The Vital Force Archive
Forty years of The Vital Force (1985-2025), 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.
December 1992
The December 1992 issue has Justin Stone defining karma as action and its fruit, and telling teachers to correct how a student moves rather than what they move after watching rigid feet at the Summer Conference. Steve Ridley urges newly accredited teachers to begin teaching at once and to practice daily, and Hannah Hedrick reports on ten new teachers certified in Chicago.
Readers thank the editor for the conference issue, Lisette Tingesdahl sends Justin Stone a belated "unbirthday" greeting, and Jamie McDonald argues that too many words and symbols deter her from learning T'ai Chi Chih.
Michael Merriman's pyramid poem traces an accreditation course from the apprehensive arrival of candidates through five long evenings to Saturday's completion, when the Chi becomes the new teacher.
Four quotations from Steve Ridley, including a passage from his book PERSPECTIVES in Motion & Stillness, on awareness released from mind-body exclusiveness and meditation as acute listening-surrender rather than conceptual excursion.
Steve Ridley
Justin Stone tells teachers to correct how a student moves rather than what they move, after seeing teachers at the Summer Conference stand rigidly with feet anchored instead of yinning and yanging through legs, hips and waist.
Viola Moriarty's pyramid poem, written after a Monday night T'ai Chi Chih practice at Steve's house, describes positively charged atoms and soft energy gently effecting Constant Creation.
Marcia Jones, a massage therapist and student of Liz Salada, describes her chronically cold hands growing warm, her body signalling which foods disagree, and T'ai Chi Chih making her a cleaner vessel for healing energy.