way to get healthy, to heal, or all of those things? What is T’ai Chi Chih anyway?

Pam: It’s a holistic practice that brings body, mind, and spirit into balance. It has wonderful benefits for the body. Physically, I am stronger, healthier, more balanced, more coordinated certainly than I was when I was 20 years younger. I am much more flexible mentally. I used to have very rigid thinking. Now I am more able to flow from one activity to another. I’m just much more adaptable than I used to be. More creative, more intuitive. Emotionally it has been very balancing, and very healing of early childhood traumas.

VFJ: And spiritually?

Pam: It has become a spiritual practice for me, in which I feel at One with all of life. I had searched through the world of 10,000 things, you know, through the realm of religion, education, philosophy, metaphysics, psychic phenomena—you name it, I’d explored it. Transformational trainings, personal growth—all those arenas I had investigated. I had this head concept about God and life, but it was the practice of T’ai Chi Chih that moved that into my heart, and opened my heart. I lived my first 40 years from the neck up. I lived in my head. T’ai Chi Chih got me into my body and into my heart.

VFJ: And therein lies the holism. What we need to accomplish before we can see… Do you see that there’s a collective spirit in TCC, like we’re all doing it together, like there’s a rise in collective consciousness?

Pam: My sense is that there is only One, period. And then we try to talk about that. The chi that flows through me is the chi that flows through you. And that connects us. To me it is the chi. You can call it chi, you can call it God, you can call it Spirit, you can call it whatever you want. But it is that life force that flows through everything—all of nature, all of life, every person—that connects us all. I believe that is how prayer works, how healing works—long distance healing works, because there is this universal energy that we are all a part of, that we can all tap into, become consciously attuned to anytime.

VFJ: Are you an optimist? Justin says TCC can bring world peace.

Pam: I believe that’s true. Part of my vision for life is to have peace on earth. I’ll share an experience. I was in a weekend workshop where at the end we were invited to make a declaration for our life, and my declaration was, “I am Peace.” And that was at a time when there was not a lot of evidence of that in my life. Very tumultuous marriage relationship—physical stuff going on. I had just started doing TCC about a month before that, but my declaration was, “I am Peace.” I then went to a women’s retreat, and the keynote speaker Peggy Bassett invited us to ask how Spirit wanted to express newly through us. And so I did. I asked, “Okay, God, how do you want to express newly through me?” I got a flyer through the mail from Corrin, saying that she was going to be in my area doing a weekend workshop to prepare people for a TCC training. I called her and I said I would really like to get more instruction in this TCC, but that I wasn’t interested in the teacher training. Could I come? Oh sure. So, there were seven of us at a home in Long Beach and she had each of us taking turns in front of the group leading a movement. And I said, “Oh, no, no, no, I don’t want to do that!” And she made me do it, so here I was in front of the others, leading Bass Drum. This incredible rush of energy flowed through me, and that got my attention. And so I started asking questions. “What is this T’ai Chi Chih anyway?” “Can a person make a living doing this?” Out of the seven people, I was the only one that went to teacher training.

VFJ: So that was the manifestation of your declaration then, wasn’t it?

Pam: It was. Wanting to be Peace, and asking how Spirit wanted to express newly through me. And so that’s how I went to teacher training.

VFJ: And the rest is history.

Pam: [Laughter] Well, in between there was a lot of me just showing up. It was like Justin just couldn’t get rid of me. I kept showing up at every training, every conference.

VFJ: Do you suppose that would be one reason why he chose you to be the trainer? He had to think about that, that if he didn’t name you, you would be following him all over until he did. I don’t think he thought too long and hard about whom he wanted. When did that happen?

Pam: December 2001. I’ve been leading for two years, so I’m into my third year.

VFJ: So you think that this is your calling right now?

Pam: I do. I’m happy to be of service to the community as a teacher, and a teacher of teachers. Sr. Antonia has asked me to lead the Seijaku teacher trainings as well. I was in the first Seijaku class that Justin taught in November of 1986, just two years after teacher training, and I’ve taught usually a spring and fall Seijaku class ever since.

VFJ: What kinds of classes have you taught?

Pam: I’ve taught quite a lot in corporate settings, cancer centers, senior centers, in retreat settings. My students total number in the thousands now.

VFJ: What are your plans for the future?

Pam: Well, I am thrilled to be a part of watching T’ai Chi Chih grow. I wholeheartedly agree with Justin that it has a purpose here and that it is a service to humankind. And part of that mission of TCC is to bring peace to people’s hearts and to our world. I’m delighted to be a part of having it spread around the world. Part of my vision is to have TCC become a household word.

VFJ: Well, Pam, I think that if you keep it up, it’s going to be a household word.

Pam: All right! Feel free to print that!