The Vital Force Archive

Steve Vogel, coordinator of Justin Stone's Albuquerque visit, thanks the New Mexico teachers and volunteers and summarizes Justin's lecture on non-attachment, impermanence and living each day as the last.

Steve Ridley sets out two principles for each movement: hands reaching their extreme position exactly as the weight fully shifts, and alignment of strength, with corrections for commonly misaligned movements.

Three letters from Bernice Playle, Linda McKenzie and Barbara Lefforge thanking the Minnesota conference hosts at Inver Hills, with Lefforge crediting the Seijaku course for calm energy amid a busy teaching year.

Steve Ridley addresses people who teach T'ai Chi Chih without completing an accreditation course, urging teachers to explain the requirement to students and framing purity of transmission as a matter of integrity.

Susan Hudgens and Hope Ridley describe Steve's October 1991 Exploring Meditative Ways Workshop, with Hudgens noting her son Nicholas saying "Mom, I like how you act" afterward.

After an 18-inch snowstorm downed trees at her home, Connie Hyde recalls her daughter Tess naming the cat's favorite branch and Justin Stone's words on the true self identifying with everything.

Liz Salada's account of hosting a weekend workshop with Steve Ridley for the third year running, where varied meditative techniques, shared practice and socializing left students equipped and motivated.

Justin Stone recounts a Zen priest's charge to "be the Big hermit," the phrase that sent him down from the Himalayan foothills, and links impermanence, emptiness and the Lotus Sutra to gratitude.

Steve Ridley's pyramid poem, dated September 29, 1991, sets the Beast at rest at the Dreamer's command so the Angel may ascend and reveal their unity.

Loretta Shriver's one-line pyramid poem greets the day and her friends with thanksgiving and joy, a morning prayer offered in a single short sentence.

Steve Ridley's short pyramid poem, dated September 1991, places a slumbering Visionary on a stage of dreams behind screens of memory, suffering amid gain and loss.

Virginia Shilson urges teachers to stop treating T'ai Chi Chih as a routine they should do and instead let the moving meditation happen, becoming one with its energy before teaching others.

Bryan James argues that circulating the chi stirs up emotional energy stored from childhood abuse and old trauma, explaining why some students and teachers suddenly quit, and urging compassion plus active recovery work.

Virginia Shilson likens T'ai Chi Chih to a Christmas tree, with each teacher a unique ornament whose radiance joins a collective energy that expands into the universe and someday returns to earth.

Teacher reports gathered from around the country, including Susan Webster's corporate wellness contract in California, Ruthmarie Arguello-Sheehan's 7 am classes for 700 hypnotherapists, and a New Mexico nursing license credit approval.

A pyramid poem Susan Caputo Hudgens wrote on October 19, 1991 at an Exploring Meditative Ways weekend, moving from open possibilities to hearts longing to be One.

Three short items: Lucy Hocking's doctor unwittingly prescribes heel-ball-toe rocking for her sprained ankle, Roxann Post's mother mishears T'ai Chi on the phone, and a ten-year-old student adds the "A's".

Liz Salada recounts the surprise Indonesian-Malaysian luncheon sixteen teachers held in Santa Cruz on November 16 for Justin Stone's 75th birthday, where a special Vital Force tribute compilation was presented.

Lia Ridley describes the first Colorado autumn she greeted without her customary sadness, finding in the withering flowers and falling leaves a peace she credits to T'ai Chi Chih and its teaching of a changeless center.

Loretta Shiver's pyramid poem traces a homecoming from the air, taking in rain-fed green land, brown earth and the cottonwood-lined river winding across the desert.

A short pyramid poem by Gielsen of New Lenox, Illinois, pairing movement through T'ai Chi with movement through life, centered amidst circles and cycles, forward and backward.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst recounts Justin Stone's Albuquerque visit, when over 200 people packed his free public lecture on "The Spiritual Life" and heard why the Daughter must come back down from the mountaintop into the valley.