The Vital Force Archive
Eighteen years of The Vital Force (2007-2025), the journal of the T’ai Chi Chih community. Search for a word, a teacher, a movement or a place, or browse by category and topic.
August 2009
The August 2009 issue centers on awareness, with Justin Stone naming softness and continuity the essence of the practice and Sr. Antonia Cooper arguing that T’ai Chi Chih’s future cannot be planned or commercialized. Sandy McAlister makes the case for dropping teaching images once a student knows the shape, and Pam Towne walks through circularity movement by movement.
Beverly Wrobel, a nurse of thirty-plus years, tells Theresa May how practicing TCC mentally while her leg was in a cast eased pain, followed by five Pyramid Poems.
Beverly Wrobel
Bayport, MN
Cathy Dalton admits Pulling in the Energy is not a favorite movement, then traces her resistance to the upturned palms' openness to change and finds a blockage in her own chi flow.
Cathy Dalton
Mahtomedi, MN
Frances Alexander plays her flute in a hilltop grotto during a break at Dan Pienciak's T'ai Chi Chih intensive, and finds in the echo of her notes an understanding of honoring the stillness.
Frances Alexander
Manahawkin, NJ.
Rita Foster, a former science teacher, recalls first feeling the Chi during Pulling in the Energy, and passes on Justin's visualization along with pointers on chin position and the five colors.
Rita Foster
Minneapolis, MN
Stephan Koblick, a lifelong athlete and student of Eastern thought, found a T'ai Chi Chih class in a hospital complementary medicine department after a serious diagnosis, and has studied with Dorene Krause for over a year.
Stephan Koblick
North Haledon, NJ