The Vital Force Archive

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.

Daniel Pienciak recounts the July 28 Zoom practice he led for teachers who could not travel to the 50th anniversary conference, with comments from participants across the country.

Diana Bahn opens with a short poem, then recounts returning to a live event at the 50th anniversary conference in Albuquerque after years of laying low and being of service while her teacher Carolyn Perkins and husband Michael weathered obstacles through COVID.

Comments gathered from small groups at the 2024 conference, responding to session themes of Worthiness, Unity, Courage, Joy, Opening, Giving and Receiving, Trust, Love and Gratitude.

Mary Strom recounts a Minnesota gathering for T'ai Chi Chih's 50th anniversary, where watching the leader's wrists during Around the Platter showed her the difference between softness and the collapse she long mistook for flexibility.

Guy Kent and Judy Hendricks report on the July 25-28, 2024 Teacher Conference in Albuquerque marking 50 years of T'ai Chi Chih, where 134 of 150 registered teachers attended, and point to online conference artifacts.

Lisa Stroyan gathers her notes from the 2024 50th anniversary conference, quoting April, Sandy, Carmen, Daniel, Tina and Justin, and closes with a pyramid poem built from the daily themes.

Nancy Jo Bleier took "There is only One Thing going on" as her mantra from the 50th Teacher Conference, praising its organization, small-group sessions, and remembrance of Justin and Connie Hyde.

John Marquez's pyramid poems on darkness, gratitude and silence are paired with anonymous workshop comments, including one widow who found faith in herself after losing her husband of 48 years.

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.

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.

Carmen Brocklehurst puzzled over the textbook subtitle "Joy Thru Movement" until she watched Justin Stone walk out of an Albuquerque dry cleaners with his laundry and saw joy itself.

Catherine Fedewa, who co-chaired the 2023 online Teacher Conference, names what Zoom gave the community and what it could not, and looks ahead to the in-person anniversary gathering in Albuquerque in 2024.

John Lee Marquez, a teacher of nine months, describes his first TCC conference under the theme "Remembering Connection," with videos and stories of Justin Stone and notes on deepening practice.

Patricia Spears Bigelow credits regular practice with strengthening an ankle after tendon surgery, easing asthma, and stopping the falls her glaucoma caused, and describes doves, squirrels and an owl watching her practice outdoors.

Jessica Lewis recounts how she, Anita Vestal, Adam Lacey and Sokie Lee won a 30-minute experiential slot at Boston's OSHER Whole-Person Health Conference in September 2023, funded partly by grants and T-shirt sales.

George Manning describes letting chi guide his teaching, moving side by side with students, slowing movements with the breath, and carrying the practice to settings where souls are forgotten.

Laurie Jacobi recalls first seeing Justin Stone playing 1940s jazz at a grand piano, and the conference where he corrected her for not moving low enough before learning of her back pain.

Lucy Hocking revisits the Asilomar grounds where she hosted the first International TCC Teacher Conference in August 1985, and admits that as a lapsed teacher she has stopped practicing daily.

Rebecca Paulson recounts April 29th World T'ai Chi and Qigong Day in northern Colorado, where 35 people from seven cities met at a community college while 26 more joined by Zoom from Belize onward.

Dina Ajlenberg, accredited in 2005 and the only T'ai Chi Chih teacher in Israel since moving from Toronto in 2009, describes three years teaching about ten movements at a dementia day center.

Patricia Winger describes how agreeing to teach her neighborhood seven days a week finally built a daily practice, breaking a 30-year habit within two months and speeding her recovery from total knee replacement.

Judy Smith walks past saguaros and the Garden Bistro to Laura Star's class under an adobe ramada at Tohono Chul in Tucson, correcting a movement and remembering family members Justin taught.

Newly accredited, John Marquez compares himself to an artichoke shedding layers, and finds that demonstrating movements while talking, correcting, pacing and counting is harder than he expected.

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.

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.

Lisa Otero recalls meeting Justin Stone through her aunt Carmen Brocklehurst, her initial disappointment that he seemed a conventional businessman, and the lessons on death and attachment absorbed over pancake house dinners.

Laurie Jacobi led a class devoted entirely to Rocking Motion and foot awareness, then shares student Patricia Blakely's email describing how the stone-like neuropathy pain in her right foot vanished by class end.

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.

Donna McElhose collected thank-you letters her Illinois students wrote to Justin Stone, describing asthma-friendly movement, circle meditation, a Folsom Prison video, and the struggle to practice alone at home.