The Vital Force Archive

A passage from Master Lam Kam Chuen's The Way of Energy describes a walled courtyard at dawn where a motionless tree's hidden root hairs patiently split the stone and mortar.

In a letter to Ed Altman, Sr. Viola Bens describes how a local newspaper story drew over 30 calls, filling classes from a retreat to a resort, with students aged 11 to their 80s.

Noel Altman reports that teachers led by Doug Harned bought the 13-part PBS videotape series for Folsom Prison to air on its TV station, and explains how to donate more materials.

Sharon Sirkis collects five classroom mishaps, including the senior center gentleman who wanted to push away his wife, a student aware only of his bladder, and a newsletter that billed her as Sharm Sinkis.

Susan Patterson recounts how Dr. Tahir Bhatti's grant-funded study on T'ai Chi Chih and chronic lower back pain led to a three-minute CBS Morning News clip and 650 calls.

Seven pyramid poems from Sharon Sirkis, Ed Altman, Karen Molloy, Justin Stone and Noel Altman, on ice-wrapped trees, a raindrop holding the world, dying inwardly, and roadrunners.

Tara Stiles reports that three Kaiser facilities contracted her, Judy Tretheway and Nancy Reed through Health Education and Behavioral Medicine, including her demanding class for the "Health Challenged."

Doug Harned describes teaching his first class, from faltering words to a looser rhythm, adding Around the Platter Variation with spare time and seeing students report warm, tingling hands.

Letters from readers, led by Catherine Brieussel's account of a year travelling from Ireland to Australia to Hopi and Navajo lands, teaching T'ai Chi Chih and becoming a Seijaku instructor, plus subscription notes and welcomes to interim editor Noel.

Shannon Marie Cooley writes from Bozeman, Montana, where she closes every class by reading aloud an article from The Vital Force, and her students especially love the letters from practitioners.

A poem by the Zen hermit Ryokan, from John Stevens's translation One Robe, One Bowl, in which he counts his three sho of rice and calls wealth and honor dust.

Bobbie Ruocco recounts how Edie Budney's Montclair students kept meeting in Brookdale Park after she moved to Brazil, growing into a five-day-a-week group that drew passersby and a TV news crew.

Justin Stone distinguishes Jnana Yoga, the Yoga of Inquiry, from Raja Yoga's eight branches, walking through Yama, Pranayama, Dharana and the stages of Samadhi, and warning against self-enlightened dabblers.

Judy Mirczak recounts how warmth moving down her chest during her accreditation course ended years of uncontrollable belching from a hiatal hernia, then calls for readers' own healing stories.

Justin Stone distinguishes T'ai Chi Chih from exercise, urges teachers lacking an understanding of softness, circularity and polarity to audit classes and ask questions, and names capable teachers as the practice's great treasure.

Jan Marshall-Thoreen describes teaching at a university health center and a bank's noon hour, and a year of remission since committing to twice-daily practice; Sr. Antonia Cooper likens mu shin to Centering Prayer.

Ed Altman compares teacher training to Olympic competition and names the three faults referring instructors should correct first: incomplete weight shift, stiff knees, waist and wrists, and leaning off center.

James K. Hecker describes the November 1998 workshop at Old Folsom Prison, where Ed Altman refined movements with inmate instructors and led practice in the Greystone Chapel at the graduation of the first volunteer inmate class.

Carmen Brocklehurst distinguishes creativity borrowed from outside sources from the kind that rises from within, and suggests sitting quietly with a notepad for five minutes after practice.

Phil Darghty, a long-term inmate at Folsom State Prison, recounts how a year of twice-daily T'ai Chi Chih with the Contemplative Fellowship eased old shoulder and knee injuries until he stopped needing pain pills.

Jean Katus describes how corrections to her basic movements at a TCC event left her defensive and doubting her teaching, and what the humbling taught her about how she corrects her own students.

Tara Stiles describes the shifting permissions for the Folsom Prison program, from five chapel afternoons down to three, plus the remarkable inter-racial mixing, while inmate Steve Wornoff likens practice there to a sleeping bird in a storm.

Linda Braga recounts the February 1999 renewal day at St. Luke's Lutheran Church in Walnut Creek, where Ed Altman led 42 teachers and students in releasing knee tension and shifting weight fully.

Catherine Brieussel teaches three T'ai Chi Chih classes in her French state school, where teenagers follow an hour of practice with soft music and illustrated notebooks of the movement names.

Kathy Vieth describes how eleven St. Louis teachers met repeatedly to reconcile their differences in form, then led a four-hour enhancement for twenty-seven students covering all 19 movements and one pose.

Sr. Marie-Ann Main sends photographs of her South African pupils at various stages through the school year, some in their first lesson and others further along, captured whenever she remembered her camera.

Eleven students from the St. Louis area, among them Tom Gerrein who can now walk up steps without a rail, give brief comments on a four-hour enhancement workshop with several teachers.

Sr. Francis A. Kay writes from her hospice ministry to HIV and AIDS patients and the bereaved in Harare, Zimbabwe, teaching a class to hospice staff and crediting T'ai Chi Chih energy for her recovery from eye surgery.

Dale Buchanan recounts opening the for-profit T'ai Chi Chih Studio in Great Falls, Virginia in 1997, with his class formats, seasonal scheduling, course prices, and advice on charging what the market will bear.

Guy Kent welcomes the new Good Karma Publishing videotape of Justin Stone teaching Seijaku, recalling years of forgotten notes and false starts when Seijaku was passed on only orally, plus bonus Jing instruction.