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.
Bird Flaps Its Wings
Bird Flaps Its Wings is one of the T’ai Chi Chih movements, and the writing here concerns both its outer form and what practicing it teaches. Articles include beginning instruction and teaching tips, several teachers’ perspectives on the same movement, and personal reflections drawn from practice and retreats.
After her first Teachers' Conference in California, Hope Ridley warns that teacher mannerisms get copied, citing a student who turned the Bird Flaps Its Wings circle into a figure eight.
Richard travels the land of Chi Lanka, passing gates named Rocking Motion, Bird Flaps Its Wings and Bass Drum, and ordering a Stoneburger Supreme from a waiter named Just-In.