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.
November 2005
The November 2005 issue covers the Albuquerque conference, where Justin Stone corrects careless yinning and yanging and insists the knees bend deeply. At 89 he names his two turning points, the 1963 Japanese freighter and the midnight revelations that time is Maya. Eldra Jackson III writes from a maximum security prison, and Sheila Leonard traces T’ai Chi Chih in Newfoundland and her 300 students.
Teachers from across North America send short notes on the 2005 Albuquerque conference, praising Justin Stone's charge to practice daily and correctly, the talent show hosted by Kathy, the prison teaching panel, and the welcome from New Mexico hosts.
Kathy Grassel taught Tai Chi Chih to 30 sixth-graders waiting to testify at the New Mexico legislature, renaming every movement with wildlife themes, plus classroom quips collected by Sharon Sirkis.
Justin Stone praises the August conference and its 17-person planning committee, then corrects teachers for careless yinning and yanging, insisting the knees bend deeply because TCC is done from the waist down.
In an open letter to Justin Stone after the Albuquerque conference, Linda Braga thanks Sister Antonia, Sandy McAlister and Pam Towne, asks Justin to speak more about his own meditation experience, and encloses two new TCC bookmarks.
Lorraine Levine asks teachers to return the 2005 TCC Teacher Survey by December 31 and publishes teaching tips from the first 55 responses, covering seniors, Parkinson's, dementia care, hospice bereavement groups and deaf children, plus a new Special Requests section.
Lorraine Levine
Outreach Coordinator