The Vital Force Archive

Brenda Mounier resisted T'ai Chi Chih until her friend Caroline talked her into driving 90 minutes for eight weeks of class, and a year later she practices for herself.

Robert Montes de Oca describes a Tuesday morning teacher practice in Albuquerque where Carmen's remark about the flow of chi led him to trace it through his fingertips, heart center and t'an t'ien during Pulling In The Energy.

Joshewa describes how classes gifted to him and L'aura during her second pregnancy became a way of life in south Louisiana, crediting TCC with stress relief, emotional stability and stillness amid movement.

Pia Knighton took over her teacher's classes at the Cenacle Retreat Center right after accreditation, then built classes at a community center, a retreat house, and the Menninger Clinic psychiatric units.

Mary Ann Moran tracks her husband's sudden job loss, resumes sent across the country and a new job in a new city, threading movement names through the refrain stay focused, stay centered, stay positive.

Jim Shorr led 7 a.m. TCC practice for fellow Road Scholar travelers during a 16-day tour of Turkey, culminating in a demonstration of the first nine movements for Dervish hosts.

Becky Watkins taught T'ai Chi Chih at two conferences for grief professionals and bereaved parents, drawing on her son's death, and dolphins surfaced in Biscayne Bay during Push Pull.

Janet Mayers recounts her first year of classes with teacher Lisa, from sore knees in Rocking Motion and over-turning in Pulling Taffy to naming the movements to fall asleep.

Jackson Rains, whose first beginners' class completed all 19 movements after six sessions, lists reminders for new teachers: smile, move confidently, limit lectures and handouts, watch the students, keep a journal.

Jeneth Rundle's poem traces Pulling In the Energy from the receptivity of the fingertips and open palms, through humility's door, to dissolving into an Essence bath of Peace.

Justin Stone offers more aphorisms from his 20th Century Psalms, on the three levels of truth, the Pleasure-Pain Continuum most people inhabit, and why Realization cannot be forced any more than a tree can blossom early.

Chris Norkus watches fifteen students at his FirstHealth class practice within their own abilities, likening them to blooming dandelions, and describes Christina falling mid-class and her hard-won gains.

Marcy Burns describes the second annual candlelight practice at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ventura, where 40 practitioners lit each other's candles and honored Justin Stone and Phyllis Luyken on her 90th birthday.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst examines why Justin Stone insisted he originated T'ai Chi Chih rather than created it, distinguishing the work of wisdom from intellect, cunning and the attachments that cling to them.

On Justin Stone's 95th birthday, the writer and a friend improvised a ceremony at the Bosque by the Rio Grande, launching a bark boat that snagged on a tree until stone and petal fell away.

Mark Tucker strings the names of the T'ai Chi Chih movements into a single day's narrative, from a breezy sunrise Rocking Motion through taffy makers at a summer circus fair to a noontime Cosmic Consciousness Pose of gratitude.

Amy Tyksinski responds to a senior practitioner who stopped lifting her front foot fully, arguing that the foot hinging to 45 degrees comes from the t'an t'ien and carries aliveness rather than tension.

April Leffler recounts a dream in which a frail, legless Justin Stone stood in a rehab room, clasped her hands, spoke in a foreign language with glowing eyes, and said he could not find his way home.

Mary Griffith traces a teenage memory of a couple practicing on the Encinitas bluff to her own first class with Joanne Thomas, and the practice that carried her and her sister through their mother's colon surgery.

Amy Tyksinski explains that the Cosmic Consciousness Pose brings the energy back together after the ida and pingala have been strengthened by the separating of the movements.

Justin Stone unpacks the Indian formula Sat-Chit-Ananda and the workings of karma, then tells how Paul Reps greeted Japan with "Tea Ceremony stinks!" to jolt people out of habit energies.

Molly Grady hosted Sandy McAlister's November 2011 Albuquerque accreditation course, where ten candidates from a teenager to a 70-something and twenty-one auditing teachers dismantled and rebuilt their practice.

Caroline Guilott describes holding the Cosmic Consciousness Pose for a minute at the end of practice, the phrase "heaven, earth and men in the middle," the focus settling to the t'an t'ien, and the feeling of being rooted through the soles of the feet.

Stephen M. Steffan, six to eight months into study with Gale Rublee Portman, combined his longtime labyrinth walking with TCC and found Rocking Motion starting on its own, followed by a strong electrical tingling and an unusually deep prayer session.

Ann Rutherford collects answers from the November 2011 accreditation candidates on weight shift, t'an t'ien, stillness between movements, presentation nerves and diploma day, followed by their Pyramid Poems.

Judy Chancey traces Justin Stone's beginner instruction to focus on the soles of the feet from her first lessons to the rest position she used to steady herself while launching a business.

Larry Kowalski, a 74-year-old retired Catholic priest who calls himself unathletic and self-conscious, describes three classes where slow demonstration, weekly review and tactful corrections left him relieved rather than taxed.

Sheryl Adair and Caroline Guilott compiled attendees' answers to Carmen Brocklehurst's two questions at the October 2011 Albuquerque retreat, from complacency after 18 years to loose wrists, grounding and locked car keys.

Lisa M. Otero recalls Justin Stone's effortlessly erect posture and teaches Cosmic Consciousness Pose by first engaging the tan t'ien, so students can lift heel and hands without tensing knees or shoulders.

Terry Slaney watched five cranes foraging silently in a wheat field on her drive to class, and found in their balanced movement a lesson in theme and variation, softness and continuity.