Impermanence

 

 

T’ai Chi Chih is a mindfulness-moving meditation practice that’s easy to learn. The series of 19 movements and one pose helps circulate the Vital Energy, the Chi. Practitioners experience peace, improved health, and many more benefits. Our free monthly e-newsletter offers inspiration between issues of the TCC quarterly journal, The Vital Force, in which teachers and students tell stories about ways they’ve benefited from the practice. 

“’We are literally the habit energies we have built up.’” – Justin F. Stone, TCC Originator

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From the recent issue of The Vital Force:

Freedom: “[I’ve had] habits that have lasted for decades. Habits that created my own emotional conditioning and habits that caused many of my own constrictive behaviors that, in turn, caused relationships to suffer, jobs to be lost, and tears to be shed. This was the stuff I was ready to be free from. My habits and conditioning were getting in the way of my ‘Freedom Quotient’ and, if unexamined, were as dangerous as the sharp brittle fragments of Pele’s hair, the long, thin strands of volcanic glass that form from lava flows. Through the consistent practice of TCC, we can create freedom in our bodies and minds using principles like ‘the effort of no effort’ and ‘less is more.’” – LP, Novato, CA

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Editor’s Note: Learn more from TCC teachers with more than 25 years of experience in the February issue of The Vital Force.

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Trust: “Seijaku [advanced TCC] offers a physical early warning system to help recognize when habitual or unpredictable thoughts and emotions arise and trigger unproductive resistance. Sensing a familiar tension in my body reminds me to go to the soles of my feet, to exhale and hold fast as needed, then let go into softness. The reward is a slow but steady growth in trust that when I let go, the Chi offers just what I need.” – S, Oct. 2022 Seijaku Accreditation

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Balance: “With polarity, I felt connected to the world. I’ve always felt distant or nonexistent, but through the energy, I feel between my hands, I feel alive and present. Yin-yang has always been seen as the balance between life. If you cannot find balance, you will not be happy or able to find rest. In the weight shift of the feet, if you cannot find the perfect balance, you fall. Finding the right balance is different for all. With the right balance in yourself, you find peace.” – DL, Albuquerque, NM

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Truth: Impermanence, suffering, and no-soul no-entity are interrelated. In our own everyday lives, our inability to accept impermanence — because things are going well now, we assume they always will, and because our young love is beautiful, we feel they will always be — brings suffering. And our identification with an ‘I’ when truly there is no abiding ‘I’ also makes for immeasurable suffering. – Justin F. Stone

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Subscribe to The Vital Force. Our quarterly journal offers engaging stories, hints, and insights from TCC teachers and students. We also highlight wisdom by, and photos rarely seen of, originator Justin Stone.