The Vital Force Archive

Linda Minor describes preparing to teach a seated class for seniors aging in place, practising seated herself, attending Carmen Brocklehurst's retreat entirely seated, and checking the room for armless chairs.

Joseph Selzer describes how residents at a New Jersey retirement community organized twice-weekly Video T'ai Chi Chih practice, reporting improved blood test markers, blood pressure, balance and coping with Parkinson's.

Diane Crago, an artist diagnosed with a vestibular migraine disorder after two years of vertigo and lost balance, sent her teacher Bill Nakao a poem instead of an article because screens hurt her eyes.

Marie Dotts treats alignment as the key to downward chi flow, recounting her own breakthrough with a resistant right hip and leading conference participants through an alignment exercise and weight shift checks.

Dorene Krause traces a T'ai Chi Ch'uan Classics quotation she copied down as a new student in 2001 to her 2017 conference breakout session on letting the t'an t'ien lift the body in vertical movements.

Victoria Mogilner recounts eight years of teaching at Gilbert Senior, where a small class grew to 49 people a week, bringing better balance and a group that moves together.

Adabelle Rychtarik's students in Simpsonville report what two years of practice changed: Sandra Johnson stands comfortably through church songs using the TCC stance, and Kathy Neely regained balance and arm mobility despite Parkinson's.

Mary Wichmann collects three student comments from her summer practices in a church memorial garden, including thanks for teaching a woman in a wheelchair and Lorraine's dawn practice with waking birds.

Adabelle Rychtarik collected testimonials from her South Carolina students, who credit TCC with better balance, easier rising from low chairs, and calm during long hospital vigils with a loved one.

Daniel Pienciak details how setting up the feet before each movement keeps the pelvis still and the back upright, and how a heel placed too far forward ruins the weight shift; followed by Pyramid Poems.

Kathy Starrick recounts her talk at a holistic nursing conference on building resilience, covering stress management, the Lavretsky depression and Irwin sleep studies, and grounding through the soles of the feet.

Christine Weber, 66, found that completing the weight shift in Around the Platter surfaced the fear from a childhood fall down an earthen dam, and her teacher Lisa Otero told her to keep going.

David Fryd came to T'ai Chi Chih at the Shoreview YMCA for his balance, stumbled through his first classes under Judy George, and kept returning until she began telling new students to follow him.

Daniel Pienciak suggests imagining three dimes under each foot, two at the balls and one at the heel, as a way to test even weight distribution and complete the weight shift.

Raymond Reid recounts arriving at T'ai Chi Chih by mistake after decades of T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Aikido, his ejection fraction climbing from twenty-five to seventy percent, and building a practice as Portland's only full-time teacher.

Charlie Williams, sent to T'ai Chi Chih by his orthopedic surgeon after two knee replacements, describes crossing an ice-covered rear deck to feed wild birds by shifting weight one grounded step at a time.

Linda Jones recounts falling without warning, losing words to aphasia, and then a New Year's Eve brain scan that returned a diagnosis of global cerebral atrophy and coming dementia.

Jean Katus relays what her monthly practice regular Carol reports: calmer nights, better sleep, lower blood pressure, and balance regained after knee replacements, plus dropping the Pulling in the Energy visualization before bed.

Carol Spicer writes on sensing the settled within the settling and the grounded within the grounding, letting go into the soles of the feet so the body's own intelligence moves us.

Jim Shorr gathers residents' own words from Edgewood Downs in Beaverton, Oregon, on regained balance, practising half the movements without a walker, and the calm the first twelve bring, plus Pyramid Poems on freedom.

Ron Richardson recounts practising on shifting Florida sand at sunset, then a conference session where Daniel Pienciak's altered resting position, hands hung at the sides, provoked objections about changing Justin Stone's form.

Judy George follows up her conference presentation on foot care with questions for teachers about rolling a ball under the sole, grounding before practice, and effects on weight shift and alignment, pointing to her online handout.

Daniel Pienciak breaks down grounding with two mnemonics from his conference break-out circles, "Sink, Shift, Hands, Heel" for beginning a movement and five S's for closing, plus three weight points under each foot.

Mrs. Stough, unable to do yoga after back surgeries, found TCC through an online search for relaxation, and describes falling asleep easily, lowered pain, and feeling grounded for the first time in her first Seijaku class.

Jim Shorr describes Don, a modest resident of Edgewood Downs Retirement Center who sheds his walker for T'ai Chi Chih after a concussion years ago and wrote his own practice creed on a napkin.

Diana Bahn describes, in the third person, her long-running free class at an assisted living facility, where canes, faded memories and old injuries wore down her early hopes until she found commonality with her elderly students.

Kathy Starrick describes presenting T'ai Chi Chih to an osteoporosis support group, demonstrating Around the Platter, Carry the Ball to the Side and Push Pull as models for vacuuming, sweeping and clearing snow.

Dale Koistinen credits resuming T'ai Chi Chih with his wife, three times a week, for going 15-0 at the World Champion Horseshoe Pitching Tournament in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Joan Hutchison, diagnosed with spinal stenosis in 2009 and unable to walk, describes how intense physical therapy helped her avoid surgery and how T'ai Chi Chih became the one exercise she can still do.

Nancy Goff-Laipple credits regular practice with teacher Hope Spangler for steadier balance after breaking her right ankle twice, two avoided falls, energy in her palms, and a quieter mind.