The Vital Force Archive

Marlene Brown hosted a one-day workshop at a tree-covered former monastery where Ed taught sixty-three people from seven states to move without tension, including one woman practising seated in a chair.

Dan Pienciak hosts Ed Altman's accreditation course at Mt. Manresa over Easter week, recounting expressway noise, lost luggage, a funeral, and ten candidates whose movements fell apart before coming together.

Margo Carpenter hosted the first T'ai Chi Chih teacher training held in Edmonton, Alberta, where fourteen candidates from Montreal to Orange, California practised with Ed Altman, joined by auditors from three provinces.

Carmen Brocklehurst urges teachers who already practise daily to attend the annual conference in New Jersey, arguing that leaving home opens a closed window and gives something back to the community.

Neena Mitchell describes how a YMCA student's discovery that muscle contractions move lymphatic fluid led her class to study lymphatic and foot reflex diagrams, motivating far more practice of Rocking Motion and the weight shift.

Letters in which Justin Stone praises the March issue, Guy Kent follows the Folsom prison reports, Neena Mitchell meets Carolyn Perkins by chance in Manhattan, and Grady Anderson reports his accreditation.

Richard Detert and two university colleagues tested 35 education professionals who learned T'ai Chi Chih at a weekend workshop, measuring stress manifestations and well-being after four weeks of journaled practice.

Justin Stone recounts visiting an animal farm where a hand-raised puma lunged at the chicken wire toward his gruff companion, and he watched his own breath stay calm throughout.

Dene Bourne, a student of Wendy Helms, describes buying a restaurant, the consuming neck and shoulder pain that followed, and the two days of burning heat in her back that ended it.

Justin Stone contrasts a culture of convenience, one-person-per-car loneliness and the quest for money with the inner Joy that comes from sincere TCC practice, Turiya meditation, gratitude and service to others.

Sherri Taylor punctured her left palm with a paring knife in August 1999 and credits daily Bass Drum, Push Pull and Pulling in the Energy, plus massage, with restoring sensation and avoiding nerve surgery.

Ed Altman traces the apparent contradiction teachers pose to students: first let every part of the body move independently, then let no part move on its own, since the Chi moves it all.

Nancy Jo Bleier describes teaching one-credit beginning and intermediate TCC courses at University of Alaska Southeast, plus monthly T'ai Chi Chih by the Sea gatherings behind the Sitka library.

After a party guest dismissed T'ai Chi Chih as boring, Marianne Ferrari describes her own beginner's athletic overeffort and the gyroscopic center, softness and inner quiet she found instead.

Sharon Sirkis closes her final class by asking each student to bring an object symbolizing what T'ai Chi Chih gave them, then lists twenty-five choices from bubble wrap to a plant.

Amy Hackenberg reviews Justin Stone's new T'ai Chi Chih video, praising its three-part structure, Justin's spare instruction on softness and weight shift, and the wordless practice session with four teachers.

Sr. Patty Campbell describes the Friday half-hour of seated T'ai Chi Chih she leads for retired sisters in St. Clare Hall infirmary, plus Monday sessions broadcast on closed circuit TV.

Justin Stone strings together aphorisms on circular versus linear time, the Zen story of the monk who carried a woman across a swollen river, and vairagya, naming TCC practice as a way to dissolve habit-energy.

Noel Altman describes choosing a small, quirky conference room with windows and wooden floors over larger HMO spaces, and how teaching in a circle improved group cohesion.

Carla Grant, several months pregnant and teaching five classes a week, describes how the baby gave her the surrender she could never give herself, softening her balance, knees and spine.

In a letter to the editor, Deanne Hodgson reports leaving her part-time nursing job to teach at twelve locations, joining Arizona Integrated Medicine and becoming T'ai Chi Chih consultant at Scottsdale's Healing Oasis.

Amelia Roache's notes from three practices record finding the soles of her feet, the moment the feet, T'an T'ien and starlight became one, and the yin-yang exchange within the weight shift.

In a letter to Noel, Jackie Williamson describes teaching her third eight-week class in Moose Jaw, letting go of self doubt, and promoting T'ai Chi Chih through a newspaper editorial and local cable TV.

Susan Kissinger describes giving up the hope of a silent house before dawn, shifting her intent to savoring each movement, and the changes that followed: diminished inner chatter, sounder sleep, and fewer esophageal spasms.

Sharon Sirkis collects classroom moments, from seniors interlocking fingers during Around the Platter to a student doing Pulling Taffy at red lights, and Nancy Vermond's seated class flows to Frank Sinatra.

Cheryl Hall credits her teacher Elizabeth Tyler, her mother Shirley Hall, and trainers Hal and Annelle Henson for the motivation that carried her through accreditation, after which her morning class grew from six seniors to 26.

Six Pyramid Poems in the form Justin Stone originated in Climb the Joyous Mountain, from Eric Imbody, Nancy Jo Bleier, Sharon Sirkis, Susan Kissinger and Elizabeth Siedlecki.