The Vital Force Archive

Steve Ridley writes that identities are perishable and transitory, and that the fullest enjoyment of visiting one comes when we reawaken as free consciousness playing through our specialized perspective.

Steve Ridley's pyramid poem on meditation, describing rest in the miraculous temple above desire impulses.

Steve Ridley offers a brief contemplation on how closer attention to inner life clarifies the outer world, until spiritual growth erases the distinction between the two to reveal composite Being.

Justin Stone contrasts humanity's lasting cultural history with the fleeting record of aggression, and argues that circulating and balancing the Chi through T'ai Chi Chih speeds our slow spiritual evolution beyond egocentric thinking.

Steve Ridley describes the spiritual teacher as a power plant transmitting shakti, and the sincere student as one who receives that evolutionary energy through attunement.

Richard Brier of Mill Valley offers a pyramid poem on the well-being of those who love, where strangers become friends in slight disguise and the fear of death dissolves.

Steve Ridley likens spiritual growth to peeling an onion layer by layer, reaching a center where nothing remains, a journey that takes many tears.

Steve Ridley's pyramid poem states that being soul-centered brings completeness and wholeness, and the recognition that all knowledge unfolds from within us rather than from outside.

Steve Ridley describes the subtlest teaching as blending with the student to impart instruction and vital force, requiring the teacher's continual surrender in service while centered in Reality consciousness.

Ralph Garn of Syracuse offers a pyramid poem tracing the pearl formed in the center of being, drawn from breath, stillness and the cycles of time into growth of Spirit.

Steve Ridley argues that sincere spiritual practice builds a storehouse of good karma, and that one can awaken to a state essentially free of karma while still honoring cause and effect.

Readers including Justin Stone, Jean Stone, Sandy McAlister and Anita Germain praise the anniversary issue, and Steve Ridley connects the Chinese proverb "Fallen Leaves Return To Roots" to softness and continuity.

Justin Stone explains why accreditation candidates give presentations, and how new teachers should use personal experience, two sample movements and definite class plans to win an audience and fill classes.

Richard Brier names softness, slowness, circularity and continuity as the essence of T'ai Chi Chih, describing practice as open-eyed meditation, 'mind-fasting,' and sinking into bubbling spring to root like a tree.

Steve Ridley's pyramid poem sets birth and death against the one that remains, closing with the charge that each person must ask what matters.

Maggie Hall and Victor Berg exchanged wedding vows at a Northern California winery with Carmen Brocklehurst officiating, joined by teachers Sandy McAlister, Lois Mahaney and others among fifty guests.

Carmen Brocklehurst looks back on the Christmas frenzy and the simple aspirations that bring people to T'ai Chi Chih: peace of mind, waking without pain, breathing, and the grace that followed.

Ed Altman offers timing cues for the soft-to-hard shift in Seijaku, including a visualization of a stiff rubber band at the waist and feet glued to the ground.

Excerpted from Climb the Joyous Mountain, Justin Stone describes the fasting mind that discards as it grows, calls meditation hard work with no material reward, and insists we cause our own suffering and must change ourselves.

After ten years as editor of The Vital Force, Lois Mahaney steps back to make room for others, staying on to handle database updates, the Teacher Directory and teacher referrals.

Yogi Pranananda offers a single-line contemplation on abundance, holding that possessiveness and acquisitiveness arise only when we forget the world is already continually arising within our Being.

Steve Ridley, who came to T'ai Chi Chih from Hatha and Raja Yoga, answers a question about the upper tan t'ien with Justin Stone's dream reply: the 3rd eye is the icing on the cake.

Steve Ridley's two-line pyramid poem asks why we cling to what already binds us, answering that being here is sufficient.

Victor Berg of Mill Valley writes to Justin Stone about a dream of being barred from reaching him by a revolving door, and the lines that came during the meditation that followed.

Steve Ridley offers a two-line parable in which a mask maker cares nothing for his happy, sad, silly or hideous faces, only for the purity of the gold they are forged from.

Steve Ridley describes daily T'ai Chi Chih practice as a catalyst that keeps practitioners moving toward greater consciousness-functioning, and argues that this promise should inspire regular practice.

Noel Altman of Redmond, WA suggests teachers lend Justin's and Steve's books, cassettes and videos to students for a week or two during a course, with order forms for those who want to buy.

Barbara Joy writes from Battery Park City about leaving her job teaching at-risk high school students to build her own practice, teaching T'ai Chi Chih to Wall Street lawyers, financial whizzes and New York City school teachers.

Two short contemplations from Yogi Pranananda, framing the choices of free will as either freeing or binding consciousness, and calling our sense of identity a temporary, transitioning one.

A pyramid poem by Ilse Meyer of Fremont, California, finding joy in children skipping and hanging from bars, trumpet vines bursting into red cascades, and creation itself as God at play.