The Vital Force Archive
Forty years of The Vital Force (1985-2025), the journal of the T’ai Chi Chih community. Search for a word, a teacher, a movement or a place, or browse by category and topic.
May 2021
The May 2021 issue pairs Justin Stone’s account of his first voyage to Japan and the I Ching with excerpts from his Vital Force writings. Pam Towne returns to the reminder that T’ai Chi Chih is done below the waist, Daniel Pienciak weighs a year of Zoom teaching, and George Zimmerman remembers Nicole’s eleven years of practice with ALS.
Ivonne Begue de Benzo, a Masters student in Positive Psychology, describes planning a qualitative study interviewing TCC teachers to build an awareness intervention for mindful eating and satiety.
Ivonne Begue de Benzo
Rochester, Minnesota
Carolyn Pogwist describes feeling like "Polarity in Motion" during Seijaku, held back and moving forward at once, and credits the Seijaku Retreat's shared reflections for her own "ah-ha" moments.
Carolyn Pogwist
Bloomingdale, New Jersey
Marija Hillis recounts how COVID-19 closures pushed her new teaching from an uneven park to three friends' backyards, growing to four weekly classes and 24 masked, distanced students.
Marija Hillis
Berkeley, California
Susan Corey applies the Laban and Bartenieff Effort/Shape Method, with its continua of flow, weight, time and space, to T'ai Chi Chih instruction, identifying the practice as a light, sustained, direct glide.
Susan Corey
Ridley Park, Pennsylvania
Annette McNeil traces a chain of coincidences from a get-well card illustrated by Sr. Antonia Cooper to the spare tire cover her husband Ed designed for their camper van, Jing.
Annette McNeil
Brick, New Jersey
Rachel Rilinger disliked the air element until a Gatha course with Melina Bondy taught her to move slowly and feel color in the air, deepening her Seijaku practice.
Rachel Rilinger
Kansas City, Missouri