The Vital Force Archive

Steve Ridley answers students who ask which movement cures asthma or helps the heart, noting Justin Stone never prescribed outcomes, and giving only general chi influences for a few movements.

Carol Glinski credits daily practice with an easy pregnancy, no morning sickness and no swelling, and describes adding a lighter set of healing sounds to direct chi toward her unborn daughter Sasha.

Carmen Brocklehurst reports that the New Mexico Nurses Association approved a 12-hour, 8-week T'ai Chi Chih course for 14.4 continuing education credits, with Ellen Tatge administering records, plus late-night encouragement from Suni McHenry.

Barbara Peller describes her first semester teaching T'ai Chi Chih to seniors at three locations, with mid-class rest breaks, chairs on hand, movements talked through aloud, and students encouraged to advocate for their own bodies.

Steve Ridley urges stillness after practice rather than chatter and random motion, using the Cosmic Consciousness Pose and several quiet minutes seated to assimilate freshly circulated chi, as hatha yoga does after asanas.

Connie Hyde reports on the New Mexico teachers' January and February meetings, where the group practised together, worked out how to offer nurses Continuing Education credit, and traded intermediate class techniques.

Linda Sanchez describes the noon-time class she teaches for staff at UC Santa Barbara, where students report less stress after a few weeks, and notes her own tense areas softening.

Steve Ridley's pyramid poem watches a snow-laden poplar, seemingly withered and fixed to the earth, become a golden being with a lofty crown as the winter sun climbs to its zenith.

Ellen Tatge of Albuquerque filled all nine of the weekly classes she scheduled and started an ongoing Guided Practice hour so graduates of beginning classes could keep practising together.

Luis Sanchez teaches T'ai Chi Chih in two retirement communities and one public class, encouraging seniors to move within comfort and answering questions about softness with "are flowers relaxed?"

Roxann Post reports on the moves of John and Joy Barbour to Payson, David Smith to Idaho and herself to Nevada, with Loretta Hopper and Della Alberson taking over the Mohave Community College classes.

Catherine Johnson of Cedar Crest reports a conversation between two teachers whose practice balanced them in opposite ways, one drawn out of her head into her body, the other warding off depression.

Three classic Taoist and T'ai Chi passages: Wang Tsung-yue on how the practice recedes as you reach for it, and Lao Tsu on the usefulness of empty space and letting things take their course.

Derek Hirsch's pyramid poem, dedicated to the Chinese poets Li Po and Du Fu, moves from ducks at twilight and a moon emerging as teacher to a ruined temple and falling rain.

Sister Jackie Kingsbury and Sister Linda Reicks describe building T'ai Chi Chih into an eight-day retreat for 25 Catholic sisters in Texas, with morning sessions, massage, a sunrise practice outdoors, and participants' written evaluations.

Linda Braga describes a three-day silent retreat at a Dominican center with 40 people from her church, where crushing a tinfoil tea wrapper showed her how tense she still was.

Barbara Riley describes her first group presentation of T'ai Chi Chih at the Rossmoor active adult community, where more than 60 people attended the free demonstration and two full classes resulted.

Steve Ridley asks where the seeker of REALITY arises if REALITY already indwells us, and points to the mind's distractions that keep self-contraction and the myth of incompleteness alive.

Steve Ridley gives step-by-step instructions for breathing into the anahata chakra at the center of the chest, pausing, then exhaling as love radiates, with an affirmation of divine order.

Lu Marla Dorn of San Francisco reports private teaching, T'ai Chi Chih moves added to her Senior Fitness classes and a March workshop for CCSF instructors, while George Balliet teaches three weekly classes in Merced.

Steve Ridley distinguishes meditation undertaken to acquire Reality from the moment the common mind-body perspective drops away and the practitioner recognizes that the Light is what they already are.

Steve Ridley describes the chakra system rooted in sushumna nadi, the astral spine, as transmitters and receivers of subtle energy that distribute soul-force to mind and body.

Michael Merriman of Denver announced a published list of Colorado TCC Association teaching locations, arguing that teaching is not competitive since all certified instructors are competent, followed by his December 1992 poem on snow and awakening.

Steve Ridley defines Meditation not as an activity but as an enduring state lying just beneath mind-body personality, with mind and body as creative components serving experience in space-time dualism.

Jean Katus sets the Taoist healing sounds alongside Sun Dance drums, eagle-bone whistles and sage smoke in a pyramid poem that closes on the Lakota words Mitakuye Oyasin, all my relatives.

Steve Ridley argues that imitating enlightened behavior through 'shouldisms' and cause-effect strategies cannot produce Enlightenment, since it is already one's core nature, closing with a four-line verse.

Roxann Post's account of Steve's T'ai Chi Chih/Meditation Workshop in San Diego in November, hosted by Susan Webster, where mixed-experience participants found harmony of spirit and refinement of the movements.

Steve Ridley's pyramid poem moves from clasped hands and a grateful heart through Great Silence to a human symphony extending to Infinity and cycles progressing in timeless Light.

Diana Daffner recounts visiting Sister Antonia, the "Chi Kung Nun" of New Jersey, amid an east coast flood with evergreens uprooted against her house, where the two practiced together and talked about living in the present.

Hope Ridley passed along excerpts from Joi V. Eden's Accent on Living piece, listing seven guiding principles for t'ai chi practice adapted to physical challenges, from setting your own pace to keeping weight over the bearing area.