The Vital Force Archive

Wendy Helms, troubled that her paying students in dojos and universities were all privileged, volunteered to teach a weekly class in a county transitional housing program for homeless families.

Jim Hecker recounts Justin Stone's May 1998 visit to Old Folsom State Prison, where he dropped the title 'Master,' talked to seventy convicts, and stayed for handshakes and autographs.

Joso's pyramid poem builds from a single word to the image of a frog floating by the power of complete non-attachment, letting go rendered in seven short lines.

Susan Larson-Waugh's newspaper profile of Joe Apt, who teaches up to 15 classes a week despite multiple sclerosis and a triple bypass, and of student Lenore Listiak, strengthening knees after replacement surgery.

Ed Altman asks a cashier for change and watches her grab the exact number of quarters, using the moment to describe the flow, ease and "every moment Zen" that daily practice brings.

Carrie Kinsey profiles Tara Stiles, accredited in 1979 at Green Gulch Zen Center, who teaches full time, works with the Old Folsom Prison meditation group, and has hosted about 40 outdoor retreats.

Carmen Brocklehurst answers the common question of what to do with students who have learned all the movements, recommending the "Justin Stone Speaks" audio tape and a teacher's eye for level yinning and yanging, curly cues and rising elbows.

Teacher updates including Donna Shaffer's retreat classes at the Marianist Center, Pat Huseby's staff workshops ahead of an Alzheimer's class, Christina Minelli's new post in Mantova, and a farewell gift for Liz Salada.

Barbara Sommers describes a year-long seated class at a Senior Day Care Center, where foot stamping built awareness of the soles, chairs in a circle curbed wandering, and the first ten movements were adapted left foot then right.

Carol Krucoff's San Jose Mercury News column, reprinted here, reports a Johns Hopkins study of 62 sedentary adults over 60 in which t'ai chi lowered systolic blood pressure nearly as much as aerobic exercise.

Justin Stone draws on the bamboo that bends with the wind and snaps back unharmed to argue that softness outlasts hardness and that the Sage accomplishes everything by doing nothing.

E. Box of Seal Beach offers a pyramid poem setting corn kernels, fish scales, pottery designs and blanket patterns beside the swimmer's stroke and the bird's wing, ending with T'ai Chi Chih's total freedom.

Dale Buchanan describes how a phone conversation with Carmen Brocklehurst about intention led him to drop Reiki, massage and other modalities and teach only T'ai Chi Chih at his new studio.

Justin Stone distinguishes ahimsa, which he says anyone can live by, from vairagya or non-attachment, which he calls nearly impossible for a householder, and credits prajna with finding his Albuquerque house in minutes.

Vivian Hoff arrived at her senior class at a St. Paul community center fighting a respiratory infection, and found her balance and breathing cleared as the chi cultivated by all twenty students took over.

Kathy Grassel reviews Spiritual Odyssey, the collection of Justin Stone's 1985 to 1997 essays, poems and napkin-scribbled snippets, drawing out its recurring themes of practice over theory and non-attachment.

A countdown of ten inducements to the 1998 Teachers' Conference, from green chile and the Talent Show to moonrise over the Sandias, Justin's new Spiritual Odyssey book, and learning the Jing.

Ed Altman recounts Justin Stone's May lecture and demonstration for inmates at Folsom State Prison, and the teacher training that prepared inmate James Hecker to lead classes there.

Aida Wilks describes three weeks of teaching T'ai Chi Chih in Manila in 1998, where children responded faster than adults and her two asthmatic nephews, aged 7 and 8, went attack-free.

Sr. Antonia Cooper takes the bamboo tree as her teacher, finding in it both the yang of strength and the yin of surrender, two pulls she now embraces rather than resists.

Noel Altman argues that Justin Stone works as a Zen master, delivering modern koans that trigger emotional crisis, and describes how years of T'ai Chi Chih and Seijaku practice eventually stopped those reactions.

Justin Stone lays out the yogic terms Sat Chit Ananda, the three gunas and avidya, warning that the one-ness found at a good ashram can trap a seeker in the vertical rather than the everyday world.

Bill Moore, a horn player and former Integral Yoga teacher, writes to Justin Stone that two years of T'ai Chi Chih slowed his breath, lowered his center of gravity and eased neck and shoulder tension.

Tori Fiore of Phoenix offers a short pyramid poem calling practitioners away from thoughts of ME and back to the chi, igniting all hearts through a shared sense of We.

A pyramid poem by R. M. Zurkan of Fairhope, Alabama, praising earth, sky and the weather outside the door, and ending in the claim that the world and the self contain each other.

Linda Braga describes a television program on NASA's human centrifuge experiments, in which pilots reported out of body experiences before blacking out, and asks what that suggests about chi and cosmic consciousness.

Shirley Ownes, 80, recounts how T'ai Chi Chih helped her recover from a 1997 hip replacement, her surgeon approving practice before and after, and how Sharon Sirkis' live class outdid the televised lessons she had followed.

Roberta Taggart argues that the TCC community is the link between individual practice and service to a lonely world, and lists the auditing, group practices, projects and conferences that keep teachers bonded.

Guy Kent recalls being intimidated yet struck by Justin Stone's approachability, notes Justin's one request that teachers not practice carelessly, and urges teachers to attend July's annual conference while they can.

Carrie Kinsey describes teaching her father, who has ankle arthritis and a mild tremor from Parkinson's, in a backyard class after her mother's death, and the modest gains that followed.