The Vital Force Archive

Dotty Hoepner recounts reading a chapter of Climb the Joyous Mountain before each session of Donna McElhose's intermediate class, drawn to Justin Stone's travels in the East and the chapter "Provincialism."

Bobbie and Andy Anderson assign pyramid poetry and a blank practice calendar marked with smiley faces to keep students practising during their breaks away from class.

Donna McElhose, left waiting three hours in a hospital cubicle for a delayed procedure, wrapped her IV lines around her wrists and practiced TCC in her gown while nurses looked on; Pyramid Poems on silence follow.

Sandra Freda visited Jerry Bumbalough's twice-weekly class at a Salinas adult day health center, where he teaches seated TCC to Spanish-speaking students with Alzheimer's beginning with "Copy me."

Bobbie Weichman rereads the letter she wrote to Donna McElhose, Justin Stone and Carmen Brocklehurst after three months of classes, measuring twelve years of practice against fibromyalgia, cranky joints and shorter, sometimes seated, sessions.

Esther Matassarin-Jacobs recounts starting seated T'ai Chi Chih at a Cancer Wellness Center after chemotherapy left her feet numb and falling weekly, and standing to class applause after knee replacements.

Terry Slaney watched five cranes foraging silently in a wheat field on her drive to class, and found in their balanced movement a lesson in theme and variation, softness and continuity.

Nadine Burge recounts how her mother's death in 2009 sent her into a depression that halted her practice, and how returning to fifteen minutes of T'ai Chi Chih eased both her neck and back arthritis and her mood.

Andrea Skillman recounts five years of teaching T'ai Chi Chih to holistic nurses at their annual conference, where beginners moved so well she had them pair up for mirrored Push Pull.

Donna McElhose lists what teachers and teacher candidates each gain from an intensive, from learning the 'second signature' role to previewing the first half of teacher training.

May Young Chin took up T'ai Chi Chih in early retirement for balance and coordination, and draws on her Chinese roots and Feng Shui's wind and water to explain why she keeps attending group classes.

Karin Yacullo recounts signing up for T'ai Chi Chih because it was something new, then repeating the beginner class as she came to see it as a moving meditation worth working at.

Nelson Weaver, a retired Air Force and corporate Type A personality, describes taking stock at 62, signing up for Donna McElhose's beginning class, and celebrating a 149 Day Gong.

Nancy Lawrence took up T'ai Chi Chih a year earlier after personal tragedies and because it cost so little, and describes chi feeling as large as a basketball during Daughter on the Mountain Top.

Richard Dye, a self-described rationalist who lives in his head, describes blundering into T'ai Chi Chih after a T'ai Chi Ch'uan class time didn't fit, and finding relief in Justin Stone's statement that no beliefs are needed.

Terry Slaney recounts Justin Stone's reassurance that she was doing fine, then traces the flow through Basic Pulling Taffy, the Anchor, Wrist Circles and Perpetual Motion.

Donna McElhose recounts how preparing for teacher training made her stop and remember life before T'ai Chi Chih, and how that remembering turned into gratitude and new joy.

Terry Slaney overhears a woman at the fitness center say she misses her T'ai Chi Chih after a T'ai Chi Ch'uan class, and the two of them find a sunlit corner for a spontaneous practice together.

Donna McElhose has her community college students hunt for articles on T'ai Chi Chih benefits at the start of the semester and again at its end, when their choices turn personal and emotional.

Donna McElhose describes the 2009 International T'ai Chi Chih Conference in Nebraska, organized by teachers from many areas rather than one region, with a scholarship raffle and a barbeque songfest.

Donna McElhose teaches Pulling Taffy through the motions of making ice cream, scooping left at waist level, circling a topping on with the right hand, wiping the dish and serving it to a friend.

Cathy Williams names impatience as an ego problem, describing the road rage incident that pushed her to swap hard rock for classical music on the drive home and to start each day with T'ai Chi Chih.

Nancy Lecraw describes five years of team teaching with Bobbie, from Tuesday morning planning sessions over tea to dividing new and review movements, working with seated students, and meeting program directors together.

Donna McElhose spells out her idea of F-U-N at the 2008 conference: Friends coming together from afar, Uniting movements with grace, and Not Trying, simply being in the movement.

Cathy Williams, grieving her sister's death from breast cancer, found her mental chatter stop during Rocking Motion and quit smoking, while Gary Swanson credits daily practice after his double lung transplant with lower blood pressure and greater lung capacity.

Two beginner accounts from a junior college class: Janis Gorski found sounder sleep and relief from a headache before her first test, and Tony Botting, facing knee replacements, could stand through ten movements.

Kathy Hubble describes nearly quitting six weeks before accreditation until a Sr. Antonia workshop renewed her resolve, and Diana Welsh Durkin reports on the Warrenville teacher training, where candidates kept journals before crossing the Cenacle Center's Bridge of Hope.