The Vital Force Archive
Eighteen years of The Vital Force (2007-2025), 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.
Churches and Spiritual Centers
Churches, temples, retreat houses and spiritual centers have long been places where T’ai Chi Chih is taught and practiced. Articles include accounts of retreats, classes held in parishes and religious communities, teachers’ reflections on practice and prayer, and stories of community formed in those settings.
Tony Johansen recounts Sandy McAlister's five-day Santa Barbara intensive, relocated after the Tea Fire destroyed Mount Calvary Retreat Center, using a cooking metaphor for how she chopped and diced the movements.
Carol E. Lieberman watched silent women moving in San Francisco parks for years before a friend, Jim Eagle, became a teacher; nine months into classes at a Unitarian church, she can sit still for ten minutes.
Carol E. Lieberman
Monterey, CA
Sr. Antonia Cooper contrasts branded "T'ai Chi for Health" programs with TCC's all-inclusive simplicity, recalls Justin Stone's caution against promising cures for specific ailments, and prints pyramid poems written by twelve women, eleven of them religious sisters, at a Jersey Shore retreat.
Sr. Antonia Cooper
OSF, North Plainfield, NJ
Sr. Antonia Cooper describes eight days of silent annual retreat at Stella Maris on the New Jersey shore, greeting sunrise and sunset with practice and finding honeysuckle blooming above the beach.
Sr. Antonia Cooper
OSF, North Plainfield, NJ
An announcement for a September 27-30 retreat led by Carmen Brocklehurst, a TCC teacher of 27 years, at the Spiritual Renewal Center in the bosque along the Rio Grande, for those who already know the movements.
Pam Towne's report on two four-day retreats at Mt. Calvary Retreat House above Santa Barbara, where Sister Antonia Cooper led the theme "Flowing from the Center with Joy," with participants' own comments.