The Vital Force Archive

Jessica Lewis pushes back on the claim that only specialists can teach Veterans, giving three reasons T'ai Chi Chih suits students with PTSD and advising class-wide suggestions rather than individual corrections.

Nancy Frost's four-hour drive to a Cape Cod church for Jessica Lewis's weekend retreat ends among nearly 30 practitioners, where teaching each movement seated first becomes a new awareness.

Lisa Stroyan reports on Sandy McAlister's April 2025 teacher discussion on balance, including an exercise of breathing out down through the flattening front foot to notice weight going too far forward.

Sue Kenney describes a student returning to George Manning's Tuesday class at Hope Cooperative's mental health program after two years away with long COVID, recalling the Taffy variations and finishing seated.

Steven Huskey teaches a weekly 45-minute seated class for brain injury survivors, emphasizing weight shift felt through the sit bones, upright torso, and compact hand movements in the side-to-side movements.

Jessica Lewis recounts how a painful condition in three right toes converted her from dismissing seated TCC as "TCC light," and argues for starting all students, especially veterans, in a chair and adding seated training to accreditation week.

Steven Huskey recounts the teaching that found him after accreditation, from filling in for his own teacher to classes for Parkinson's patients and a brain injury support group, and the lesson plans he abandoned for flexibility.

Greg Berg recounts his first eight-class beginner course, crediting written class plans, co-teaching with Jim Eagle, Justin Stone readings and closing stillness, while admitting 14 students was too many.

Three of Donna McElhose's College of Lake County students write letters to future beginners, describing bad knees, ankle and wrist ligament injuries, the switch to a seated class, and the fear of being the only man in the room.

Lisa Stroyan describes how seated T'ai Chi Chih amplifies awareness of the t'an t'ien and feet, with guidance on soft seated weight shifts, chair choice, and letting students sit, stand or rest as needed.

Laurin MacDonald joined the 50th conference by Zoom from England and recounts teaching TCC to a group recovering from strokes and paralysis, where nonverbal participants imagined the movements and fingers began to flutter.

Sue Kenney frames T'ai Chi Chih as a web of relationships: with her aging self, with fellow practitioners, with a Sacramento parish's Wednesday Taize service, and with George Manning's class at HOPE Cooperative.

Three practitioners write in: Parker Reynolds practiced TCC mentally while coming out of hip surgery anesthesia, Sherry Corson found relaxing hands and belly deepened her Chi, and Lynne Roberts keeps teaching while awaiting back surgery.

Warren Wolfe, sleepless in the hospital after knee-replacement surgery and plagued by muscle spasms, began doing T'ai Chi Chih mentally at 3 a.m., and describes the practice he has refined since.

Laurin McDonald recounts the first 800 hours of teaching after her 2018 accreditation, from a chance encounter at a business showcase to classes in wheelchairs, a mosque, and her Seijaku accreditation in 2021.

Carolyn Perkins, writing from Cyprus, managed one group practice and one of Carmen's workshops at the teacher conference despite the time difference, and does six repetitions daily since breaking her neck.

Jeneth Rundle recounts her only face-to-face visit with Justin Stone in May 2011, when her phone rang mid-practice, and how his question returned to her after foot fusion surgery.

Abby Molino, a nurse since 1976, describes the right-left confusion that flummoxed her during Pulling Taffy's Anchor variation, with coping strategies and mirroring tips for instructors; four poems by Beverly Miles follow.

Dina Ajlenberg, accredited in 2005 and the only T'ai Chi Chih teacher in Israel since moving from Toronto in 2009, describes three years teaching about ten movements at a dementia day center.

Linda Jones teaches seated TCC to beginners and to chemotherapy patients who regained feeling in their fingertips, yet finds mental practice, with its complete weight shifts, the most powerful of all.

Patty Stupca reports the January Second Saturday discussion of seated practice, including Kay Rydeen's caution to rock from the sitz bones rather than the lower lumbar spine, and chair placement for unsteady students.

Pam Towne teaches Justin Stone's joy song from Meditation for Healing, with its faster weight shift, swinging arms and one syllable per shift, and suggests adapting it for students' balance.

Carolyn Pogwist describes her post-accreditation difficulty putting T'ai Chi Chih into words, and how one-on-one work with a breast cancer survivor in radiation treatment taught her to teach beginners.

Sue Bitney describes the beginning class she started at a senior co-operative housing building during COVID, where a core of eight practise twice weekly and one man moving only one hand practises with them.

Lisa Stroyan recounts how tiny hand movements in a reclined gravity chair restored her Chi in 2015, then details practical seated adjustments: sit-bone weight shifts, arm extension, grounding and "squirm."

Jim Shorr describes how Creekside Village senior housing uses Margie, a longtime student, as a seated demonstrator whom wheelchair and walker participants follow, with Wayne and Bob explaining what it gives them.

Kathy Starrick teaches seated TCC to every class, standing or not, after two major surgeries and a fractured leg left her practising mentally, then seated, with less pain and better sleep.

Monica Motyka credits her teacher Donna McElhose, who led mixed standing and seated group practices, with the confidence to now teach seated T'ai Chi Chih in every location she teaches.

Sandy McAlister explains why she left Anchor Taffy and Working the Pulley out of her seated TCC DVD, and why she now believes both belong in the practice with safe adaptations.

Pam Towne traces how she moved from seeing seated T'ai Chi Chih as a last resort to respecting it as a powerful practice, after teaching wheelchair users, hurting her back overdoing the pelvic tilt, and finding beginners connect with the t'an t'ien faster when seated.