The Vital Force Archive

Lisa Thorburn traces a fourth grade lesson on tone of voice to the way teachers correct students, and suggests tape recording a class, inviting a trusted observer, or rehearsing feedback with another instructor.

Lois Broome thanks Pam, Margo and Justin for the Seijaku training weekend held at the Providence Centre in Edmonton, Alberta, April 29 to May 1, calling it easy beside her recent Teacher Training.

Leslie Keith quit smoking six months into T'ai Chi Chih, when a painful thrush infection and her doctor's advice coincided, and substituted movements and a glass of water for cigarette breaks.

Roberta Taggart reports on Pam Towne's one-day workshop at Loyola Marymount University, where 24 practitioners refined movements, partnered to sharpen observation skills, and welcomed Greg Callaghan six months after his release from Avenal Prison.

Margery Erickson describes a student in her spring class whose stiff, tense movements softened after she bought the video and practiced, replacing the electric neck massager she had used before work each day.

Classroom mishaps collected from Cristina Minelli, Sher Dano, Sharon Sirkus and Lisa Thorburn, including an Italian student who thought Sandy's talk of knees meant a missing girl named Denise.

Nancy Hoing writes to her teacher Ginny Morgan about being diagnosed with three hereditary clotting conditions, getting her medical team's approval for T'ai Chi Chih, and regaining strength, balance and reduced leg pain.

Two brief student notes: Sharon Narushoff thanks her teacher Margery Erikson for a discipline that fills her need for personal ritual, and Maryann Gottdenker says T'ai Chi Chih speaks to a seldom-addressed part of her.

Justin Stone presents quotations he found in old papers, possibly from Gopi Krishna's Higher Consciousness, on bioenergy and kundalini, with his own commentary on where they fit T'ai Chi Chih.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst notes that T'ai Chi Chih classes exclude no one, and that even imperfect movers gain balance, serenity and more, with deeper benefits reserved for wholehearted practice; plus Sharon Sirkus's rehabmanagement magazine find.

Justin Stone's casual notes argue for seeing from the Universal rather than the personal standpoint, calling time and change illusion, Nirvana the Garden of Eden, and most teachers tellers of what students want to hear.

Five pyramid poems by students in Sharon Sirkus' T'ai Chi Chih class at U.M.B.C., including Stephanie Meier on relaxing away from her kids and Angela Carroll's moonchild seeing herself for the first time.

Sandy McAlister answers common questions about the two-signature referral process, explaining what a well-prepared candidate looks like, why two teachers help, and why practice generally needs about two years to mature.

Dorene Krause traces her path from a first class to accreditation in November 2004, then gives the poem she wrote sitting alone on the beach during a New Jersey retreat.

Barbara Riley describes Bay Area teachers gathering in Wendy Helms' garden in June to celebrate Lois Mahaney's birthday with cake, recalling her years as Vital Force publisher and database founder.

Kathy Grassel describes the 4 by 7.5 foot banner TCC Guide Sr. Antonia Cooper designed for the 150th anniversary of her German motherhouse, founded in 1855 by Antonie Werr to care for women in need.

James Hecker recounts being expelled from the Knights of the Altar for asking questions, his Wisconsin farm boyhood, and the Navy corps schooling and Special Forces assignment that followed.

Cristina Minelli recounts Pam Towne's three-day April workshop in Italy, where the French group of Catherine Brieussel, her son Matthieu and student Jean Michel Victoire joined the Italians to form a European group of 22.

Judy Tretheway's web log entry on a week when three of four Folsom programs were cancelled, and she visited two locked-down students at their cell doors with handouts, meditation coaching and eye contact through a crack.

Sr. Antonia Cooper's May 28 and 29 workshop in Mantova, with Catherine Brieussel returning, taught the Italian group that flowing from the center matters more than knowing the movements.

Kathy Grassel introduces a religious drawing by Juana, one of her T'ai Chi Chih students in prison, explaining the paño tradition of pictorial letters that began in Texas, New Mexico and California jails in the 1940s.

Margery Erickson recounts the fourth annual teachers' retreat held at Lonnie Miller's beach houses, where a scheduled hour of Saturday solitude and ocean walks gave rise to written reflections from participants.

Kathy Starrick recounts her breast cancer diagnosis, surgery and recovery, practicing the movements mentally and then seated, and includes the Pyramid Poems that began arriving during her healing.

Dorene Krause returned to the Ringwood retreat center where she first learned T'ai Chi Chih, finding the intensive with Sandy McAlister and Dan Pienciak a kind of coming home.

Barbara Marysdaughter's poem sets her quiet, dim-lit class against the cardio-pump crowd glaring through the door glass, waiting to punch, as the TCC students bow and disappear.

Pat Flynn recounts the third annual June Intensive at Mt St Francis Retreat Center with Sandy McAlister, where students and teachers hit an overload meltdown and learned Sandy's maxim, "Look for progress, not perfection."

Mary Pat George describes her Atascadero fitness center class being scheduled back-to-back with body combat sessions, and how newcomers in fatigues unknowingly walked around the circle of energy her students had created.

Margo Carpenter recounts a snowy April weekend in Edmonton where Canadian students learned Seijaku with Pam Towne, joked about Bird Flaps Its Wings, and passed a basket to start a Canadian Teacher Training Fund.

Meg Costello, a Catholic Sister teaching with a physical disability, recounts five years of invitations: a stress management class at Georgian Court College where a student in a wheelchair wrote approving comments, monks at a New Jersey monastery, and a public school special needs class.

Nine participants at Margo's Canadian Seijaku weekend with Pam give their closing comments, returning again and again to the metaphor of resistance giving way to softness and to the pleasure of practising as a group.