The Vital Force Archive

Liz Salada makes the case that teachers who co-sponsor community events gain reciprocal guidance and flexibility that solo teaching lacks, citing the I Ching on synergy and collective achievement.

Chris McLain traces the miscommunication that dogged the 1991 "On the Family" conference, including a transport committee missing Justin's flight, and poses questions on certification, honoring teachers, and students' healing crises for the 1992 Vallombrosa gathering.

Virginia Shilson's first-person account of a month in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, describing the crowded streets full of cattle, camels and rickshaws and her daily afternoon visits to meditate at the feet of her injured Guruji.

Jeanne Jacobs recounts a Teacher Review in Victoria B.C. where the suggestion to return before arriving in Push Pull kept her hands flowing and, in teaching, kept her non-attached.

Conference coordinator Pam Towne outlines the July program at Vallombrosa, including silent and refining practice, optional meditation, workshops, a display room for members' artworks, and the Seijaku accreditation schedule with check-in times and registration deadlines.

Vicki Brodie recommends accredited teachers sit and watch Steve's practice tape rather than move along with it, as a way to rethink and refine movements after seeing others practise differently.

Prompted by Master Steve Ridley's phrase "you are teaching physical prayer," John J. Barbour describes TCC as communion with nature and Cosmic Energy, bringing rejuvenation, longevity and eventual serenity.

Teachers report in: Chris McLain brings TCC to nursing staff at Fargo hospitals, Donna Shaffer leads poolside sessions for Apple developers, and Ellen Greyson describes losing years of joint pain.

Jennifer Biehn describes how meditating with other educators in the Educator's Sangha strengthened her resolve, and how she presented T'ai Chi Chih to co-workers at San Francisco State.

A Center for Healthy Aging newsletter near Chicago praised T'ai Chi Chih for lowering blood pressure and cholesterol, and announced a 12-week class taught by Nancy Meyer and Hannah Hedrick with an optional research study.

Jennifer's set of breathing gathas, dated Spring 1991, pairs each in-breath and out-breath with a line on calming, seeing what needs doing, compassion, nonattachment and bringing joy to work.

Chris McLain reports that she and instructor Colleen Heising are working with Dr. Alberto Pontillo of the Fargo Veterans Hospital on the first research study of T'ai Chi Chih and Alzheimer's.

Steve Ridley describes the air as saturated with Chi, argues that complex spiritual systems hinder reception of it, and gives a seated breathing prelude moving awareness from soles to t'an t'ien to head top.

Nurse Marty Wilkes describes how T'ai Chi Chih, taught by Mark Louris, became part of the three-week Chronic Pain Program at Sister Kenny Institute, Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis.

Virginia Shilson of Albuquerque takes up Justin Stone's statement that there is re-birth but no-one who is reborn, working through her return from India, reincarnation, and thought as reusable energy.

Steve Ridley recounts a brief exchange from one of his public classes, in which his detailed instruction for overlapping forearms in Pulling Taffy drew the protest that students have only two arms.

Steve Ridley describes the unfolding of innate Knowing as conceptual constraints of our own making fall away, with transitory veils of limitation lifted one by one in the world of forms.

Carmen Brocklehurst describes the blue/violet light visualization Justin Stone taught at the 1991 Teachers Conference, and how she finally felt it by imagining her own shower water as that light.

Steve Ridley unpacks Justin Stone's two tasks, knowing who you are and according with impermanence, as a "Great Circle of Completion" in which only awakening beyond ego allows genuine rather than merely relative accord.

Lia Ridley of Denver traces her teaching principle back to her first day facing 32 fourth graders, and to the pride-swallowing it takes to keep coming from love rather than self-concern.

Asked about one student's problem area, Justin Stone answered that how students move matters more than memorizing movements, urging teachers to show softness and, where possible, a lower stance.

Newspaper coverage of teachers Alison Douglas, Hope Ridley and Lisette Tingsdahl, including a Wyandotte seniors class where one student with a bad back felt relaxed but not tired.

Steve answers Jeanne Jacobs of Stanwood on hand placement in the second half of Daughter in the Valley, insisting the hands rise only with the backward weight shift to avoid a hollow move.

Steve's pyramid poem sets the vain dream of external perfection and ego-preference against an Awakened Consciousness that rides the ups and downs easefully, concluding that perfection is seeing True.

Chapter 34 of the Tao Teh Ching, printed in full, describing the Great Tao as a flood that clothes and feeds all creatures while claiming nothing and lording over no one.

Connie Hyde's pyramid poem pairs a birthday practice among the pines and woodpeckers of the Sandia Mountains with the drive home to fire trucks and volunteers watering her garage.

Billie Blair Miller describes team teaching with Fran Dukehart and taking over Martha Immel's Morro Bay classes, while Betty Comey lists the fitness clubs, bookstore, third graders and cable series her accreditation opened up.

Carmen Brocklehurst gave a 30-minute demonstration to court-mandated "At Risk" teenagers in Albuquerque, fielding wisecracks and giggles until one departing boy said it was the calmest he had felt in a long time.

Justin Stone questions whether anything is unholy, citing Krishnamurti and Bodhidharma's "vast emptiness," then offers brief verses on evanescence, rebirth and walking through snow without destination.

Steve offers a single-sentence reminder that growth usually calls not for a new teaching but for renewed commitment, effort and willingness to dive deeper into the path already chosen.