The Vital Force Archive

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.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst takes Justin Stone's 2005 remark that time is the maker of delusion and asks whether the Chi is in the movement or always present, comparing students' joyful faces to a baby reaching for something unseen in its crib.

Victor J. Dougherty recalls watching a technician degauss a cathode ray tube TV at the RCA Service Center in 1988, and finds in those slow circles an image of recalibrating chi.

Daniel Pienciak builds on Justin Stone's instruction to focus on the soles of the feet, distinguishing merely bending the knees from surrendering all bodyweight to the feet so the upper body genuinely relaxes.

Christina Tillotson traces her first TCC practice in a grassy circle at Asilomar in 1983, her 1993 accreditation, and a newer Encinitas Senior Center student who said this omnipresent energy would have replaced her hippie-days substances.

Aphorisms Justin Stone collected in Spiritual Odyssey, insisting T'ai Chi Chih is not exercise but movement from the center, alongside Paul Reps on vinegar, Bodhidharma's vast emptiness, and posture as character.

Beverly J. Miles describes a year of practising Seijaku and arrives at the questions she still cannot answer, about holding the breath during hold fast, alternating sides in the Joy Song, and which movements are omitted.

A sequence of pyramid poems by Beverly Miles, moving from passing clouds and softness that beckons chi to an ode to Seijaku and a closing poem on conference connection and flowing gratitude.

Excerpts from Spiritual Odyssey in which Justin Stone credits the growth of T'ai Chi Chih to teachers' teh, or inner sincerity, warns against treating it as a business or as exercise, and insists movement come from the center.

Seven subscribers, among them Sue Bitney, Michelle Crow, April Leffler, Beverly Miles, Carolyn Pogwist and Guy Kent, wrote whatever surfaced after practice, from Passing Clouds and the water cycle to the t'an t'ien's glide in Working the Pulley.

Pam Towne, accredited in 1984 and present at every teacher conference since Asilomar in 1985, urges teachers to come to Albuquerque in July for the first in-person gathering in five years and TCC's 50th birthday.

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.

Guy Kent recounts Justin cutting short his accreditation presentation for comparing TCC to "T'ai Chi in the park," a lunch about stock charts and guilt, Saturday teisho readings, and Justin's tears over a critic who renamed the movements.

Connie Shaw recounts a class in which teacher Marie Dotts urged students to practice with soft eyes and follow where the Chi led, and Shaw felt the room dissolve into light.

Two student assignments collected by Donna McElhose: Nancy L. maps the electrical, magnetic and heat sensations she feels movement by movement, and Bryan F. describes chi radiating from the t'an t'ien like ripples in a pond.

Rebecca Paulson describes the February 24th gathering at the Windsor Recreation Center, where more than 30 people from eight towns, some practicing in person for the first time since the pandemic, completed a full silent practice.

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.

Dorene Krause describes the tan t'ien as a rounded bowl of stored Chi rather than a dot, with quotes from Justin Stone and Julie Barrier-O'Grady and instructions for breathing into the center in stillness and in movement.

Terry Gay Puckett strings together phrases gathered at the 2023 conference, from "effortless effort" and "empty the cup" to feeling the soles of your feet and remembering Justin Stone.

Transcribed from Justin Stone's spoken word CD, tracks 4 and 6 cover bringing heart fire below the navel, Hakuin Zenji's words on the elixir of life, why softness keeps the meridians open, karma and habit energy, and the balance of intellect and emotion.

JJ Johnson answers a student's question about Seijaku with the story of practicing at a Texas roadside park on World T'ai Chi Day when a freight train roared past.

Sue Kenney lists the paradoxes of T'ai Chi Chih, physical and spiritual, calming and energizing, and recalls Justin Stone's advice not to analyze them but to experience the effort of no effort.

Adam Lacey travelled from Oxfordshire to the inaugural Tai Chi and Qigong research conference in Boston, where prominent scientists named T'ai Chi Chih in their trials and attendees sought out the day-two experiential workshop.

From a spoken word CD, Justin Stone links chi to breath and mood, cites Sri Aurobindo, and describes the maximum Chi program he would give athletes, including Nei Kung at bedtime.

Caroline Guilott insists on Justin Stone's exact wording, from "graceful conclusion" to the "hip swivel," and explains how the relaxed, slightly cupped hands let students feel polarity as heat, cold or tingling rather than a cosmetic gesture.

Caroline Guilott draws on Justin Stone's exact phrases, from "graceful conclusion" to the hip swivel, and explains why polarity between relaxed, slightly cupped hands is felt in the body rather than the mind.

Carmen Brocklehurst recounts a doctor's advice to release teaching stress, her 1976 start with Helen Brungardt Pope, and, in a reprinted 2009 piece, the quiet mind and turning t'an t'ien she found.

Daniel Pienciak recalls Pam Towne relaying, at a 2009 Seijaku accreditation, that Justin Stone prized expansion and contraction, and describes feeling that dynamic in the t'an t'ien during every weight shift.

Garo Nokhoudian's pyramid poems move from surrender and caring to Chi waking up playfully between the sheaths, ending with hang time when earth and sky beat as one.

John Marquez builds a pyramid poem from single words, moving from chi and movement through vibration, freedom and awareness to silence, breath and honest written speech.