The Vital Force Archive

Rosalind L. Braga recounts Justin Stone's 1998 talk at Folsom Prison, where the words "your joy is my joy" won over inmates and guards, and traces the weekly classes and inmate teachers that continue in 2023.

Rosalind (Linda) Braga recalls a private lesson where telling a nervous teacher candidate what she was doing right made her cry, and offers wording for positive group corrections.

Linda Braga recalls an early morning practice on a Mt. Baldy patio where a Doberman, a grasshopper and a bumblebee gathered beside her, all facing east until she finished.

Lucy Hocking revisits the Asilomar grounds where she hosted the first International TCC Teacher Conference in August 1985, and admits that as a lapsed teacher she has stopped practicing daily.

Rebecca Paulson recounts April 29th World T'ai Chi and Qigong Day in northern Colorado, where 35 people from seven cities met at a community college while 26 more joined by Zoom from Belize onward.

Dina Ajlenberg, accredited in 2005 and the only T'ai Chi Chih teacher in Israel since moving from Toronto in 2009, describes three years teaching about ten movements at a dementia day center.

Fusun Sulzbach traces her on-again off-again practice from her 2002 accreditation presentation through a divorce, retirement, a gym class closed by COVID, and a June retreat in Oceanside that renewed her daily routine and ended her sleep medication.

Caroline Guilott insists on Justin Stone's exact wording, from "graceful conclusion" to the "hip swivel," and explains how the relaxed, slightly cupped hands let students feel polarity as heat, cold or tingling rather than a cosmetic gesture.

Caroline Guilott draws on Justin Stone's exact phrases, from "graceful conclusion" to the hip swivel, and explains why polarity between relaxed, slightly cupped hands is felt in the body rather than the mind.

Carmen Brocklehurst recounts a doctor's advice to release teaching stress, her 1976 start with Helen Brungardt Pope, and, in a reprinted 2009 piece, the quiet mind and turning t'an t'ien she found.

Patricia Winger describes how agreeing to teach her neighborhood seven days a week finally built a daily practice, breaking a 30-year habit within two months and speeding her recovery from total knee replacement.

Marcella K. Levie treats Justin's Graceful Conclusion between movements as a moment of coming home, followed by Sharron Gonzalez on the value of in-person accreditation courses over Zoom and on making daily practice a habit.

George Manning describes letting chi guide his teaching, moving side by side with students, slowing movements with the breath, and carrying the practice to settings where souls are forgotten.

Susan Corey rereads her notes from Laurie Jacobi's "Embracing Emptiness" talk at the 2022 Teacher Conference and finds that waiting inside the pauses brings her weight shift into palpable harmony.

Lisa M Otero recounts her early frustration with Justin Stone's instruction to come to a graceful conclusion, how balancing over her heels removed knee strain, and how strength at 60 brought softness.

Judy Kistler-Robinson turned shut-down recreation center classes into Zoom sessions that drew friends across the country, and she still offers a free monthly online practice from Albuquerque, including one student's husband with Parkinson's.

Terry Gay Puckett recounts how student Denise Richter contacted a San Antonio Express News columnist without telling her, and the resulting article filled her senior center class and a waiting list.

Abby Molino, a nurse and massage therapist, returned to T'ai Chi Chih after three decades, traded her frustrating VHS tape for a DVD, and drew the many-handed kitchen woman with her Sandhill Crane.

Ivonne Begue se Benzo describes the weekly practice she began shadowing with the sisters of Assisi Heights in Minnesota, and how moving meditation lets her respond rather than react.

Newly accredited, John Marquez compares himself to an artichoke shedding layers, and finds that demonstrating movements while talking, correcting, pacing and counting is harder than he expected.

Rosalind L. Braga recounts a silent encounter at a contemplative retreat at Santa Sabina Center, where a curious young Chinese woman who practiced T'ai Chi Ch'uan watched her move and called it light as a feather.

Judy Hubbell, three years into teaching Mind Body Health classes including ones for Chinese seniors, responds to the JustinStoneTCC.com newsletter and asks about Justin's link to Wen-Shan Huang.

Caroline Guilott describes the resting pose that ends each movement, the softening around the t'an t'ien with feet rooted, and her memory of Justin Stone rising early and repeating his own close.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst recounts years of struggling with Justin Stone's instruction to "come to a graceful conclusion" until a Tuesday morning practice when she simply followed him and her wrists went soft.

Lorraine Lepine describes the resting position, or graceful conclusion, that punctuates the nineteen movements, and the grounded empty fullness of Chi settling when the body comes to stillness.

Amy Tyksinski describes the "Flowing River Moments" she offers her high school class, then prints students' own written reflections on self-love, the effort of no effort, polarity and balance.

Carmen Brocklehurst links everyday acts of kindness, including a boy who unbuckled his seat belt to save a cat, to the wholeness felt when a group ends a movement together and Justin asked, "Did you feel that?"

Rebecca Paulson opened her fall and winter classes in Colorado by comparing TCC to the life of trees: rooted grounding, a heart center, dropping leaves before snow, and winter dormancy as self-care.

Amy Tyksinski uses Around the Platter Variation to teach polarity between the palms, suggesting the base of the palms come slightly closer to activate the wrist meridians and awaken felt Chi.

Patty Stupca, inspired by Kay Rydeen's visual aid, walks readers through a word puzzle moving from DOG SHOWS to GOD SHOWS to GOOD SHOWS as four levels of TCC practice.