The Vital Force Archive

Kris Jordahl, who began practising in 2020 and never met Justin Stone, counts 20 openings, groundings, pauses and closings, arguing the graceful conclusion is where energy settles.

Lisa Stroyan collects teachers' responses from Sandy McAlister's April 2023 Zoom discussion on the split mind, including Joan Weaver's trick for recovering a lost count while teaching.

Host Jessica Lewis introduces participant accounts from the March 2023 Zoom Intensive, where teachers and candidates report new sense of the t'an t'ien, fuller weight shifts, relief from knee pain, and reconnection to community.

Joanne Howell recaps the Second Saturday discussion of Sandy McAlister's four practice types - formal, working, play and tailored - with teachers' examples of connected forms, imagery and staying true to Justin Stone's original.

John Marquez builds a pyramid poem from the firm resting position outward to friendship, morning reading of centuries-past wisdom, self-responsibility, and students absorbing Justin's teachings until teacher and student merge.

Daniel Pienciak describes experimenting with faster, smaller movements and fewer repetitions, citing Justin Stone's Photo Text encouragement to build a personal program and test different speeds.

Jan Walker asks the private TCC teacher Facebook group why polarity matters, and Chris McLain, Jessica Lewis, Hannah Hedrick and Barbara Kristoff answer with quiet minds, universal principles and Randolph Stone's polarity therapy.

Pam Towne offers a New Year self-check on how you move, using a mirror or cell phone video to test softness, continuity, weight shift, polarity of the palms and focus in the t'an t'ien.

April Leffler describes how allowing space under the armpits, rather than letting the upper arms hang, dropped her shoulders and freed the Chi, and how she taught it using the Goldilocks Method.

Amy Tyksinski uses Around the Platter Variation to teach polarity between the palms, suggesting the base of the palms come slightly closer to activate the wrist meridians and awaken felt Chi.

Patty Stupca, inspired by Kay Rydeen's visual aid, walks readers through a word puzzle moving from DOG SHOWS to GOD SHOWS to GOOD SHOWS as four levels of TCC practice.

Monica Motyka Ganzer noticed, while adding dated margin notes to her copy of Spiritual Odyssey, that her once-alarming handwriting had become fluid and even, evidence that peace was no longer something she controlled.

Patty Stupca asks what comes after regular T'ai Chi Chih and Seijaku practice brings peace, and answers that the goal is nothing: return to the present and find gratitude.

Lisa Stroyan draws on Justin's three confirming signs, the Nei Kung and an email exchange with Lynne Roberts to offer practical ways to develop TCC mentally, from breath counting to feeling weight shift through the soles.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst argues that T'ai Chi Chih movements never change, only our perception of them, and that teachers must admit mistaken understanding, citing Hakuin and Justin Stone's chapter "The Growth of Certainty."

Margery Erickson recalls hiding behind a tree at her first outdoor class, hosting her accreditation in her home weaving studio, and Justin shaking his head at her Daughter in the Valley.

Dorene Krause collects the AHA! discoveries her students report, from feeling energy between the palms to finding the foot's place, alongside the AAH... moments of effortless flow, grounding and calm.

Hannah Hedrick works through the principles she took from the four teacher trainers' presentations at the international conference, from pressing dimes into the floor to using wrists rather than arms in Working the Pulley.

Lisa Stroyan's poem, sparked by Lorraine Lepine's practice and Ann Rutherford's conference reference to kelp, names sensations of soft arms, uncurling fingers and resting on the energy sea.

Johnnie Marquez came to T'ai Chi Chih for balance after stumbling off a stationary bike, resisted his teacher's repeated suggestion to seek accreditation, and describes how Zoom practice, an Intensive and pyramid poetry changed his mind.

Johnnie Marquez traces the stages of a student's journey from quickly learned movements to the growing intimacy with the feet, total weight shift and moments when the practice seems to do itself.

Patty Stupca uses the Zen parable of the overflowing teacup to ask what expectations, shoulds and judgments students bring to practice, offering gratitude as what to fill the cup with instead.

Rosalind L Braga praises the 2022 conference for its easy attendance and the fact that no one had to choose between presentations, and for awakening a lasting sense of belonging among longtime teaching colleagues.

Amy Tyksinski gathers quotations recorded in small group sessions with Justin Stone around his metaphor of dyeing the cloth, linking devotion, faith and letting go to becoming large-hearted.

Laurie Jacobi recounts how pandemic isolation in Minnesota opened a fruitful emptiness, drawing on Lao Tzu, Japanese flower arranging and the slowed transitions between movements, followed by readers' Pyramid Poems.

Sandy McAlister explains why Justin Stone wanted teachers to educate themselves rather than take formal courses, and how conference talks on Taoist philosophy, grounding, meditation and Justin's own travels deepen a teacher's understanding.

Daniel Pienciak, a conservatory-trained musician, compares solo piano practice and choral singing to TCC, arguing that group flow delights but daily solo practice carries the inner discipline Justin Stone described.

Drawing on three decades as a Special Education teacher, Linda Braga argues that partner practice, where classmates observe each other and trade feedback, should be a standard part of every TCC class.

Laurie Jacobi takes a student's description of T'ai Chi Chih as a tool for transformation and applies it to her own foot placement, Push Pull and Passing Clouds, watching physical corrections change corresponding areas of her life.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst recounts how Eliza Fulton and Anita Vestal built a virtual 2022 teacher conference for 156 Zoom participants, and how Patty Stupca's talk sharpened her own teaching of grounding the Chi.