The Vital Force Archive

Justin Stone's conference talk on inner sincerity and the teacher's responsibility, with five practice notes: keep TCC standardized, lead the movements from the wrists, avoid upper-body effort, take a low stance with correct yin-and-yanging legs, repeat for muscle memory, and trust the flow of chi rather than the exercise.

Teachers who gathered at Inver Hills send thanks, with Jeanne Carlson-Linscott recounting news of her brother's remains found in Laos and Connie Hyde writing after a friend's death.

In a letter after her Bullhead City teacher training, Roxann Post thanks her trainer and describes the spiritual search she began at twelve, her sense that nothing is fixed or solid, and the exchange of energies in class.

Seven sayings Justin Stone quoted in his talk "Merging Sense With Essence," among them that lotus flowers come from swamp mire, and that ordinary life need not be abandoned, only greed, anger and delusion.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst's notes on the 1991 T'ai Chi Chih Teachers Conference in Minnesota, from the pod living arrangements to the unhurried four and a half days of sharing with Justin and Steve.

Steve Ridley defines spiritual work as transmuting tensions and releasing self-created resistance to Reality based living, aided by regular correct T'ai Chi Chih practice and its underlying life-principles.

Justin Stone lists the seven books he most often carries and rereads, among them John Wu's The Golden Age of Zen, Krishnamurti's Notebook and Chang Chung Yuan's Creativity and Taoism.

Steve Ridley's brief pyramid poem states that the in-visioning of the Enlightened Heart can find only a dim echo through what he calls grossly clumsy poetic lines.

Susan Webster describes hosting Justin Stone's Heightened Awareness Seminar in San Diego and the teaching that followed: a weekly Naval Hospital employee class, a senior high-rise contract, and fuller classes.

Steve Ridley argues that releasing tension, setting aside analytical thinking and moving in a feeling mode lets insight and chi arise, citing two principles from Chang Sen-Feng's T'ai Chi Ch'uan Classics.

A roundup of the talent show at the Minnesota conference, where Vicki Brodie, Barbara Lefforge and friends sang TCC parodies, Jim Celmayster offered "If I Were a T'ai Chi Man," and Linda McKenzie led the closing chant.

Ruthmarie Arguello Sheehan answers a reader of New Mature Woman who saw T'ai Chi practised in China, describing her daily twenty movements as joy, serenity in activity, and a guard against jet lag.

Steve Ridley offers three brief aphorisms urging practitioners to refine the movements beyond their own teachers, to keep qualifying themselves so they add no baggage to students, and to teach only what they truly know.

Answering a teacher's question, Justin Stone distinguishes the word "now" from the lived experience of the NOW, warns against parroting "All is One," and calls uniting Sense and Essence the Zen Way.

Diana Daffner, who came to T'ai Chi Chih after twenty years teaching aikido, massage and meditation, describes beach practice, a sunset anniversary session with forty friends, and classes at an addiction rehabilitation center.

Steve Ridley describes the good teacher as one who shares life as consciousness and spiritual force, the good student as one who digests what is imparted, each of us being both.

Diana Celmayster passes along the lyrics her husband Jim wrote minutes before a conference evening of self entertainment, a T'ai Chi Chih parody of "If I Were a Rich Man" naming Around the Platter, the pulley and Seijaku.

Donna Shaffer brought T'ai Chi Chih to the first "Get Fit Los Gatos" weekend and a TANDEM Computers health fair, while Carmen Brocklehurst won a contract teaching New Mexico school staff.

Jeanne Jacobs of Arlington, Washington plays on the syllable "sum," from dim sum as barely perceived chi to summit as transcendent chi, with intermittent practice as "some-times."

A one-line exchange collected at conference, in which a question about whether Seijaku's resistance is mostly mind or body gets the deadpan answer 60-40 going left, 40-60 going right.

Writing from Guam, Sister Mary Joseph Quichocho practises daily and did T'ai Chi Chih at the beach, where a man teased that Pulling in the Energy was calling in the fish.

Richard Brier walks through the movements one by one, giving each a personal symbolic meaning, from varying circle size in Around the Platter to the student whose 35-year insomnia eased with Passing Clouds.

Steve Ridley sets out three expectations for those recommending teacher candidates: expert, unhesitating execution of every movement, a stable and caring temperament, and an "empty cup" respect for the 24-hour accreditation process.

Lucy Hocking writes from Mount Desert Island, Maine, home to Acadia National Park, inviting East Coast students and friends to practise with her and hoping to sponsor a New England teacher training.

William A. Nielsen, Jr. recalls Justin Stone repeatedly correcting his bent rear knee at the 1988 Albuquerque accreditation, then finding himself a student again at Steve Ridley's Chicago teacher candidate class.

Barbara Peller thanks Steve for the Chicago teachers' course that taught her to move the Chi with confidence, and Jayne Uchacz credits T'ai Chi Chih with giving her strength after a recent great loss.

A letter from Tamzan Johnson, newly accredited after the course in Victoria, thanking Steve Ridley, Justin Stone and the journal while settling into steady daily practice at home.

A pyramid poem by George Balliet of San Mateo, California, surveying a world of crime, decay and few who pray, and ending with his gratitude at having found the Way.

Justin Stone argues that people cling to habitual thinking even when it makes them unhappy, so reformers and missionaries waste their effort, while T'ai Chi Chih and meditation, offered when asked, let habits change as people evolve.

Writing from Palm Desert after his Teacher Training week, Bill Fisher asks for letters and news clippings from back issues of The Vital Force to back up upcoming radio and TV talk show appearances.