The Vital Force Archive

Jane Piepmeier, a first grade teacher living with migraines, rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia, describes how a brochure at a York mind/body clinic led her to Hope Spangler's class and daily morning practice.

Thirteen attendees, many of them first-timers, describe Conference 2001 at St. Mary's: Justin Stone on purifying habit energies, Ed Altman's alignment work and leap of faith talk, and the rededication ceremony.

Joseph Lomonico limped into a sample class with a painful, stiff right ankle, and by the fourth session, while doing Push Pull, the pain stopped and he walked nearly normally.

Sr. Antonia Cooper gives full instructions for the Rededication Candle Ceremony, from candle suppliers and spiral formations to the stepping pattern, reflection questions and the yin-yang meaning of each hand.

Dan Pienciak describes the seven month, once-a-month preparation course he ran with Sr. Antonia Cooper in New Jersey and the payment timelines, referral form cautions and Good Karma product orders he handled as host for 18 candidates.

Hannah Hedrick, a teacher of fourteen years, noticed corrections given and received with new gentleness at the 2001 Conference, and asks readers to telephone one lapsed teacher and invite them back to a gathering.

April Leffler, accredited just ten months earlier, audits a weeklong New Jersey teacher training with 18 candidates and 16 auditors, watching practices fall apart and come back together.

Deborah Cole's untitled pyramid poem urges grounding in thought and deed, letting the river of life lead, and finding the power of all within, including life's unwanted gifts.

Kathy Starrick writes on the last night of her accreditation week about wrestling with her ego, discovering that the Chi, not she, moved her audience, and learning to ground through the bubbling springs.

Judy Tretheway's poem stands in the Cosmic Consciousness Pose, poised between heaven and earth on the tiny tripod of the feet, finding alignment, center and softness within sturdy bones.

Ann Rutherford reports on the open forum night at the September Meditation Retreat, where Justin Stone asked whether one can live a spiritual life as a householder and advised plain food, less sleep and non-attachment.

Joe Lomonico's pyramid poem builds toward enlightenment through removing walls of race, religion and nationality, recognizing kinship, and encouraging right by loving interaction rather than might.

Noel Altman's account of the November 2001 Albuquerque Teacher Renewal and Teacher Training, where 15 candidates graduated, four certificates were withheld, and Justin Stone's stern corrections opened one auditor's t'an t'ien.

Two pyramid poems by Jan Linthorst, one on group practice leaving him glowing with chi for days, the other thanking Justin Stone for the teachers conference.

News briefs announce the 2002 Teachers' Conference in San Antonio on the theme "Return to the Source of the Bubbling Spring," Carolyn Hales Perkins interviewed on bone density, the Fleischmans at a Shepherd's Centers conference, and a teaching rotation at an Idyllwild Christian retreat.

Seven classroom mishaps collected from Sharon Sirkis, Debbie Cole, Ann Sollars and others, including a church bulletin advertising "Moving Medication" and a carpet-scraping heel dubbed the Chi Dragon.

Wendy Howard recounts her first year as a new teacher, from handing out attendance certificates to her beginning classes to the after-practice conversations where her continuing students do most of the talking.

Kathy Starrick watched smoke rise over the Twin Towers from her New Jersey living room, then faced it and offered her practice to those across the river, Passing Clouds releasing grief and relief.

Letters requesting prints of the back-cover photo of Justin and Ed, with photographer Alice Maisel's prices, plus Cristina Minelli's account of an Open Encounter talk in Italy that won a professor's pledge to bring T'ai Chi Chih to the University of Verona.

Sr. Marie-Ann Main passes along letters from her Pietermaritzburg group, which she drives more than 70 miles from Durban to teach monthly, reporting looser joints, relief from 21 years of back pain, and lifted depression.

Linda Braga expected one or two students at her fall class in San Leandro on September 11, 2001, and twenty-five came; midway through they lit a candle and kept silence for the dead.

Ed Altman announces that Sandy McAlister and Pam Towne have become T'ai Chi Chih Teacher Trainers, outlining their accreditation histories, the workshops they will lead in Chicago and Indianapolis, and why shared leadership is needed.

Carmen Brocklehurst maps her eight-session Intermediate class week by week, from the opening full practice through stop-action work on the Taffies, with counting repetitions on the fingers and an invitation to Seijaku at the end.

Justin Stone warns against decorative, dance-like gestures, correcting the aimless hand waving he sees in Bird Flaps its Wings, Pulling Taffy Variation #2, Light at the Top of the Head and Daughter in the Valley.

Sr. Grazyna Michniewicz's photo essay from the St. Francis Center in Scottsdale, where she practiced T'ai Chi Chih and found Justin Stone's book for sale in the center's book shop.

Justin Stone warns that gossip and petty squabbles have crept into a practice meant for Love and Joy, and praises Ed Altman's leadership at teacher training courses and workshops.

Donna McElhose struck up a conversation about T'ai Chi Chih while waiting for a movie to start, and one of the two women she gave a card to dropped her psych class to enroll at the college instead.

Sr. Patty Campbell recounts a blood infection and knee replacement that kept her from moving, and how she mentally practised all nineteen movements and the Six Healing Sounds from her hospital bed, closing with two autumn poems on a sweet gum tree.

Elaine Unzicker writes to Ed that her backyard class, begun September 8 with six students and promoted only by flyers and a yoga teacher's introduction, has grown to ten, with an Ojai Day demo ahead.

Nancy Vermond, grieving the hurried clearing of her sister's condo after Alzheimer's moved her into a nursing home, found in the Around the Platter Variation a reminder to hold on lightly.