The Vital Force Archive

Steve Ridley describes how the Cosmic Consciousness Pose aligns chi and draws energy upward to the third eye, and offers a breathe-and-relax method for holding it several minutes.

Justin Stone's seven-line diamond form from Climb the Joyous Mountain is explained, followed by seven pyramid poems written by Carmen Brocklehurst's Seijaku students on stillness, chi and time.

Thank-you notes from Jeri Kline, Lise Kimball, Melody Rudolph, Judy Dunlevy and Elana Cohen following the October 1995 teacher training in Kearny Mesa, with gratitude to Steve Ridley, Susan Patterson and Justin Stone.

Justin Stone argues that family and financial life can be lived alongside an understanding of impermanence, and that recognizing the interrelatedness of all beings is where spirituality and an end to war begin.

Justin Stone credits the worldwide spread of T'ai Chi Chih to the good it does rather than promotion, and praises Steve Ridley for teaching six teacher training courses in one year with much travel and little financial reward.

Terry Jennings of Honolulu describes a symbol received during meditation at the October 1995 San Diego accreditation course: two semi-circles touching that became whole circles and then a moving mandala.

Justin Stone connects the Prajna Paramita Sutra's Perfection of Wisdom to T'ai Chi Chih, arguing that freely flowing balanced chi lets the Cosmic Rhythm move us, and asking whether we will release our habit energies.

Jan Martindale traces how T'ai Chi Chih moved her from a toxic job in Southern California to Portland, Oregon, then describes practising at Cathedral Rock in Sedona and joining group sessions in Albuquerque and Denver.

Mary Hong's piece for the Glenbrook South Oracle profiles math teacher Amy Hackenberg, who found T'ai Chi Chih through a Los Angeles Times notice and now offers free after-school classes to students and faculty.

Steve Ridley offers a set of brief reflections on spiritual growth as an unfolding of Consciousness, with aphorisms on relatedness, the sacredness of each moment, and shaping chi to shape our lives.

Carmen Brocklehurst recounts arriving at Chotoku-in temple in Kyoto, where Mrs. Ogata looked up from sweeping the moss and spoke Justin Stone's name, and closes with her own poem on jade green.

Excerpts from a Sept. 27, 1994 Albuquerque Journal feature on 78-year-old Justin Stone, tracing T'ai Chi Chih from a chance 1971 bookstore conversation to 800 teachers and the Chinese idea of TEH, inner sincerity.

Steve Ridley recommends pausing class to sit and talk with students about T'ai Chi Chih, balancing the work periods of moving together, plus short aphorisms on what makes teachers effective.

Mark W. Jones of Denver offers a short pyramid poem whispering that everything in existence is pure dancing joy, with the sun unable to contain its mirth and trees shaking with laughter.

A pyramid poem by Ann Oni Mousse descending from darkness through the absence of taste, color, smell, feeling and sound to a single question: from here to where.

Steve Ridley offers a brief sitting practice, breathing through the heart chakra with the affirmation "I am a vessel of peace," alongside sayings from M. T. Kupper and Ho Hu Tzu on surrender.

A short pyramid poem signed clb, picturing bright diamonds and rainbows falling from behind stone gray walls, and the joy that brings friends together to meet and ground.

Beverly McFarland's brief pyramid poem moves from resting to playing to Being, each held within the same ringing silence.

Carol Glinski recounts a class where a mother arrived with her two young children after her sitter cancelled, and the restless pair ended up still, hugging the teacher goodbye.

Lee Campbell recounts a 6 a.m. practice in a park across from her Lucerne hotel, where a bell clock chimed and a stranger practiced his own form of T'ai Chi behind her.

Steve Ridley's one-line pyramid poem places a listener in stillness beside a river, where the water's song is the thing from which realizations arise.

Jean Katus reports on Barbara Friedman of Florida, who learned T'ai Chi Chih at an Arizona Elderhostel, ordered a videotape, and found her hip pain gone, canceling planned replacement surgery.

Vicki Brodie casts T'ai Chi Chih as computer specifications, listing Regular Daily Practice as the operating system, a slowed baud rate, Chi downloaded during the Resting Pose and memory extended by storage in the T'an T'ien.

Connie Hyde's one-line pyramid poem, printed under the heading Seijaku in Denver, asks who it is that discerns, measuring change, robed in being.

Joanne Sultar describes a student who arrived feeling as rigid as Richard Nixon, and her new morning program moving with 318 kindergarten through third grade children in the schoolyard half a block from her house.

Donna J. Moore describes the carbon-copy check list she uses with accreditation candidates, with each movement scored on Enter, Hands, Feet, Exit and Other before she recommends them.

Steve Ridley offers a brief statement that thanking only for what we enjoy is shortsighted, since every experience can return us to wholeness, where gratitude becomes our natural disposition.

Carmen Brocklehurst recalls Justin Stone prompting shy new teachers to practice right inside the Albuquerque student union in 1981, and how a later demonstration for a fibromyalgia support group answered her questions.

Ralph Garn's practical advice for new teachers on finding venues, reaching the decision maker, and pricing, including how he rebuilt classes in Syracuse through a new age bookstore and a summer questionnaire.

Letters from Vicki Brodie, Steve Ridley, Justin Stone, Sr. Antonia Cooper and others praising the Denver conference issue, listing fall teaching schedules, and inviting responses to the book Ishmael.