The Vital Force Archive

Cristina Minelli adapts Italian meditation teacher Andrea Magrin's WhatsApp pairing system for TCC, where practitioners post a request like "10/10" and video call a partner, each leading half the movements.

Jessica Lewis pushes back on the claim that only specialists can teach Veterans, giving three reasons T'ai Chi Chih suits students with PTSD and advising class-wide suggestions rather than individual corrections.

A transcribed lecture in which Justin Stone traces the Yin and Yang Chi back to the Tao, compares T'ai Chi Chih with Zen meditation, Hatha Yoga and T'ai Chi Ch'uan, and recounts early student results from 1974 onward.

Darlene Benton, newly accredited after years of teaching qigong and T'ai Chi Ch'uan, filled her first classes with massage therapy clients aged 18 to 80 who kept returning and brought friends.

Judy Hubbell describes teaching T'ai Chi Chih outdoors and at senior centers in the Castro, South Sunset and Ocean Beach, with City College classes for older adults and YouTube sessions for isolated students.

Lanni Lantery recounts a 2003 TCC presentation where built-up Chi made her karate demonstration so fast she split her student's groin cup, plus a beginner's George Clooney remark during Pulling in the Energy.

Linda Braga remembers Ruby Harper, her San Leandro student and a Hindu swami in orange robes, who while meditating at her Guru's ashram in India took down a message from Justin Stone about natural breathing, signed in his own ascending hand.

Excerpts from Justin Stone's Spiritual Odyssey recall the 1989 Albuquerque conference and its silent sunrise practice at Old Town Plaza, the first 1974 class, and his warning to keep T'ai Chi Chih unmixed with other traditions.

Justin Stone's own definitions of koan, mantra, prajna, samadhi, satori, teh, T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Zen, drawn from two of his books and showing how his emphasis shifted over time.

Jessica Lewis recounts how she, Anita Vestal, Adam Lacey and Sokie Lee won a 30-minute experiential slot at Boston's OSHER Whole-Person Health Conference in September 2023, funded partly by grants and T-shirt sales.

Adam Lacey travelled from Oxfordshire to the inaugural Tai Chi and Qigong research conference in Boston, where prominent scientists named T'ai Chi Chih in their trials and attendees sought out the day-two experiential workshop.

Dr. Anita Vestal reports from the inaugural Science of T'ai Chi and Qigong as Whole Person Health Conference, where Dr. Helen Lavretsky could not locate a TCC teacher for a study through the website directory.

Track 5 of Justin Stone's spoken word CD, in which he explains how flowing Chi erases vasanas and samskaras, names the seven emotions, recounts travels in India, Kyoto and Taipei, and denies that T'ai Chi Chih is a martial art.

Transcribed from his spoken word CD, Justin Stone contrasts changing the Chi directly with working through the mind in Zen or Hatha Yoga, and traces Yin and Yang back to the Tao in Chinese cosmology.

Rosalind L. Braga recounts a silent encounter at a contemplative retreat at Santa Sabina Center, where a curious young Chinese woman who practiced T'ai Chi Ch'uan watched her move and called it light as a feather.

In this chapter from his reissued book, Justin Stone argues that Yoga and Buddhism are three-tiered paths, tracing sila, dhyana-samadhi and the prajna wisdom that enlightened the illiterate woodcutter Huineng.

Jan Walker asks the private TCC teacher Facebook group why polarity matters, and Chris McLain, Jessica Lewis, Hannah Hedrick and Barbara Kristoff answer with quiet minds, universal principles and Randolph Stone's polarity therapy.

Justin Stone maps Patanjali's Raja Yoga into three parts and eight steps, argues that morality is only the stairway to the bridge, and explains how erasing habit energies leads to detachment.

Justin Stone recounts arriving unannounced at Rammurti Mishra's Manhattan ashram, the Indian teacher's reading of his recurring vision of a burning golden Buddha head, and his koan-like reply about mistakes.

Rosemarie Berezin signed up at the Clarkstown Community Learning Center thinking T'ai Chi Chih was formal T'ai Chi, and found in Oreann's class a practice that feels like floating in the Caribbean.

Marcella Levie connects Marie Dotts's Zoom guidance about letting TCC do her with the Hebrew Letter Movements she teaches, tracing her path from a Siesta Key beach in 1991 toward accreditation.

Justin Stone describes human beings as shifting yin and yang energies, explains that blood follows chi and chi follows thought, and argues that T'ai Chi Chih balances energy before illness arises.

Paul E. Ciske follows up his conference talk on grounding, describing the equal and opposite forces felt at the soles and the t'an t'ien, and how Seijaku with Fast Track worked as a neurologic stimulus akin to Z-Health drills.

Susan Corey applies the Laban and Bartenieff Effort/Shape Method, with its continua of flow, weight, time and space, to T'ai Chi Chih instruction, identifying the practice as a light, sustained, direct glide.

Anne Braudy, a Boston pianist with no local teachers, describes how COVID-19 stay-at-home orders ended her group yoga classes and revived the near-daily morning T'ai Chi Chih she had learned from Carmen Brocklehurst's video.

Laurie Jacobi, listening to Taoist master Waysun Liao during the pandemic, treats TCC as a moving art and traces the axle of stillness in the Anchor variation of Pulling Taffy and Six Healing Sounds.

Denise Emanuel Clemen stocked her Minneapolis pantry as COVID-19 emptied the Trader Joe's shelves down to green jackfruit, then found her real reserve in daily T'ai Chi Chih, yoga and 3:00 a.m. Nei Kung.

Charles Sasa, a black belt in Okinawan weapons who could describe chi but never feel it, recounts finally sensing energy during Passing Clouds and his teacher Hannah Hendrick's reply.

Jessica Lewis recounts a 90-minute virtual meeting with David-Dorian Ross and TaijiFit instructors about the Free T'ai Chi for Veterans program, the Fang Song principle, and how teaching Vets with few words changed her view of other T'ai Chi styles.

Kathleen McAllister describes the frustrating sign-up process for David Dorian Ross's Free T'ai Chi for Veterans program, and decides patience and softness are the way to meet it.