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.
September 1995
The September 1995 issue centers on the 10th Annual Teachers’ Conference at Regis University in Denver, which Carmen Brocklehurst reports drew about 130 teachers, and Sr. Antonia Cooper describes the Saturday night candle ritual she built with Meara Joy Norice. Justin Stone names steady practice the way into the Tao, and Bob Yurko and Tonya Setzke remember Alison Douglas.
Paula Favorito practised each morning at 7:30 on the beach across from her Victorian inn in Cape May, with ocean waves for music, when fifteen playful dolphins appeared offshore.
Paula Favorito
New Milford, NJ
Short responses from teachers at the 10th Annual Teachers' Conference in Denver, including the candlelight ceremony, talent night, Justin Stone's "Cosmic Rhythm" talk, Seijaku training, and Amy Hackenberg's jarring return to Chicago.
Ralph Garn's post-conference notes on teacher camaraderie, Justin Stone's revised Seijaku, and the hard/soft, holding fast and letting go rhythm he took home with him.
Ralph Garn
Syracuse, NY
Nancy Kennedy, accredited in May 1995, practised TCC mentally through an hour-long MRI and the nurse's screen registered the change, then watched a nursing home patient with dementia and her own mother in Florida grow quiet during practice.
Rich Axline recounts arriving at the Teachers' Conference expecting to know only classmates from his San Diego teacher training, then finding strangers' faces familiar and naming the gathering his T'ai Chi Chih family.
Rich Axline
Lompoc, CA
Justin Stone contrasts Buddhist cause and effect with cyclic events like the plum blossom pushing through February snow, and names steady T'ai Chi Chih and Seijaku practice as the way to enter the Tao.
Hope Ridley's conference notes on adapting TCC for seniors, wheelchair users, cardiac and arthritis students, including skipping taffies, one-arm Pulley, mental practice, class fees and bringing focus back to the t'an t'ien before standing.
Patty Campbell OSF rose earlier each spring morning to practice with her bedroom window open, using the chirping of newborn fledglings as her music, and closes with a poem on hunger for life.
Patty Campbell OSF
Guilford, IN
Susan Patterson describes opening a T'ai Chi Chih studio in San Diego in July 1995, driven by demand from California nurses, and the monthly teacher gatherings it now hosts.
Susan Patterson
San Diego, CA
Jean Katus taught eight introductory sessions at an international high school theatre festival, and when a rowdy group of six disrupted her final class, the movement itself quieted them without a word of reprimand.