The Vital Force Archive

Carol Love makes the case for taking practice outside, from Nature-derived movement names to choosing a spot where uneven ground sharpens balance and birdsong replaces traffic noise.

Fred Lorch credits his ongoing T'ai Chi Chih practice with better balance, flexibility and strength as he ages, plus blood pressure averaging 20 points lower and improved coronary health.

Lois Vermilya's prose poem gathers energy from the most distant star into fingertips and soles, naming a paradox of force and letting go that might fuel her activism of fierce hope.

Cristina Minelli adapts Italian meditation teacher Andrea Magrin's WhatsApp pairing system for TCC, where practitioners post a request like "10/10" and video call a partner, each leading half the movements.

Four written assignments collected by Donna McElhose: students describe emerging from bipolar isolation, easing fibromyalgia fatigue, practising anywhere after 2005 cancer surgery, and discussing Justin's Climb the Joyous Mountain chapter by chapter.

Dr. Ofelia Olivero describes how lowering the foot slowly and deliberately keeps the practitioner rooted, sharpens awareness of shifting weight, circulates chi evenly, and becomes an expression of presence.

Kate Polk credits her T'ai Chi Chih practice with two reductions in her blood pressure medication, calmer recurring visions of a traumatic experience, and comfort during radiation for a skin cancer on her scalp.

In a note to her teacher Parker Reynolds, Liz Emmer asks whether love and chi are linked, wondering if the walls hatred builds block chi the way open hearts let energy flow.

Marcella K. Levie asked her senior students why they return each week, and Madelon, Olga, Ariette and Sima describe calmer minds, better balance, repeating guitar and flute music, and effort without effort.

Shelley Nielsen's letter to her library foundation recounts joining Marie Dotts's weekly class in January 2022, easing arthritis pain and hearing strangers stop their cars to say she looked at peace.

Amy Tyksinski gathers six UNM college students' written responses to the Softness passage in Justin Stone's Spiritual Odyssey, from bamboo and oak temperaments to jaw clenching, political argument and caring for a crying baby.

Silvia Coffey sets her own habit of self-criticism, learned in middle school, against a passage from Justin Stone's Climb the Joyous Mountain on how self-pity and gratitude cannot share a breath.

Carol Love recalls the phrases her teacher Marie Dotts repeats in class, including "You can't do bad T'ai Chi Chih" and the advice to move just the arms or just the feet.

Gregory Berg notices how seldom the body moves sideways in daily life, from supermarket aisles to the Pecos River, then follows that thought into Carry the Ball to the Side, where the margin becomes the new center.

Kathy Grassel interviews Tyler, a retired Episcopal and Byzantine Rite priest leaving her Albuquerque gym class for Chicago, on how the Tao Teh Ching, yin and yang, and bodily worship shaped his three years of practice.

A letter to future students from one of Donna McElhose's students, K. L., who began T'ai Chi Chih in 2005 after a breast cancer scare and urges beginners to persevere through the awkward first weeks.

Three of Donna McElhose's College of Lake County students write letters to future beginners, describing bad knees, ankle and wrist ligament injuries, the switch to a seated class, and the fear of being the only man in the room.

Jim Shorr collects comments from four practitioners at Creekside Village in Beaverton, finishing their sixth year of Saturday morning sessions, on balance, joint tension, new friendships and Qigong warm-ups.

Holly Hershman passes along a student's note crediting T'ai Chi Chih with a 30% gain in movement and flexibility after hip and sciatic trouble, plus thank-you messages from JustinStoneTCC.com newsletter readers, including an opera singer who practices daily to warm up her breath support.

Connie Shaw recounts breakthroughs in seeing her own conditioning fall away, and lists what keeps her practice alive: posture, empty mind, returning to the t'an t'ien, and deliberate uncontrived laughter.

After more than four years of practice, Nancy Hellebrand Blood woke up to why attention rests in the soles of the feet: it leaves no room for habitual thoughts.

Victor J. Dougherty recalls watching a technician degauss a cathode ray tube TV at the RCA Service Center in 1988, and finds in those slow circles an image of recalibrating chi.

June Calende describes a weekly hour at the senior center: shoes off, chairs against the wall, Debby counting reps barely audibly, nineteen movements done beside an east window of trembling leaves and a kettle pond.

Connie Shaw recounts a class in which teacher Marie Dotts urged students to practice with soft eyes and follow where the Chi led, and Shaw felt the room dissolve into light.

Two student assignments collected by Donna McElhose: Nancy L. maps the electrical, magnetic and heat sensations she feels movement by movement, and Bryan F. describes chi radiating from the t'an t'ien like ripples in a pond.

Seven subscribers, among them Sue Bitney, Michelle Crow, April Leffler, Beverly Miles, Carolyn Pogwist and Guy Kent, wrote whatever surfaced after practice, from Passing Clouds and the water cycle to the t'an t'ien's glide in Working the Pulley.

Lisa Stroyan describes locating her tan t'ien lower and deeper than expected during April Leffler's online accreditation, and A.B. of Albuquerque finds Bass Drum and Around the Platter blurring the boundary between self and cosmos.

Warren Wolfe, sleepless in the hospital after knee-replacement surgery and plagued by muscle spasms, began doing T'ai Chi Chih mentally at 3 a.m., and describes the practice he has refined since.

June Calende describes a weekly 3:00 practice at a senior center, shoes off, windows facing a kettle pond, Debby naming the nineteen movements in a barely audible voice.

Jim Shorr collects statements from four Oregon senior students naming the movements that matter most to them, from Ellen H.'s swimmer's affinity for Working the Pulley to Linda L. feeling God's presence in Passing Clouds.