The Vital Force Archive

Justin Stone credits Corinn Codye with founding The Vital Force and Lucy Hocking with hosting the first Asilomar conference, then urges teachers to subscribe, submit articles and register early for Timothy Stuetz's summer gathering.

Wendy Helms of Orinda, California offers a two-line pyramid poem inviting the reader to listen to the silence and feel the peace of one-ness in the still center.

Roberta Taggart summarizes a Times report on William Haskell's federally funded Stanford study testing t'ai chi and other unconventional therapies against aging, measuring balance with eyeglass-mounted devices and stress indicators in saliva.

Timothy Stuetz urges teachers unsettled by Steve Ridley's resignation to attend the July 25-27 conference anyway, promising eight to ten group movement sessions, Joel Andrews' golden harp, a tea ceremony, and his own post-conference Meditation Intensive.

Rosa Fallon's pyramid poem moves forward and back, naming liberated energies, new places and pleasures, wonderful silence, deep breathing and release in a handful of lines.

Synopses and excerpts of four newspaper and magazine pieces on TCC, covering Sister Marian Massman in La Crosse, Sister Antonia Cooper and Edie Budney in New Jersey, Bonnie McKenzie in San Jose, and Elissa Maguire on muscle and posture.

Justin Stone announces "Chi Enhancement," a method for increasing the power of the jing that he will teach to teachers at the summer conference, and lays out the three levels a TCC teacher passes through.

Tamara Johnson of Portland offers three lines on simplicity, chi and feeling blessed, a brief statement of what the practice has given her.

Carmen Brocklehurst recommends Justin Stone's audio tape "Serene Nature," used in her classes and on the national PBS series, saying it recreates the serenity of a Japanese garden she visited with him.

Ed Altman takes up the Buddha's parable of the raft, arguing that it describes conduct after Enlightenment and gives no license for altering the T'ai Chi Chih movements in the name of evolution.

Rosa Fallon of Pittsburg, California offers a three-line pyramid poem tracing the search for center through T'ai Chi Chih, meditation and life itself.

Seventeen volunteers gathered quarterly at Lois Mahaney's San Lorenzo home to collate, label and stuff the journal for mailing, followed by silent practice, a pot-luck meal, and Linda Braga's Winter Solstice ceremony.

Justin Stone names TEH, or Inner Sincerity, as the basis of T'ai Chi Chih, credits teachers' sincerity for its growth, and warns against careless interviews that call the practice exercise.

Susan Patterson recounts years of struggling to find reliable rental space in San Diego before leasing her own studio in 1995, and concludes a studio is not needed to build a teacher family.

Corine Reeber takes an Oriental Painting class and finds the teacher's insistence on posture, focus and patient repetition mirrors T'ai Chi Chih, including a warning about students who impose their own style too soon.

Mark Jones likens T'ai Chi Chih to the star-filled night sky over his rural New Mexico home, then draws on Swami Muktananda's writing on nerve purification to explain periods of difficulty during accelerated practice.

Sandy McAlister relays student Joanne Ramirez's account of postponing surgery for a torn cartilage in her left knee, and after eighteen months of practice walking, climbing stairs and dancing again without pain.

Richard Brier describes teaching Rocking Motion, Bird Flaps Its Wings and the basic stance to ten people in the early stages of Alzheimer's, and how the program director went home energized rather than exhausted.

Alberta E. Osborne describes waking with tingling in her right leg and numbness in both feet, and how improvement began after her second T'ai Chi Chih class, leaving her 85 percent better.

Richard Brier's pyramid poem of repeated thanks for gifts, grace, time and space, ending with the image of the empty cup and a single request to rejoice evermore.

Lee Campbell reports a student who left her first TCC class pain free and, after six months of daily panic attacks, had none since, rocking many times a day and videotaping herself to check her movements.

Roberta Taggart offers five pointers for new or physically limited students to avoid delayed-onset muscle soreness: staying at 70% of capacity, adding practice time gradually, practising daily, warming up and breathing naturally.

A 15th century poem by Kabir advising the reader to skip the excursion to the garden, since the thousand-petalled flower inside the body is itself a place to sit.

Ann Doering recounts a two and a half week study trip to Hangzhou for Chinese medicine, chi gong and T'ai Chi, where she demonstrated T'ai Chi Chih for her Chinese teacher.

Lee Campbell gave back issues of The Vital Force to a Buddhist monk studying toward accreditation, and notes the Joy Thru Movement ad in The Empty Vessel and her gift of the book to Qi editor Michael Tse.

Justin Stone draws on the Buddhist Abidhamma's count of sixty-odd joyous states of consciousness against only three miserable ones, asking why people rush toward craving, anger and delusion instead of the joyous Way.

Sister Francis A. Kay fell six steps from a cabin ladder during a Kentucky retreat, fracturing a thoracic vertebra, and found the joyous movements more healing than her prescribed therapeutic exercises.

Newly accredited in spring 1996, Mark Jones offers the write-up he gives students, defining T'ai Chi Chih as a Chi Kung discipline, explaining Chi and the Great Yin and Yang, and urging daily practice for fun.

A short pyramid poem of spring, with a magenta sky, bare twigs, birds in winged procession and plum blossoms on the branches bearing witness to cyclical splendor.

Vickie Brodie's pyramid poem catalogues a backyard in spring: goldfinches at the birdbath, mourning doves on the fence, snapdragons in bloom, and air that is neither hot nor cold.