The Vital Force Archive

Responding to a reader's question about inner resolve, Steve argues that restless seekers who switch teachers miss the depth of one path's purification methods, philosophical study and living principles.

Letters from Gordon Wade, Viola Moriarty, Ken Koeneman and Anne Metzenbaum thanking Steve Ridley, Jeannie Engen, Pat Hill and Bryan James after June accreditation courses at Mooselake and Denver.

Justin Stone's 1992 conference talk on Prajna, the innate wisdom buried under habit energies, drawing on a Sufi exchange, Paul Reps, Krishnamurti and Da Hui to argue that students already are complete.

Richard Brier of Mill Valley plays on 'train' and 'training' in a pyramid poem about being so fully 'here' that arriving 'there' finds us already present.

Susan Webster congratulates the teachers accredited at the June Denver course, thanks Steve for his way of sharing chi, and describes the following Teachers' Conference as renewing her as a student.

Justin Stone offers a short koan-like statement that trying is not the Way and not trying is not the Way, neither nor, closing with the soul in the breath and the breath as fire.

A short pyramid poem by Richard Brier of Mill Valley, California, thanking Great IT for a portion of the Infinite and insisting that this is not the end.

Merry Lynn Noble describes receiving her teacher's certificate in June 1992 after a week-long training with Steve, thanking Justin Stone, Pat Hill and Bryan James, and planning to bring TCC into her psychotherapy practice.

A pyramid poem that asks whether we turn on our inlight as we turn on a light, suggesting a lit candle or stick of incense dedicated to another's inlight, an oriental custom of respect.

Larry Kessler's pyramid poem traces the one separating into two and into the many, unfolding as moon and sun, night and day, you and me, then flowing back like tides to one.

Six short pyramid poems by Steve Ridley, Viola Moriarty, Ed Altman, sch and Joe Apt, on liminality in a doorway, shifting light, non-identity and indestructible love.

Pam Towne summarizes the 39 evaluation forms returned by Conference participants, reporting what teachers came for and their suggestions, from movement-by-movement refinement with Steve and Justin to small-group coaching.

Jean Katus offers a three-line haiku in which prairie grass bends under the wind, rising and falling until the field itself becomes a vast sea.

Drawing on 28 years with Learning Handicapped children, Linda Braga explains how brain dominance patterns produce "hollow" or unsynchronized movement, and recommends Edu-Kinesthetics materials for switching both hemispheres on.

Susan Webster of El Cajon offers a brief thank you to Pam Towne for organizing the conference, crediting her patience and gentle guidance throughout the gathering.

Lia Ridley describes a slow group practice session in Steve's Denver class where, after fifteen years of practice, she rested in the lower t'an t'ien and found spontaneous meditation without any sense of doing.

A pyramid poem by Gary Halden of Two Harbors on the good fortune of teaching T'ai Chi Chih, with loose wrists, empty mind, and ego lost in a hurry worry world.

Lois Mahaney compiled biographical sketches and impressions from about twenty teachers who attended the 1992 Teachers' Conference at Vallombrosa, including Seijaku training, movement corrections, and requests for more time with Justin and Steve.

Steve Ridley presents daily T'ai Chi Chih practice as a purification rite that augments chi flow, builds inner stability, and makes "the effort of no effort" a natural way of meeting daily challenges.

Gary Halden offers eight pointers for teachers, from giving every student an individual correction to reading complaints about sore quadriceps or an aching lower back as signs of leaning too far forward.

Pam Towne recounts coordinating the conference rather than attending it, naming the painful and joyful moments, the Seijaku prelude, the harp and gypsy dancing, and the silent Sunday practice.

A passage from Justin Stone's Climb the Joyous Mountain arguing that the technique of meditation matters less than its fruits, and that habit energies, those well-worn grooves of many lifetimes, are man's greatest enemy.

Janet Yannacone recounts a spontaneous train trip to San Francisco with Lynne Blackford and Susan Webster between Seijaku training and the Conference, finding in it a metaphor for never arriving.

Steve Ridley's pyramid poem asks us to see past the body facades people wear and recognize instead the individual states of Consciousness riding within each bodily vessel.

After her first Teachers' Conference in California, Hope Ridley warns that teacher mannerisms get copied, citing a student who turned the Bird Flaps Its Wings circle into a figure eight.

Barbara Lefforge closes each basic course by handing out certificates of completion and inviting students to describe the experience, offering copies of her certificate to other teachers, plus two poems by her and student Robin E. Wheeler.

Vicki Brodie credits Pam Towne with a good mix at the Conference, proposes optional Saturday afternoon workshops instead of free time, and argues refining TCC belongs in audited Accreditation Courses and Renewal Classes.

Becky Lampl, a student of Barbara Lefforge, names T'ai Chi Chih as the breeze in her hair, grass against her leg, rain on thirsty earth, and bubbles connecting all as one.

Jean Katus, still wearing her conference t-shirt, ate at a hibachi table in San Jose with three Taiwanese diners who described younger people in Taiwan taking up T'ai Chi.

Teachers report in: Lisette Tingesdahl meets Barbara Joy by chance at a ROM Institute conference, Gary Halden's wheelchair student straightens her bad leg after five weeks, Ellen Tatge lobbies the New Mexico Arthritis Foundation, and Sister Dorothy Ferrell prepares classes for IBM employees.