The Vital Force Archive

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.

R. Taggart's account of Sandy McAlister and Lois Mahaney appearing on Transitions, a local senior-issues TV program, where six students from Casa Sandoval Retirement Community performed ten minutes of seated TCC on air.