The Vital Force Archive

Transcribed from Justin Stone's spoken word CD, two talks recount a Roshi telling a lawyer to remove his overcoat, poems by Tagore and Tenko-san on the question of who you are, and a monk who kept rescuing a biting scorpion.

Kathy Grassel interviews Tyler, a retired Episcopal and Byzantine Rite priest leaving her Albuquerque gym class for Chicago, on how the Tao Teh Ching, yin and yang, and bodily worship shaped his three years of practice.

Darlene Benton, who learned T'ai Chi Chih largely from Carmen Brocklehurst's YouTube videos, finally visited the Albuquerque center, toured Justin Stone's artwork and books with Guy and Carmen, and bought his "Joy" notecards.

Benjamin Brisjar recounts how T'ai Chi Chih reversed a volunteer shortage at the all-volunteer Pittsburg Fifty Plus Club, sustained members through COVID Zoom classes, and led the Board to fund reprinting the Photo Text.

Dora Wiemann recounts how a donation earmarked for outreach led her to pull 208 excerpts from Justin Stone's Photo Text, sorted into four card decks, and suggests practising with one quotation at a time.

KG describes how her two presentations at the 50th anniversary conference honored the people and entities that brought Justin Stone's works into print and published the community's experiences in The Vital Force.

Judy Kistler describes the TCC International Foundation's redesigned website at taichichihfoundation.org, which added teacher conference registration, scholarship and grant details with teacher testimonials, and a Donate page with fund options.

Justin Stone's own definitions of koan, mantra, prajna, samadhi, satori, teh, T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Zen, drawn from two of his books and showing how his emphasis shifted over time.

KG recalls Justin Stone quietly pushing her photography career forward: buying a print he did not want, sending her to find a Belgian fine-art book publisher, and posing for the Photo Text.

Tracks three and four of Justin Stone's spoken word CD, in which he links karate board-breaking to accumulated chi, explains effortless effort, and gives three reasons for concentrating in the soles of the feet.

Dr. Anita Vestal reports from the inaugural Science of T'ai Chi and Qigong as Whole Person Health Conference, where Dr. Helen Lavretsky could not locate a TCC teacher for a study through the website directory.

Terry Gay Puckett recounts how student Denise Richter contacted a San Antonio Express News columnist without telling her, and the resulting article filled her senior center class and a waiting list.

Judy Hubbell, three years into teaching Mind Body Health classes including ones for Chinese seniors, responds to the JustinStoneTCC.com newsletter and asks about Justin's link to Wen-Shan Huang.

Justin Stone maps Patanjali's Raja Yoga into three parts and eight steps, argues that morality is only the stairway to the bridge, and explains how erasing habit energies leads to detachment.

In this chapter from his reissued book, Justin Stone argues that Yoga and Buddhism are three-tiered paths, tracing sila, dhyana-samadhi and the prajna wisdom that enlightened the illiterate woodcutter Huineng.

JJ Johnson quotes a line from a 2007 Carmen Brocklehurst article to a frustrated veteran student, then cannot find the sentence anywhere in the text; with Pyramid Poems by Johnnie Lee Marquez.

Quotations drawn from Justin Stone's spoken word CD, on building an imperturbable Center amid busy life, the tan t'ien as the seat of intuition, and why a teacher who does not practice is a fraud.

Drawn from Justin Stone's spoken word CD, a Lotus Sutra passage, the Nasrudin tiger powder joke, Hakuin's enlightenment by broom and his Song, notes on purification, and a warning that a teacher who does not practice is a fraud.

Rebecca Paulson's pyramid poem "One" grew out of re-reading Chapter 42 of the Tao Te Ching in Stephen Mitchell's translation, and her note on yin, yang, grounding and the dynamic Chi.

Passages culled from Justin Stone's books, including Meditation for Healing, Gateway to Eastern Philosophy & Religion, Heightened Awareness and the out-of-print Abandon Hope, on posture, mantras, joy and the effort of no effort.

Justin Stone introduces his out-of-print book on gurus, teachers and the mystery of Being, then argues in the chapter "Abandon Hope" that only dropping hope for tomorrow lets us live today.

Justin Stone recounts his first voyage to Japan, a chance train meeting with Reverend Takahashi, and the Chinese volume on the I Ching that Mr. Tung insisted he carry around the world.

Rebecca Paulson gathers Justin Stone's own wording on how to close each movement, from his Blue Photo Text, showing the step back, the hands lowered gently to the sides, and the four to five second rest pose.

Sandy McAlister retells Justin Stone's story of the unlettered mantra practitioner who ran across the water, and uses his shrugged answer about hand height in Pulling in the Energy to argue that correctness is found by feeling.

Linda Minor recounts playing prescriptive harp for a dying friend and being engulfed by a yellow light and overwhelming peace, then finding words for it years later in TCC, Anton Grosz and Rachel Naomi Remen.

Justin Stone lays out the four observations of the Satipatthana or Way of Mindfulness practice - breath, state of mind, feeling-sensation and objects of mind - and recommends a half hour daily.

Justin Stone gives two healing visualizations, the Duck's Egg and the Waterfall, that precede Chih-kuan and Great Circle meditation, recounting the Russian woman whose hospital practice restored her strength.

KG announces that all the content from Justin Stone's two DVDs, individual movement instruction plus the 30- and 45-minute practices, is now streaming, prioritized after COVID-19 closed classes worldwide.

Justin Stone asks readers to notice posture and passing states of mind without correcting them, reading tension in the wrists and waist, and to feel the exact instant weight shifts between feet.

Carmen Brocklehurst recounts how a tape of Justin Stone's 1990 teacher conference talk, recorded without permission, was transcribed and made into the booklet Evolution Through Chi, now given free to new teachers.