The Vital Force Archive

Judy Smith walks past saguaros and the Garden Bistro to Laura Star's class under an adobe ramada at Tohono Chul in Tucson, correcting a movement and remembering family members Justin taught.

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.

Walter Charley, who learned T'ai Chi Chih in Sedona around 1976, recounts teaching groups of children in psychiatric hospitals, where depressed children lifted and anxious ones calmed; with pyramid poems by Beverly Miles and Johnnie Lee Marquez.

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.

From a spoken word CD, Justin Stone links chi to breath and mood, cites Sri Aurobindo, and describes the maximum Chi program he would give athletes, including Nei Kung at bedtime.

Track 5 of Justin Stone's spoken word CD, in which he explains how flowing Chi erases vasanas and samskaras, names the seven emotions, recounts travels in India, Kyoto and Taipei, and denies that T'ai Chi Chih is a martial art.

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.

Jeneth Rundle recounts her only face-to-face visit with Justin Stone in May 2011, when her phone rang mid-practice, and how his question returned to her after foot fusion surgery.

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.

Laurie Jacobi recalls first seeing Justin Stone playing 1940s jazz at a grand piano, and the conference where he corrected her for not moving low enough before learning of her back pain.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sandy McAlister describes the first California teacher's retreat since COVID-19, held in Oceanside with 20 teachers, and its theme of coming home to community, to practice, and to Prajna, the inner voice heard in silence at the tan t'ien.

Sue Kenney recounts how a 2001 Vital Force article led her to teach at Folsom Prison, walking the metal detectors, gold coin checkpoints, cell blocks and yard to reach a chapel class of thirty men.

April Leffler recounts an intuitive nudge to focus on the Taffies at her YMCA class, and the fellow teacher who arrived that morning with a box of salt water taffy, as evidence of prajna at work.

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.

Daniel Pienciak recalls Pam Towne relaying, at a 2009 Seijaku accreditation, that Justin Stone prized expansion and contraction, and describes feeling that dynamic in the t'an t'ien during every weight shift.

Abby Molino, a nurse since 1976, describes the right-left confusion that flummoxed her during Pulling Taffy's Anchor variation, with coping strategies and mirroring tips for instructors; four poems by Beverly Miles follow.

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.

Donna McElhose's students describe healing lower back pain and tennis elbow, feeling tingling energy, grounding in the t'an t'ien for balance, and combining silent group practice with meditation before and after class.

Garo Nokhoudian's pyramid poems move from surrender and caring to Chi waking up playfully between the sheaths, ending with hang time when earth and sky beat as one.

Sharon Sirkis, in a piece reprinted from June 2001, used a slow winter in her classes to go within, then coaxed a squirrel across a parking lot and read its antics as a message: sit still, leap, discard the garbage.

John Marquez builds a pyramid poem from single words, moving from chi and movement through vibration, freedom and awareness to silence, breath and honest written speech.

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.