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 1993
The December 1993 issue opens with Justin Stone retelling the Buddha’s instruction to a grieving mother, arguing that accepting impermanence frees us from striving. Carol Glinski describes practicing through pregnancy and using focused breathing in the labor room, and Barbara Peller counts a year of senior classes reaching 130 students a week. Justin Stone is also first to register for the 1994 Teachers’ Conference.
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.
Encouraging Joyful Movement
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.
Carmen L. Brocklehurst
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.