The Vital Force Archive

Sue Bitney co-chaired the raffle and auction for the 50th anniversary conference in Albuquerque with Judy Trousdell, then tested positive for COVID and instead had a last conversation with her hospice patient.

Linda Minor recounts playing prescriptive harp for a dying friend and being engulfed by a yellow light and overwhelming peace, then finding words for it years later in TCC, Anton Grosz and Rachel Naomi Remen.

Hannah Hedrick describes practising three times a week in her yoga shed during the pandemic, private sessions for students with cancer, energy work for a dying fellow organizer, and a Down Syndrome class cut short by lockdown.

Denise Emanuel Clemen finds the movement names taking on new meaning through four years of caring for her mother and her boyfriend, who died in June 2014, and names the love she feels radiating from TCC.

Denise Emanuel Clemen recounts the divorce that wrecked her life in 2007, her skeptical first T'ai Chi Chih class at an Oxnard gym, and practicing in her living room after her partner Dan died of lung cancer in hospice care there.

Albuquerque students remember Justin Stone: Amy Tyksinski was present for his final quiet, effortless breath, Judy Hendricks recounts his last days under hospice care, and Mary White, Guy Kent, Kathy Grassel and others add memories, poems and thanks.

Judith Schwartz describes her three classes at Laguna Honda Hospital, including the Zen Hospice Floor, where she rings a singing bowl, plays Mbira and chant recordings, and leads patients in wheelchairs.

Sister Francis A Kay writes from eleven years teaching T'ai Chi Chih in Zimbabwe, including at the Harare Hospice Bereavement Center amid cholera, AIDS and forced evacuations, before returning to the US for heart surgery.

Sher Dano recounts a student telling her, after class, how her family gathered at her dying mother's hospital bed and did Rocking Motion, the mother's favorite movement, as she slipped away.

Linda Robinson recounts how a chance remark from a Seattle hospital bereavement coordinator led to paid TCC classes for the recently bereaved, with practical advice on scheduling, candles and group critique.

Sr. Francis A. Kay writes from her hospice ministry to HIV and AIDS patients and the bereaved in Harare, Zimbabwe, teaching a class to hospice staff and crediting T'ai Chi Chih energy for her recovery from eye surgery.

A profile of teacher candidate Sue Inteman, a student of Marjorie Peltier who uses T'ai Chi Chih in recovering from left facial paralysis and presented research on TCC and stress reduction to Hospice of Wake County.

Ralph Garn remembers his teacher Rahshelle-Lei O'Culmain, who died February 7 at a hospice in Oahu after years of caring for family members with cancer and facing her own.

Oonagh Perdue of Phoenix reports on her talks and demonstrations for clubs, hospices and other groups, and names Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor among the students who loved TCC.