The Vital Force Archive

Lisa Renee France signed up for a T'ai Chi Chih course only to earn one CPA credit, then a hospital stay made Sharon Sirkis's lessons about bamboo, patience and a too-full plate suddenly matter.

Sharon Sirkis and Sher Dano collect classroom slips and comebacks, from a student whose favorite move was "Rocking Horse" to a retirement center lady asking permission to complain about the cold room.

Cristina Minelli recounts her November 2001 lecture to roughly 300 people at the University of Verona's Special Education department, from her ten years of insomnia and the Indian tiger parable to leading the room in Push Pull and Around the Platter.

Janet Oussaty gathered about 100 weekly journals from her credit-bearing T'ai Chi Chih courses at Kean University and grouped the students' own words into themes of initial skepticism, reduced stress, self esteem and spiritual path.

Sharon Sirkis opens her UMBC classes with a name-and-party memory game that takes an hour with 25 students, drawing out fear, perfectionism and the value of repetition for their TCC practice.

In a letter to her teacher Sharon Sirkis, Tessa Bogar describes how a summer gym-credit class eased a lifelong habit of dissociating, so that she could feel the weight shift in each step home.

Letters requesting prints of the back-cover photo of Justin and Ed, with photographer Alice Maisel's prices, plus Cristina Minelli's account of an Open Encounter talk in Italy that won a professor's pledge to bring T'ai Chi Chih to the University of Verona.

Donna McElhose struck up a conversation about T'ai Chi Chih while waiting for a movie to start, and one of the two women she gave a card to dropped her psych class to enroll at the college instead.

Janet M. Oussaty recounts a year of TCC expansion at Kean University, from a student-run practice group and credit courses to a 100-person session at the AAHPERD national convention in Cincinnati and a campus cable television interview.

Jessica Skolnik, a college student of Sharon Sirkis, recounts walking away from a near-fatal car accident, losing her migraines, and practicing barefoot in a Connecticut park while on tour with a band.

Ann Sollars, the only accredited teacher in Idaho, writes from Pocatello about teaching old friends in Blackfoot and invitations to present at Idaho State University, including a T'ai Chi Ch'uan professor's intermediate class.

Donna McElhose describes the eight-week beginner and intermediate T'ai Chi Chih courses she teaches for credit at the College of Lake County, including written tests, video taping, student projects and 100-day practice charts.

Kimberly Hurst signed up for T'ai Chi Chih as an easy winter-session gym credit, skeptical of chi, until the hand-squeezing exercise produced warmth and tingling and her high-strung habits began to settle.

Five light moments from Sharon Sirkis and Ed Altman, including a senior's "big belly" horsepower, a hubcap that interrupted the Six Healing Sounds outdoors at UMBC, and fireworks after teacher training.

Christeen McLain offers to share curriculum guidelines and procedures with anyone wanting to teach TCC for college credit, drawing on her classes at Minnesota State University Moorhead since 1996.

Nancy Jo Bleier describes teaching one-credit beginning and intermediate TCC courses at University of Alaska Southeast, plus monthly T'ai Chi Chih by the Sea gatherings behind the Sitka library.

Janet M. Oussaty describes winning approval for a one-credit T'ai Chi Chih course at Kean University, from curriculum committees to flyers, plus the class format, grading by journals and presentations, and a parallel non-credit offering.

Cheryl Hall recounts how she and her mother Shirley found T'ai Chi Chih at a Cannon Beach retreat with Elizabeth Tyler, both became accredited, and now co-teach classes in Oregon.

Dan Carpenter, a student finishing a semester class, compares the flow he finds in Perpetual Motion and Rocking Motion to carving down a mountain on his snowboard, and recounts practicing at dawn during an ice storm.

Shirley Ownes, 80, recounts how T'ai Chi Chih helped her recover from a 1997 hip replacement, her surgeon approving practice before and after, and how Sharon Sirkis' live class outdid the televised lessons she had followed.

Carolyn P. Shaw, accredited since 1979, has taught T'ai Chi Chih to New Mexico school counselors and students, faculty wives in Singapore, colleagues in Madrid, and friends in Belgium and Holland, calling it a "grace note" rather than a business.

Southwestern College's newsletter The Heartlink put Janet Yannacone on its front page as new Art Therapy Program Chair, describing her therapeutic model blending art therapy, T'ai Chi Chih and spiritual principles for children.

Carmen Brocklehurst counts more than 78 T'ai Chi Chih teachers in Albuquerque, where the practice began at the University of New Mexico and now reaches hospitals, corporations, senior centers, churches and trade fairs.

Leslie Johnson-Leech passes along the water poetry printed on a T-shirt from WATER WAYS, a children's workshop at Point Loma Arts Academy, plus the Namasté greeting a San Diego State extension student offered.

Susan Webster reports on the nineteen graduates of Steve's August 1993 accreditation course, new classes for San Diego city employees, Mercy Hospital and an AIDS program, and her bid to add TCC at Grossmont College.

Teacher updates from Gordon Wade on Elderhostel classes in Banff, Sister Trinitas on retired nuns' balance and walking, Pat Graves teaching at a Santa Fe half-way house, the Sanchezes' move to Lake Tahoe, and Dorcas Hueners' master's thesis.

A Chicago Tribune story on adult education visited Barbara Peller's Oakton Community College class, quoting students aged 67 and 73, plus an NTSW Industries newsletter piece on her work.

Linda Sanchez describes the noon-time class she teaches for staff at UC Santa Barbara, where students report less stress after a few weeks, and notes her own tense areas softening.

Roxann Post reports on the moves of John and Joy Barbour to Payson, David Smith to Idaho and herself to Nevada, with Loretta Hopper and Della Alberson taking over the Mohave Community College classes.

Lu Marla Dorn of San Francisco reports private teaching, T'ai Chi Chih moves added to her Senior Fitness classes and a March workshop for CCSF instructors, while George Balliet teaches three weekly classes in Merced.