The Vital Force Archive

Denise Alire found joy in worldwide Zoom practice during years of solitude, favors practicing alone along the beach until a place invites her to stop, and still loves the stronger cosmic vibrations of moving as one in person.

John Marquez describes a 5:30AM Saturday with his cat Bella, arguing with his own laziness, and finds that beginning one movement, or even a weight shift in a checkout line, builds consistency.

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.

Lynne Roberts recounts the 2022 virtual conference with 60 volunteers and 163 teachers, praising new presenters and April Leffler's tip of mentally placing dimes on the soles of the feet.

Rosemarie Berezin signed up at the Clarkstown Community Learning Center thinking T'ai Chi Chih was formal T'ai Chi, and found in Oreann's class a practice that feels like floating in the Caribbean.

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.

John Marquez builds a pyramid poem from the word gratitude after a morning practice, then traces how years of T'ai Chi Chih turned being alone from a negative into valued time for practice and writing.

Passages from Justin Stone's Climb the Joyous Mountain on disciplined mind, Japanese understatement, spring rain on temple eaves, gratitude at meals, and Zen freedom lived amid conditions.

Margery Erickson recounts a former student, Sandy, rejoining her drop-in YMCA class and producing the worn list of TCC movements she once used to practice before craft shows.

Terry Gay Puckett's Shih Tzu puppy chewed open a tube of toxic acrylic flow, and the two hours stranded in a vet's exam room became a slow practice of T'ai Chi Chih and Seijaku.

Denise Alire practices T'ai Chi Chih barefoot on the sand by the bay, fretting over unfinished shopping and no cash, then finds two rolled twenty dollar bills at her feet.

Dorene Krause takes four lines about the growth of certainty, heard in Daniel Pienciak's Seijaku course, and applies them to years of practice, including a student's account of returning to class thinking she knew the movements.

After an exhausting three-hour Seijaku teaching practice, John Marquez walks to a nearby park, lies barefoot under a tree, and finds Justin Stone's phrase about serenity amid activity coming true.

Paula Haraldson set four intentions for her accreditation course and found grounding the hardest, especially when fatigue from a brain injury left her unable to teach a movement she knew well.

Bianca Lee's poem traces the move from hiding fear and imperfection to trusting the group that caught her, closing with accreditation week as a beginning rather than an ending.

Sue Bitney recounts auditing the final days of a teacher accreditation course, describing the candidates' vulnerability and courage and the welcome she offered them in their last conversation together.

Larry Tolbert moves through a Monday morning practice in a public grove, crows and playing children all around, and takes Justin Stone's line about the form coming not from but through him into his own poetry writing.

Roseann Heinrich's rhymed verse traces her path from needing calm, through twenty years of teaching, to the chi that now leads her to write poems each morning.

Sue Kenney recounts teaming up with George Manning and Linda Robinson to present on inclusiveness and seated students at the virtual 2021 conference, joining the Q&A from a nursing home wheelchair after two hip surgeries.

Victor J. Dougherty's poem listens to the silence of falling snow, following each flake to ledge, leaf, field or face, and finding that neither is ever in the wrong place.

Dora Wiemann recalls Saturday evening meditation and Teisho at Justin Stone's house, where he answered his own question about why they gathered, and Judy Hendricks describes learning from his DVDs and CDs.

Kristin Clark Taylor describes completing one of the first accreditation courses held entirely on Zoom, with Daniel Pienciak and April Leffler, and insists the Chi she felt alone in her living room was not virtual.

Mary Ann Johnson of Ponte Vedra Beach offers a New Year blessing in verse, wishing 365 days of deep joy and 525,600 minutes of peace to the TCC circle, sometimes gathered virtually.

Carmen Brocklehurst recalls Justin Stone asking "What does that have to do with TCC?" during their conversations, and how his remarks about the blue sky taught her awareness beyond the movements.

A gathering of Pyramid Poems by Nathalie Miller, Monica Cejudo, Linda Jones, Rene Stramwasser and others on doing Nei Kung at night, trusting the blue sea, silence, and chi received in the t'an t'ien.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst answers a friend whose practice had not shifted his pile of problems, using Hurricane Rita's aftermath in Louisiana to show how TCC opens the eyes to good amid destruction.

Dorene Krause set up a Zoom class in April and invited her students to write for a booklet she called "Students Speak," collecting five accounts, among them a woman who found her old notes in a drawer during the pandemic.

Eric Schoenfeld recalls the spirit of oneness at retreats at the now-sold Franciscan Spiritual Center in Pennsylvania, and finds that same warmth in Sandy McAlister's Tuesday noon Zoom practice.

Linda Robinson of Seattle kept teaching through hip and knee discomfort, and four of her Monday morning students describe how Zoom practice sustained them during the pandemic lockdown.

Anne Braudy, a Boston pianist with no local teachers, describes how COVID-19 stay-at-home orders ended her group yoga classes and revived the near-daily morning T'ai Chi Chih she had learned from Carmen Brocklehurst's video.