The Vital Force Archive

Steve Ridley's pyramid poem moves from the "placeless PLACE" within time and space to the effortless dissolving of heartaches and inherited ways, closing on oneness and lasting joy.

Kirby's account of a December 1986 Seijaku retreat in the Utah canyonlands, where the group practised in falling snow at 16 degrees, hiked ten miles daily, and kept a final day of silence.

Jean Katus draws on the T'ai Chi Ch'uan Classics to argue that the power teachers gain from long practice is channeled through them, not owned, and must stay tied to integrity.

A January 1987 letter from Valerie Lawson-Smith and Steve, newly settled in Tsuchiura north of Tokyo, describes Steve's Aikido training, English teaching jobs, her high school post and plans for private TCC classes.

A brief note from Jean Katus of Fort Yates, North Dakota, on how the contrasts in Seijaku made her relate to softness more completely, with the two forms complementing each other.

Christeen M. Curran reports from Fargo that three of her students will be certified in Denver in June, and that the nursing home chain where she teaches wants a staff member accredited for all its homes.

Corinn Codye Scott's four-line pyramid poem names Seijaku as healing the unhealable, moving the immoveable, knowing the unknowable and loving the unloveable.

Chris Worcester's pyramid poem records a December 1986 Seijaku retreat in the Utah canyonlands, moving from dawn practice and campfire coals to moonlit Seijaku, Nei Kung and the eternal now.

Katy Buss, student of Jean Katus, credits the practice with carrying her through moving, resettling and a new job, and says it works on the whole being better than yoga.

Justin Stone describes illness as the body's effort to throw off impurities, warns that pain-killers and sleeping pills add to that burden, and places karma, habit-energies and T'ai Chi Chih within an ongoing purification of chi.

An anonymous short poem suggesting that when the movements disappear and only you remain, contact comes not with the form moving in space but with the atoms and molecules themselves.

Steve Ridley explains how to hold the Cosmic Consciousness Pose for five to fifteen minutes after practice, focusing on the upper t'an t'ien, and why he follows it with a grounding resting pose.

Mark S. Harrell lays out five tenets for teachers and students alike: courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control and indomitable spirit, arguing that one's own life must be in order before teaching others.

Christeen H. Curran reports on teaching T'ai Chi Chih in Fargo, from a ten-week geriatric contract at Villa Maria Nursing Home to 250 nurses doing Bass Drum at a state convention.

An energy poem by TCC student Leslie Oldershaw of Lake Tahoe, picturing each person as a channel through which love, peace and harmony rise from the earth and radiate outward to weave the stars.

Justin Stone states that only teachers who practice daily should teach T'ai Chi Chih, and only those who learned Seijaku from him and practice it regularly should teach it.

Lois Mahaney's pyramid poem moves from dawn skies and breezes through Seijaku's rootedness, T'ai Chi Chih's softness, and daily meditation inviting the Universal Chi, to revelation.

Carmen Brocklehurst describes how a retreat conversation led to a paid three-day engagement teaching T'ai Chi Chih to fifteen company presidents at the Arizona Biltmore, and urges teachers to approach corporations.

Robyn McCulloch, a Recreational Therapist at Washoe Medical Center in Reno, taught the whole form to three Occupational Therapists in nine hour-long sessions and modified movements for chronic pain and rehabilitation patients.

Jean Katus argues that westerners who feel perpetually short of time become more effective by giving themselves over to daily T'ai Chi Chih, quoting Justin's line that the purpose of meditation is to meditate.