The Vital Force Archive

Marcella K. Levie asked her senior students why they return each week, and Madelon, Olga, Ariette and Sima describe calmer minds, better balance, repeating guitar and flute music, and effort without effort.

Sharon Sirkis collects four TCC laughs, from a plumber who found waterfall music anything but soothing to a teacher candidate joking about the KGB over an autographed brochure.

Pam Towne teaches Justin Stone's joy song from Meditation for Healing, with its faster weight shift, swinging arms and one syllable per shift, and suggests adapting it for students' balance.

Daniel Pienciak, a conservatory-trained musician, compares solo piano practice and choral singing to TCC, arguing that group flow delights but daily solo practice carries the inner discipline Justin Stone described.

Bruce Childs returned to teaching chair-assisted TCC at the Barnstable Adult Community Center after the pandemic, and lists the resources in his toolbox, from Sandy McAlister's DVD to his own Little Guy illustrations.

Sharon Sirkis collects four classroom moments, including Ruth's shaking key-ring bracelet, silly putty mistaken for chewing gum during Pulling Taffy, and a student who called Anugama's music a funeral march.

Justin Stone lays out a sequence of listening practices, from registering random sounds without embroidery to chanting the Gayatri Mantra and singing his own "Healing thru Joy," recalling a flute heard in Himalayan rain.

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.

John Flynn describes playing the shakuhachi, an end-blown bamboo flute, for Cathy Burton's Ventura class, quoting a Chan poem and a master's account of Three Valleys that shapes his playing during the Daughter movements.

Cathy Burton attended accreditation in Rochester at age 70 with no plan to teach, then took over Dixie Adeniran's Ventura classes after the Thomas fire forced her mentor to evacuate.

First-year teacher Nikol Price describes using essential oil sprays and albums like Misty Forest Morning to mask Student Union noise and make her class an experience rather than exercise.

Eliza Fulton treats the final pause after practice as a living silence that heals body and mind, noting that "silent" and "listen" are anagrams and urging us to rest from mental activity.

Kathy Starrick, a former technical writer, compares the silence between musical passages and the white space on a page to the pauses she takes after each movement to absorb its peace.

Susan Sobelson describes thirty-two teachers, students and passersby circling on Raspberry Island in the Mississippi for World T'ai Chi and Qigong Day, a singing bowl marking each movement as barges and trains passed.

Marcy Burns describes the annual candlelit holiday practice and party at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ventura, begun by Lisa Otero, where thirty-eight students and seven teachers moved in concentric circles.

Larry Bloom describes his Sandy Springs Circle of Light practising to guqin music in honour of Franky Carrillo, exonerated after 20 years in Folsom, and teacher Sheryl Adair's closing question.

Judy Resele found a cable soundscapes station for her practice and used the eight panes of her window to track repetitions, freeing her mind and lengthening her Cosmic Consciousness Pose.

Carol Spicer registered over 60 people for the Saturday community practice, half of them newcomers drawn by newspaper and online outreach, who followed Sandy's lead with harp music and little verbal instruction.

Jackson Rains compares Good Karma's two Justin Stone instructional DVDs, the 2005 four-teacher filming and the 1994 solo re-release, on mirroring, music, chapter breaks and picture quality, and recommends the solo version.

Carol Mockovak describes the Friday night Dances of Universal Peace at the conference, where leader Francis Gurtz taught a dance on a Rumi poem and teachers chanted, turned and were reluctant to stop.

More than twenty Pyramid Poems by students and teachers, including Caroline Guilott, Dora Derzon and Nancy Frost, honor Justin Stone a year after his death, alongside captions for two new Good Karma Publishing CDs.

Maryjean Owens took a summer break from group class and practiced alone at dusk in a secluded park with her Maltese, Babette, opera in her ear buds, before returning to the group and starting Seijaku.

Ten reader-submitted pyramid poems on silence, from Bo in Atlanta, Tudor Oprea, Pete Gregory, Barbara Dinehart and others, hearing the first silent note, windless water and the heart's song.

Mary Case, who noticed her own sudden hearing loss ten years ago, offers practical adjustments for students who cannot hear you: face them, seat them discreetly up front, lower the music, and use a waist amplifier.

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.

Carol Spicer found deeper softness in a silent group practice led by Antonia in Ringwood, and describes how her teachers now lead music-only practices at student request.

Donna Dittmer, 73, took up T'ai Chi Chih after serious surgery left her with problematic breathing, and felt the energy in the first movements her class learned with Bev Chandley.

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.

Carmen Brocklehurst describes Justin Stone's 94th birthday gathering in New Mexico, with a noon practice at the country's first TCC center, jazz musicians, visiting teenagers, and three-year-old Leila Berg.

Linda Braga pairs the CD "Seaside: Solo Piano" with Rocking Motion and Bird Flaps Its Wings, then teaches a visualization of a footprint in wet sand, washed away each time the weight shifts back.