The Vital Force Archive

Chris McLain credits her daughter Carrie's recovery from an unexpected heart attack to more than 400 days of solo daily practice, and traces three generations of accredited teachers in her family.

Steven Huskey teaches a weekly 45-minute seated class for brain injury survivors, emphasizing weight shift felt through the sit bones, upright torso, and compact hand movements in the side-to-side movements.

Colette Hertz describes the exhaustion and deepening after her November 2024 accreditation, teaching seated TCC to her 95-year-old neighbor Roberta, and feeling chi in her fingertips while her right hand was in a cast.

Holly Hershman passes along a student's note crediting T'ai Chi Chih with a 30% gain in movement and flexibility after hip and sciatic trouble, plus thank-you messages from JustinStoneTCC.com newsletter readers, including an opera singer who practices daily to warm up her breath support.

Laurin MacDonald joined the 50th conference by Zoom from England and recounts teaching TCC to a group recovering from strokes and paralysis, where nonverbal participants imagined the movements and fingers began to flutter.

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.

Warren Wolfe, sleepless in the hospital after knee-replacement surgery and plagued by muscle spasms, began doing T'ai Chi Chih mentally at 3 a.m., and describes the practice he has refined since.

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.

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.

Jeneth Rundle recounts her only face-to-face visit with Justin Stone in May 2011, when her phone rang mid-practice, and how his question returned to her after foot fusion surgery.

Ana Royal describes injuring her left knee reaching for a carry-on bag in Boston, the years of injections and medicated gel that followed, and how a year of daily TCC practice ended both.

Senior teacher Nancy Werner-Azarski of Minneapolis recounts seeing Justin's face when she sat to meditate before practice, his silent standing answer at an Albuquerque conference, and how hip pain led her to two long-avoided projects.

Hannah Hedrick, managing nearly four decades of chronic back pain and recovering from a third hip surgery, found that seated TCC sharpened her feel for grounding, alignment and the tan t'ien.

Jeneth Rundle describes teaching seated T'ai Chi Chih over Zoom while her student Angela recovered from knee replacement surgery, and teaching from a chair herself during her own knee trouble.

Kathy Starrick teaches seated TCC to every class, standing or not, after two major surgeries and a fractured leg left her practising mentally, then seated, with less pain and better sleep.

Monica Motyka credits her teacher Donna McElhose, who led mixed standing and seated group practices, with the confidence to now teach seated T'ai Chi Chih in every location she teaches.

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.

Diana Daffner tripped on a curb, broke her elbow, and found she could approximate most T'ai Chi Chih movements with her arm in a cast, which came off after fourteen days.

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.

Dorene Krause collects statements from five of her students, led by Peter Swist, who turned to TCC after spinal stenosis surgeries left him a constant fall hazard, plus Victor DePauw on daily practice.

Diana Bahn recounts covering her teacher Carolyn Perkins's classes the day Perkins broke her neck in February 2020, and how insurance denying a rehab bed kept her out of a COVID-struck hospital.

Oreann Kempadoo recounts becoming accredited in 2015 and struggling to introduce TCC in Rockland County until an adult learning center called, followed by testimonials from students including a woman recovering from a head injury and C-spine surgeries.

Merle Freidin Smith began T'ai Chi Chih after a 1998 rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis, and practiced it mentally through 18 days in hospital after cervical fusion surgery, keeping her attention in the soles of her feet.

Donovan Rundle plays grand piano accompaniment for all 19 movements at Lisa Otero's Silent Circle Practice in Ventura, and traces his playing back to physical therapy for a bullet wound to his dominant hand.

Jan Wilkowski recounts a brutal third week after left knee replacement, when playing Justin Stone's DVD on repeat and moving the arms, then the mind, brought her first real sleep and a return to writing and artwork.

Neena Mitchell had been teaching seated T'ai Chi Chih to seniors in Camillus just in case, then ruptured a kneecap muscle and used mental TCC in the MRI chamber and seated practice through surgery and recovery.

Ava Wilensky, six months into T'ai Chi Chih, was left unable to walk, sit or lie down after a hiking trip, and rebuilt her mobility by yinning and yanging alone, three repetitions at a time.

Kent Jarratt used the Six Healing Sounds while waiting in a car during a police sting to recover his stolen laptop, then visualized the whole practice after heart ablation surgery.

Christine Moore recounts how hip tendonitis and a knee injury from a bipartite patella forced her to postpone accreditation, and how seated and mental practice healed her instead.

Hannah Hedrick describes the slippage in her 20-year-old artificial hip, and the physical therapist who evaluated T'ai Chi Chih's weight shifting, approved both directions and asked to refer patients to her classes.