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 1997
The December 1997 issue carries Justin Stone’s insistence that teacher training candidates arrive already doing the form correctly, and his account of a plant growing from barren rock on the Albuquerque tramway. Rosalind L. Braga describes a retreat leader whose hands stiffened with chi at Santa Sabina, and Carrie Kinsey interviews Theda Gillespie, teaching at 81 in New Zealand.
Karen Scharf-Morgan reports on the Albuquerque accreditation course where twelve candidates from New York to Alaska were certified with help from Ed and Noel Altman, Pam Towne and auditing teachers, plus Justin's nightly reminders of softness.
Kay Monroe Farrell thanks her teacher Richard Brier and describes how daily Shibashi Qigong and T'ai Chi Chih eased her fear of metastatic colon cancer and preceded a 59% drop in her CEA.
Host Jeanie Lemaire describes a five-day course led by Ed and Noel at a candidate's home and outbuilding, accrediting eight new teachers, with a comment from auditing teacher Sharon Sirkis.
Mary Stebbins, a museum educator, found that doing T'ai Chi Chih over her lunch hour changed how a restless boa constrictor behaved during her live animal demonstrations.
Mary Stebbins
Baldwinsville, NY
Hosts Carol Armstrong and Marjorie Peltier report on North Carolina's first accreditation course, where Ed Altman certified seven candidates on September 27, 1997, bringing the state to nine teachers.