The Vital Force Archive

Pam Towne lays out the in-person options for connecting with the TCC community, from the Santa Barbara retreat and four-day Intensives to the New Jersey Teachers' Conference and its post-conference Seijaku courses.

Anita Vestal traces her teaching from a York health fair discovery in 2001 through classes in Taos, Austin, a Florida 55-plus community, and Spanish-language courses for Costa Rican mountain villagers.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst opens each beginning class with the Buddha's saying about keeping attention in the bottoms of the feet, then recalls Justin Stone's reminders and his effortless close as proof that grounding requires no trying; Pyramid Poems follow.

Justin Stone recounts talking a woman out of abandoning her family for a Master in India, then contrasts Zen's self power with Shin Buddhism's reliance on Amida Buddha.

Roseann Heinrich, who could never sit still to meditate, describes how the slow weight shift across the soles of her feet let her stop taking medication to relax and become a daily practitioner since 1999.

Carol Spicer heard T'ai Chi Chih principles in skier Julia Mancuso's 2014 Olympic interview about grounded feet and free hips, and finds the same letting go while walking, swimming and doing laundry.

Sheryl Adair moves through a full practice on a screened porch at Lake Burton in August, noting how the rain builds to a downpour and eases again with each successive movement.

Lisa Otero lays out what to do before an accreditation course: study all of Justin Stone's writings and videos, write out general and movement-specific instructions, learn to mirror, and practice-teach under supervision or by Skype.

Justin Stone gives teachers the keys to the first five movements, from flattening the feet before raising the toes in Rocking Motion to keeping the hands a steady distance apart in Bass Drum.

Matthew van der Giessen describes sending weekly class-summary emails with unlisted YouTube clips of the movements taught, using Chimpmail, an iPad and Good Karma videos to cut dropout rates.

Sheryl Adair staffed a booth at a "Go Red" women's heart health event at Emory University Hospital, demonstrating TCC to nurses next door and drawing an invitation to teach nursing students.

Justin Stone's introduction to Heightened Awareness, newly back in print, argues that wisdom is already within us, using the Indian pearl story and Dogen's half dipper of water to make the point.

Linda Braga recounts a year of teaching James, a student with dementia, and Angel his caretaker, including how she asked the class to welcome him and how he returned after a failed residential placement.

Larry Bloom describes creating a five-stroke digital painting of Daughter on the Mountaintop, drawing on shodo, Zen calligraphy and enso, and the wabi-sabi aesthetic Justin Stone praised.

Carol Spicer's short poem calls the t'an t'ien a well of soft chi and vitality, wellness flowing through her and outward like a fluid puzzle in motion, complete with love.

Monica Campbell answers her students' questions about "the pause," describing how Resting Pose after nine repetitions balances yin and yang, gathers chi into the t'an t'ien, and opens a moment of stillness.

Carol Nelson-Selby answers a new teacher's question about introducing Carry the Ball to the Side to seniors with hip and knee replacements, using a rain stick to teach the weight shift.

Carol Spicer writes on sensing the settled within the settling and the grounded within the grounding, letting go into the soles of the feet so the body's own intelligence moves us.

Jim Shorr gathers residents' own words from Edgewood Downs in Beaverton, Oregon, on regained balance, practising half the movements without a walker, and the calm the first twelve bring, plus Pyramid Poems on freedom.

Richard Karasik draws on conversations with Justin Stone about art, music and stocks to argue that the spaces between TCC movements are alive, and recalls Justin's insistence on staying true to the form.

Lawrence Kaiser, a student of Bill Moore, describes practicing T'ai Chi Chih before and backstage during his run as Bottom in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," using it to ease pre-performance nerves, stay moment-to-moment, and release lower-back tension that blocks the voice.

Sandy McAlister opens with a 17-year student who found fuller weight shift by moving her underneath hand an inch farther in Pulling Taffy, then argues Justin Stone's photo text and DVD should stand unchanged.

Seven students in Tracy Gibbons's U.K. classes describe what T'ai Chi Chih has given them, from clearer memory, weight loss and better sleep to the calm they never found in other T'ai Chi and Qigong forms.

Daniel Pienciak traces his understanding of expansion and contraction to a scene in the film "The Mask of Zorro," where staying inside a circle teaches the young student to let the enemy come to him.

Dixie Adeniran describes her sunrise practice in the back yard, birds bathing in the Buddha fountain during Bird Flaps Its Wings, and circles within circles leading to Cosmic Consciousness Pose; followed by Pyramid Poems on Nei Kung and sleep.