The Vital Force Archive

Victor J. Dougherty recalls watching a technician degauss a cathode ray tube TV at the RCA Service Center in 1988, and finds in those slow circles an image of recalibrating chi.

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.

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.

Rachel Rilinger disliked the air element until a Gatha course with Melina Bondy taught her to move slowly and feel color in the air, deepening her Seijaku practice.

Mary Ann Benner found T'ai Chi Chih at the Mayo Clinic during her husband's three months of cancer treatment, then carried it home to Lorraine Lepine's church group and daily Zoom sessions through COVID-19.

Mary Frances Reis stands on her porch amid towering evergreens in an unusually silent spring, joining the T'ai Chi Chih community at a distance and breathing in God with all humankind.

Rachel Rilinger, a music therapist covering for a recreation therapist on an inpatient acute psychiatric unit, led Rocking Motion and watched pacing, blanket-covered and muttering patients join staff in flowing practice.

Rachel Rilinger announces her accreditation after six-and-a-half years of practice begun with her aunt Terry Jennings, and lists the settings where she plans to teach, from a disability camp to a climbing gym.

Mary Frances Reis describes how a three-month stay at an eco-spirituality center led her to match the nineteen movements to Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry's universe story, from Rocking Motion as the flaring forth onward.

Sky Young-Wick admits he avoided Justin Stone out of fear of his blunt feedback, then describes sensing his presence during practices in Kansas City, including one his student Jack felt too.

Stephen M. Steffan, six to eight months into study with Gale Rublee Portman, combined his longtime labyrinth walking with TCC and found Rocking Motion starting on its own, followed by a strong electrical tingling and an unusually deep prayer session.

Sky Young-Wick recounts coordinating the 2010 Teacher Conference despite never having helped with a TCC event, and describes the 40-plus volunteers, deepened relationships, and unexpected joy that resulted.

Susan Kissinger describes noticing at the 2010 conference that other teachers transitioned between movements differently than she did, and returning to Seijaku after six years away from it.

Susan Kissinger's account of Sandy McAlister's April 2010 intensive in St Louis, where 13 students and eight teachers from seven states gathered, and of her own softening since her first class in 1996.

Mark Moloney audits the November 2009 Albuquerque teacher training, where Sandy McAlister's precise corrections and her nearly wordless demonstration of seated T'ai Chi Chih moved him most.

Sky Young-Wick argues that every T'ai Chi Chih teacher is a leader, drawing on her 50-year friendship with her former babysitter Marge to define leadership as sharing time, honesty and heart without ego.