The Vital Force Archive

Donna Aldous recounts selling her Mesa, Arizona property after 13 years as a snowbird, settling into a co-operative suite, and starting classes at Queen's House Retreat Center and her Manor.

Terry Jennings guides readers through a short experiential exercise: sensing the space outside and inside the body, around thoughts and sounds, then moving free form for five minutes, closing with a poem about air.

Five short passages from Justin Stone's Vital Force writings of 1986 and 1988, on accepting impermanence, love as self-realization, flowing slow motion in a dream, energy as wisdom, and his objection to teachers inventing new movements.

Loretta and Gil Weimer began T'ai Chi Chih on her 68th birthday in Donna's class, then learned the rest at home with handouts and a DVD, gaining better balance, deeper sleep and less aching.

JJ Johnson describes cutting to three repetitions per movement, drawing on Daniel Pienciak, Jim Hecker and Bill Moore's pine needle exercise, and finds the hands gathering and releasing chi.

Caroline Guilott traces her years of practice from bursts of heat and tingling fingers to a game of hide and seek with the Chi, learned by releasing tension and grounding.

Judy Hendricks recalls Tuesday morning teacher practices at the TCC Center, where Justin Stone offered no new material, only corrections to bend the knees and turn the waist, and she still hears him on DVD.

Trish Winger balanced a hardcover book on her head during class to demonstrate a still torso, and found her students' backs straightened and their movements grew smoother.

Christa Keller's prose poem, written out of her Seijaku practice, holds to the single moment, the breath of life, and moving through the perceived hardness of life with softness.

Justin Stone recounts his first voyage to Japan, a chance train meeting with Reverend Takahashi, and the Chinese volume on the I Ching that Mr. Tung insisted he carry around the world.

Laurin McDonald describes how Zoom sessions she and Lesley Nell run became a lifeline for isolated older UK students, and an anchor for her own bereavement after losing her husband in November 2020.

Rick Davis argues that the 19 movements need nothing added to them, and that stillness of mind comes from yielding the intellect to the form rather than overthinking or embellishing it.

Rebecca Paulson gathers Justin Stone's own wording on how to close each movement, from his Blue Photo Text, showing the step back, the hands lowered gently to the sides, and the four to five second rest pose.

Sharon Sirkus collects three classroom moments: a Senior Center group breaking into "Down in the Valley," an Aspenwood resident asking to be poked more, and a student who skipped practice and put her shirt on backwards.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst recounts seeing a video of a teacher shifting forward onto two bent knees, and argues that keeping the back knee straightening preserves the balance Justin Stone taught.

Cindy Nelson's short poem names the vibrant energy of the universe, active waves of life transforming with gold shards of experience, and a calm blue center supported by T'ai Chi Chih.

Verla J. Klassen's poem traces earth's energy entering through the soles of her feet: Rocking Motion on a Pacific beach, bare feet on ancient Minnesota gneiss, swans on a stream.

Victor J. Dougherty's poem listens to the silence of falling snow, following each flake to ledge, leaf, field or face, and finding that neither is ever in the wrong place.

Sandy McAlister rereads an account she wrote 35 years earlier of teaching her first T'ai Chi Chih class, when 21 students arrived, nervousness became excitement, and fear turned to curiosity.

Bryan Fain traces his first months as a beginner, from imitating his teacher and memorizing sequence to Marie Dotts' weekly group practice and a workshop with Bill Moore.

Pam Towne returns to Justin Stone's reminder that T'ai Chi Chih is done primarily below the waist, tracing how the t'an t'ien and weight shift move the hands for us.

John Marquez describes enduring a difficult pandemic year by practicing repeatedly, holding the Zen question "What is this moment lacking?" and deliberately choosing to shelve a dark place and take back joy.

Daniel Pienciak found that a year of teaching on Zoom demanded keener focus and heightened awareness, and argues that according with impermanence, rather than clinging to the familiar, moves practice forward.

Laura Star practices at dawn in a stone-ringed circle of desert sand near Tucson, joined by doves and coyotes, then trades cacti for birch trees and loons up north.

Jeneth Rundle expected Zoom teaching to fail and found it joyful, tracing how that surprise exposed a hidden belief that the Chi could not reach students remotely.

George Zimmerman remembers Nicole, who kept a daily T'ai Chi Chih practice through eleven years with ALS, moving without her wheelchair for three years and later practising the movements in imagination alone.

Bill Nakao takes up continuity between movements, citing Justin Stone's "It is all continuous, dear" and the thread running from Rocking Motion to the close, and asks practitioners to attend to the pauses at rest position.

Rita Otis recalls a rafting trip where a retired man shouted with delight at feeling the energy ball, and describes wanting that bubbling joy rather than a correctly done form.

Dora Wiemann lays out a recipe for practice that begins with the TCC principles like full weight shift and grounding, then moves to the invisible ingredient of allowing the movements to express themselves.

Bruce Lee proposes that each person carries a unique vibration, a harmonic of the one universal vibration, which practice stimulates and which teh, or inner sincerity, moves us to express and share.