The Vital Force Archive

Connie Lapp describes arriving at her first classes in September 2012 too sick and exhausted to do more than get to work, and her path to teacher prep and accreditation.

Justin Stone recounts the unexplained urge that sent him from Taos to Albuquerque, where a bookstore remark led to six weekly classes, and adds his Buddhist prayer before meals.

Justin Stone instructs students to sit quietly and note tactile sensations, sights and sounds, classifying each reaction as pleasing, displeasing or neutral, with the Zen master Tokusan telling two disputing monks both are right.

Told she must be a slow learner, Caroline Guilott answers with twenty years of the same 19 movements and one pose, a retreat with Carmen Brocklehurst, and the slow discovery of grounding in the soles of her feet.

Dora Wiemann unpacks flowing and emptiness at the 2018 conference, sharing the lists her teacher prep students made of their own markers for feeling ungrounded and grounded, then asks whether a plant sprouting from a rock at Folsom flows from emptiness.

Amy Tyksinski describes her doubt before leading Turiya meditation sessions at the Philadelphia conference, then traces the year she spent slowing down Push Pull after a friend questioned its continuity.

Amy Tyksinski describes teaching Nei Kung to beginning students midway through each semester and shares notes from Justin Stone's Saturday night teshos on Original Face, motivation, patience and confidence in the Chi.

Sandy McAlister passes on conference updates for teachers who could not attend: the renewed five-year vision statement, Foundation finances and scholarship totals, new grants and committees, and a tribute to Connie Hyde.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst distinguishes softness from limpness, comparing it to the confident strength of lifting a baby, then guides Rocking Motion through heavy air and shares words her Albuquerque group felt while practicing.

Daniel Pienciak lists practical lessons from years leading two senior memory loss groups: speak loudly, repeat movements six or eight times, walk to each person, and return to favorites like Six Healing Sounds and the Joy Song.

Janet Oussaty's 2018 conference paper on Flowing from Emptiness draws on Alma Zerboni clearing her mind in a park between classes, a student who complained there was nothing to hold onto, and the Tao Te Ching.

Margery Erickson gathers four teaching moments that made her chi smile, including a beginner who nearly walked out, a mother sharing energy with her handicapped son, and a student off her antidepressant.

Stephen Thompson's conference notes give three partner exercises: a paper plate shared between Pulling in the Energy and Around the Platter, mirrored Working the Pulley, and a hand-hovering energy circle with weight shifts.

Judy Kistler-Robinson recounts stalling Sister Joan Schafhauser outside a birthday cheesecake at the Philadelphia teacher conference, hearing how Joan's smile, not perfect movements, kept men coming to her prison class.

Stephan Koblick, drawing on his sports and karate background, describes how he reframes T'ai Chi Chih for reluctant male students by comparing the weight shift and chi transfer to a golf swing or a thrown baseball.

Joseph Selzer describes how residents at a New Jersey retirement community organized twice-weekly Video T'ai Chi Chih practice, reporting improved blood test markers, blood pressure, balance and coping with Parkinson's.

Co-coordinators Laurie Jacobi and Linda Zelig announce the 2019 International T'ai Chi Chih Teacher Conference, "Return to the Circle," set for June 27-30 at the Marriott Southwest near Minneapolis.

Sue Bitney thanks Laurie Jacobi and Bonnie Sokolov, who stood directly behind her during accreditation week in 2005 until her body finally understood Working the Pulley.

David Parrish shifts attention from grounding below the waist to the hands, asking students to keep them alive and soft with open wrists so chi can flow and flutter visibly.

Parker Reynolds traces a two-year intention to teach youth back to a video of Sister Christa and April Leffler at Drexel Neumann Academy, and to the church youth group class that finally resulted.

Bob Poland, a diabetic whose fingertips are calloused from daily blood sugar tests, describes feeling energy through his palms for the first time, plus relaxing his knees and fully unweighting the opposite foot.

Dr Jerry C. Jonnson offers two handouts he wrote to promote his classes: a plain description of T'ai Chi Chih with a list of researched benefits, and a basics card weighting shifting at 80 percent, posture 15 and hands 5.

Dixie Adeniran writes of three years holding the deaths of her parents, the loss of her home to fire, and her husband Jack's death, and the Justin Stone quotations and lines of verse that came to her mid-practice.

John Flynn describes playing the shakuhachi, an end-blown bamboo flute, for Cathy Burton's Ventura class, quoting a Chan poem and a master's account of Three Valleys that shapes his playing during the Daughter movements.

Cathy Burton attended accreditation in Rochester at age 70 with no plan to teach, then took over Dixie Adeniran's Ventura classes after the Thomas fire forced her mentor to evacuate.

Eliza Fulton describes demonstrating T'ai Chi Chih at the Glenwood Springs Downtown Block Party, microphone and gawking crowd included, until three young people with a baby joined her and one bystander signed up for a class.