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 1997
The September 1997 issue carries Elizabeth Salada’s resignation after six years as publisher-editor of The Vital Force, and Ed Altman’s announcement that teacher training moves to a week-long daytime intensive in January 1998. Justin Stone distinguishes one-pointed concentration from meditation that becomes no-pointed, and Dr. Tahir Bhatti describes his UCSD study of T’ai Chi Chih for chronic low back pain.
Ed Altman opens with Ramana Maharshi's train parable and warns against the upper arm and shoulder effort he saw at the summer conference, urging teachers to let the weight shift circulate the chi.
Ed Altman
San Rafael, CA
John Armitage decided to attend his first TCC conference after a casual remark from Ed Altman, and found the large group practice, Sr. Antonia Cooper's Candlelight Ceremony and the Talent Show unforgettable.
John Armitage
Albuquerque, NM
Eugene Box's three-part pyramid poem calls on the Great Spirit for humility, denies any absolute circle or line, and ends with a sea voyage whose safe passage rests on trust in the master.
Eugene Box
Seal Beach, CA
Robert Montes de Oca's pyramid poem casts T'ai Chi Chih as a sea of flowing and ebbing water, with practitioners as two drops joining it through infinite wisdom.
Robert Montes de Oca
Albuquerque, NM
Gwen Yee traces her path from 1977 classes to accreditation and teaching, then recounts her first TCC conference, where corrections from many teachers and Joel A.'s harp concert left her feeling at home inside her own heart.
Gwen Yee
Salinas, CA
Justin Stone distinguishes concentration, the one-pointed focus of zazen and koan practice, from meditation that becomes "no-pointed", using the image of sinking between waves to rest in the Turiya state.
Rosa Santamaria Fallon recalls the July Teachers' Conference in Orange, California, where Sister Antonia Cooper's Candlelight Rededication Ceremony healed memories of her convent schooling in Franco's Spain.
Rosa Santamaria Fallon
Pittsburg, CA