The Vital Force Archive

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.

Hannah Hedrick recounts how it took four Seijaku accreditation courses, and a new emphasis on moving through resistance with about a third less effort, before the advanced form finally called to her.

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.

April Leffler collects her students' metaphors for T'ai Chi Chih: sun melting a snowball of stress, wind rippling a lake, and trains passing a porch while the mind travels, plus Desiree A.'s list of life's paired energies.

Sr. Antonia Cooper counts the nine different names Justin Stone gave the rest pose in the T'ai Chi Chih Photo Text, notes his openness about how and when to practice, and prints the 2011 mission statement.

Jerry Bumbalough describes teaching seniors with Alzheimer's and dementia at an adult day health care facility, where early frustration turned around after Antonia advised him to simply say, "Copy me."

Nancy Werner-Azarski, who has attended every conference since 1996, lists what one weekend gave her, including lectures and meal talk, and how an injured knee upended her bias against seated T'ai Chi Chih.

Sandy McAlister turns her disappointment over a rose dropping its petals into gratitude, connecting the lesson on impermanence to Justin Stone's Chih K'uan practice of holding fast and letting go.

Joe Michaud's short poem watches a woman move through T'ai Chi Chih with liquid smoothness and unspent strength, ending on the turn that the dance dances the woman.

Pam Towne links year-end closet clearing and shredded tax records to the letting go practised in Seijaku, where each repetition passes through resistance back into softness, and thanks Justin Stone in his final process.

Joe Michaud's poem moves from moment-to-moment dying and returning to life, to Master Chang's butterfly dream, to the two dark and light fish chasing each other's tails, ending with a koan-like demand.