The Vital Force Archive

Sister Carol DeAngelo describes the seated, breath-and-hands practice she leads at St. Cabrini Nursing Home, where residents, day health registrants and nurse assistants find a noisy room gradually quieting.

Carolyn Perkins recounts taping a six-minute T'ai Chi Chih segment at Martha Stewart's Westport studio, persuading Stewart that her 89-year-old mother, recovering from hip replacements, should practise seated.

Anne Hollek, left balance impaired after surgery removed a tumor from a balance nerve, writes that nine months of classes with Donna McElhose let her walk heel to toe and ride a bicycle again.

Diana Vrba, wedged into a middle seat on a five and a half hour flight from Virginia, recalled Virginia Cepeda's teaching and practiced Rocking Motion entirely in her mind.

Pat Flynn got through accreditation during a Lyme disease flare, then began teaching a small class of friends, neighbors and her parents, adapting Rocking Motion and seated practice for a stroke, a pregnancy, a ball walker and a fused spine.

Virginia Lee Cepeda recounts teaching Dimetra Stafford, a blind student who learned Rocking Motion over the telephone before joining the class, and how the group bonded around her.

Roberta Taggart describes the six-week pro bono program she began in 1999 teaching twelve special needs children in a Newark public school, with guidelines, foot massage routines, and the speech pathologist's observations of calmer behavior.

Judy Hendricks describes practicing T'ai Chi Chih mentally during three weeks of hospital bed rest after her water broke at 6 1/2 months, and the resealed rupture and full-term birth of her daughter Anastasia that followed.

Sr. Patty Campbell recounts a blood infection and knee replacement that kept her from moving, and how she mentally practised all nineteen movements and the Six Healing Sounds from her hospital bed, closing with two autumn poems on a sweet gum tree.

Janet M. Oussaty recounts a year of TCC expansion at Kean University, from a student-run practice group and credit courses to a 100-person session at the AAHPERD national convention in Cincinnati and a campus cable television interview.

Hannah Hedrick, a former AMA executive, lays out the folder a teacher should assemble for a hospital interview: benefit statements, the AMA Cultural Competence Compendium entry, Dr. Scotti's letter to Justin Stone, and research citations, speaking of symptoms rather than diseases.

Sr. Margaret M. Costello, disabled by a stiff leg since age fourteen and a self-described perfectionist, describes how the October 2000 Teacher Training Course broke open the frozen feeling below her waist.

Robert E. Rollin, a student of Judy George, recounts a night of bronchitis when mentally picturing the TCC movements relaxed him enough to stop his coughing spasms and sleep.

Nancy Vermond reports Hannah Hedrick's conference roundtable on teaching T'ai Chi Chih in chest-high water of 90 to 100 degrees, using ankle or waist weights to stay grounded.

Margery Erickson follows up on her efforts at a public school, describing how seven of her 15 special needs students learned all the movements and how one of them led the class.

Sr. Patty Campbell describes the Friday half-hour of seated T'ai Chi Chih she leads for retired sisters in St. Clare Hall infirmary, plus Monday sessions broadcast on closed circuit TV.

Margery Erickson signed up 70 support staff at her intermediate unit before administrators shut the class down, so she folded T'ai Chi Chih into the health curriculum for her life skills students instead.

VirginiaLee Cepeda describes how Ann Vidmar, who has multiple sclerosis, came to class with a walker, then a cane, and eventually walked in with no aid; Vidmar adds her own thanks.

Noel Altman describes filling three waitlisted TCC classes at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco, teaching the form over two eight-week courses, adapting for disabilities, and sending students home with Justin Stone's video.

Mary Teetor Zablotny's letter to the San Francisco Kaiser Health Education Department describes practising two or three movements at a time while hospitalized with pneumonia, and the easier stair climbing her asthma allowed after four classes.

Letters praising editor Noel's redesign of the journal, plus Sr. Viola Bens asking for help teaching a hearing impaired student and Jean Doan practicing daily at nearly 75 after a shoulder injury.

Tara Stiles reports that three Kaiser facilities contracted her, Judy Tretheway and Nancy Reed through Health Education and Behavioral Medicine, including her demanding class for the "Health Challenged."

In a letter to Ed Altman, Sr. Viola Bens describes how a local newspaper story drew over 30 calls, filling classes from a retreat to a resort, with students aged 11 to their 80s.

Linda Braga recounts teaching Dennis, a blind student who walked to class with a white cane, and lists the verbal cues, seating choices and sound cues that helped him learn the standing form.

Carrie Kinsey describes teaching her father, who has ankle arthritis and a mild tremor from Parkinson's, in a backyard class after her mother's death, and the modest gains that followed.

Barbara Sommers describes a year-long seated class at a Senior Day Care Center, where foot stamping built awareness of the soles, chairs in a circle curbed wandering, and the first ten movements were adapted left foot then right.

Susan Larson-Waugh's newspaper profile of Joe Apt, who teaches up to 15 classes a week despite multiple sclerosis and a triple bypass, and of student Lenore Listiak, strengthening knees after replacement surgery.

Pat Huseby of Danville, California announces she will teach Alzheimer's patients at a new 48-bed Alzheimer's wing opening that spring, and asks other teachers with similar experience to contact her.

Sharon Sirkis, Roberta Taggart and Barbara Riley answer Carol Lesch's question on teaching Parkinson's patients, from Florence's belly laughs at an adult daycare center to Bill's improved balance after eighteen months.

JKH, after 15 years in Folsom State Prison, writes to Justin Stone about founding the Contemplative Fellowship, adapting the diagonal steps to fit a cell, and asking how to become accredited.