The Vital Force Archive

Steve Ridley offers tests for judging whether a spiritual teaching or teacher is genuinely useful: increased vitality and freedom, a wholesome feeling in the heart center, and the capacity for spontaneous humor.

Carol Glinski practiced TCC and the healing sounds daily through her pregnancy, then used focused breathing in the hospital labor room to bring her daughter's heart rate back to normal and avoid a C-section.

News of Shelley Morey carrying T'ai Chi Chih to Ecuador with the Peace Corps, and Sr. Yolanda Tancinco's report on sisters in Cebu City finding grounding and changed attitudes.

Justin Stone dismisses debating students over questions like why the right hand leads or how a movement got its name, saying the benefits come from doing T'ai Chi Chih, not talking about it.

Ralph Garn of Syracuse reports that after the teachers' conference, chi vibrations grew strong in his left hand during Rocking Motion and later in both hands during Daughter in the Valley and Push Pull.

Joan Torrence describes the first Oregon Teachers Meeting at Elizabeth Tyler's and then teaching the first five TCC movements to a karate class on Orcas Island.

Steve Ridley advises teachers to keep personal theories about which meridians each movement affects out of the classroom, arguing that consistent, attentive practice with unclouded mind lets students validate their own experience.

Linda Braga sat for early-morning breath counting on her parents' Iowa porch after the Chicago conference, until a nip on her bare toes turned out to be a chipmunk.

Teacher updates from Gordon Wade on Elderhostel classes in Banff, Sister Trinitas on retired nuns' balance and walking, Pat Graves teaching at a Santa Fe half-way house, the Sanchezes' move to Lake Tahoe, and Dorcas Hueners' master's thesis.

Lia Ridley traces her teaching from 4th graders to dance classes, ESL students and conference workshops, finding one constant intent of sharing consciousness-love while facilitating learning rather than directing it.

Linda Braga practised at dawn on a patio in the hills near Mount Baldy, joined by a Doberman named Prince, a brown grasshopper, geckos, a vole and a column of ants.

A Chicago Tribune story on adult education visited Barbara Peller's Oakton Community College class, quoting students aged 67 and 73, plus an NTSW Industries newsletter piece on her work.

Loretta Shiver's pyramid poem names peace in the heart, clarity in the mind, certainty of purpose and unconditional love as the reasons we practice.

Connie Hyde, Ellen Tatge and Carmen Brocklehurst each describe the 8th T'ai Chi Chih Conference in Chicago, crediting Barbara Peller's planning, Hannah Hedrick's emceeing, and Justin's talk on non-attachment and non-violence.

Press coverage of two teachers: Barbara Riley's classes at the Rossmoor retirement complex, where a student with a hip replacement praised the gentle motion, and Lynne Blackford's full-page feature in the Missoulian.

Ed Altman's pyramid poem builds from the words "How easily" to the observation that still, centered beings forget their inner nature, with no self excluded from that forgetting.

Ralph Garn traces a single practice in clipped fragments, from rocking motion and soles of the feet to the dropping away of yesterday's to-dos and chi roaming freely.

A passage from Black Elk Speaks in which the Lakota holy man observes that the sky, the whirling wind, birds' nests, the sun, the seasons and life itself all move in circles.

Ed Altman urges teachers to ground their teaching in daily personal practice, discuss it weekly with students, start them small, and have them practise on lesson days.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst uses the koan "Inch time, Foot gem" to describe the gentleness and clarity students gain from Seijaku, and announces the February 1994 Seijaku Teachers Training in Albuquerque.

Four short letters from participants in the June 1993 teacher training in Alameda, including Rosa Santamaria Fallon on a classmate who credited T'ai Chi Chih with ending her addictions.

Justin Stone offers casual notes on the fullness of emptiness, gratitude as joy apart from satisfied desire, Confucius on human-heartedness and Teh, and why teaching must fit each person's Karma.

Justin Stone was first to send an early deposit for the 9th International Teachers' Conference at Vallombrosa Center, August 1994, which will mark 20 years of T'ai Chi Chih teaching; $75 holds a place.

Donna C. Pietrzak recounts the August 1993 San Diego teacher training, which closed with a silent round of T'ai Chi Chih whose sense of oneness brought tears of joy.

A birthday message of thanks to Justin Stone on behalf of the whole body of TCC teachers and friends, asking that each class be offered and received as an act of love.

Steve Ridley offers a series of aphorisms on stillness becoming movement, true giving as success, the final uselessness of pride, and why creative expression requires a calm mind.

Justin Stone retells the Buddha's instruction to a grieving mother to collect rice from any household untouched by death, arguing that accepting impermanence frees us from constant striving.

A short pyramid poem of thanks to one of the few people whose paths cross ours and change our outlook, addressed to someone the writer says she will never forget.

Steve Ridley warns that overextending a posture dissipates chi while folding in too far stagnates it, and advises keeping some yin in reserve when extending so circulation stays unbroken.

Loretta Shiver answers Justin Stone's remark about teachers underestimating the power of the Chi by saying she doubts only the vessel holding it, plus notes from Viola Moriarty and Vickie Brodie.