The Vital Force Archive

Justin Stone contrasts the hard-to-grasp roots of Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism with Confucius' plainly understandable human-heartedness and TEH, urging honest examination of one's own financial dealings.

Ralph Garn of Syracuse notes that increased T'ai Chi Chih and meditation time has expanded his awareness, or perhaps old habits simply gave themselves up, leaving him feeling behind the projector.

Judith Jones describes teaching her first class after October 1994 accreditation at the Evergreen Cancer Center in Kirkland, where her twelve students included colleagues, volunteers, cancer survivors and community members.

Sandy McAlister observes that teachers each express TCC differently, with love, technical exactness or drama, and finds that seeing her own strengths and weaknesses clearly makes her less critical of others.

Ralph Garn of Syracuse builds a pyramid poem from arms rising to the open sky, painting with movement on an unseen canvas while chi draws and guides the outline clear.

Marc Heeg, a concert pianist in Boulder, finished his teacher accreditation amid a packed summer, began an October class with eight students, and had ten more waiting without any advertising, plus his brochure's account of yin and yang.

Jim Houle's pyramid poem holds life as something tenuous carried in the arms, nurturing at times and threatening to tear apart at others, yet letting us feel the universe's heartbeat.

Loretta Shiver's pyramid poem follows a westward drive at sunset, where the traffic dissolves into black silhouettes and orange silence, and peace remains after a curve returns the color.

Beverly McFarland describes her fourth-class Taffies and silent practice, Diana and Richard Daffner report free beach practice with dolphins and Diana's flute tape, and Hope Ridley balances quick learners with two students who have MS.

Virginia Shilson of Albuquerque offers short pyramid poems from her collection Poetic Views, addressing Mother Earth, an unnamed wildflower, a raven and his shadow, and gnarled winter limbs.

Steve Ridley describes advancing in T'ai Chi Chih as a matter of degrees: opening properly within each movement pattern while in energetic rapport with the space, continually emptying out to become fuller.

Barbara Riley's piece from the Jan.-Feb. 1995 HEALTH 2000 Newsletter introduces T'ai Chi Chih's twenty movements to newcomers, citing lower blood pressure, easier arthritis pain and better balance, and announcing her eight-week class series.

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.