The Vital Force Archive

Larry Tolbert moves through a Monday morning practice in a public grove, crows and playing children all around, and takes Justin Stone's line about the form coming not from but through him into his own poetry writing.

Diana Hudson's Christmas parody recasts "The Night Before Christmas" with the WooWoos, her outdoor practice group at Veteran's Park, and a Santa pulled by honking wild geese who passes his COVID test before joining them.

Suzanne Roady-Ross recounts Judy Chancey's conference presentation on teaching veterans in the ocean, waist or chest deep, replacing familiar imagery with waves, sinking sand, porpoises and frisbees.

Verla J. Klassen's poem traces earth's energy entering through the soles of her feet: Rocking Motion on a Pacific beach, bare feet on ancient Minnesota gneiss, swans on a stream.

Marija Hillis recounts how COVID-19 closures pushed her new teaching from an uneven park to three friends' backyards, growing to four weekly classes and 24 masked, distanced students.

Donna Aldous recounts selling her Mesa, Arizona property after 13 years as a snowbird, settling into a co-operative suite, and starting classes at Queen's House Retreat Center and her Manor.

Laura Star practices at dawn in a stone-ringed circle of desert sand near Tucson, joined by doves and coyotes, then trades cacti for birch trees and loons up north.

Kathleen McAlister describes Sunday morning group practice in a Philadelphia-area park through 2020, where flags, bees, motorcycle rallies, a political road rally and a track meet all tested her focus.

Melissa Eichman's pyramid poem moves through glistening snow, patient stillness and a gentle breeze where yin and yang converge, ending with a soft walk across snow kissed earth.

Lisa recounts how she and Sandy Roerig found students not among neighbors on their block but in a 55+ community meditation group, forming an outdoor practice group they named the Woo Woo Warriors.

Barbara Kristoff walks California's Old Tiburon Trail using Justin Stone's Satipathana mindful meditation, then describes the Zoom class she co-teaches with Linda Prosche and Tom Rothenberger, closing with pyramid poems from their park practice.

Amy Moody rafted 200 miles through the Grand Canyon over 11 days and found the chi so strong that simply standing and centering set her fingers fluttering, teaching movements to fellow passengers along the way.

When COVID-19 closed her senior center and gym classes, Nancy Rolph-Johnson moved practice onto the grass of two Long Beach and Bellflower parks, masked and ten feet apart, with student comments included.

Sue Bitney led a 50-person introductory class outdoors in frost and 30-degree temperatures at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum's Serenity Garden, offering a buffet of movements to let students feel different weight shifts.

Sue Bitney, practicing 18 years and teaching 15, describes the pandemic quiet that deepened her practice, learning Zoom for her classes, and a masked Saturday group at Lake Harriet with pinwheels marking six feet.

Dorene Krause practices alone behind a deserted high school during the pandemic spring and watches her own shadow on the concrete, noticing an upside-down heart form as her hands carry the ball.

Terry Johnson's first T'ai Chi Chih class, set for April Fool's Day 2020, was cancelled by COVID-19, so she worked her local food bank instead and now practices in the park with a staff member who would have been her student.

Hannah Hedrick describes practising three times a week in her yoga shed during the pandemic, private sessions for students with cancer, energy work for a dying fellow organizer, and a Down Syndrome class cut short by lockdown.

Susan Kenney writes in litany form about the weekly group practice in the park and the church, and how it continues after the pandemic separates the group into different places.

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.

Denise Emanuel Clemen counts TCC as the most portable practice she owns, recalling sessions on the Grand Canyon rim, the Badwater Basin salt flats, and her brother's Maryland double-wide, followed by pyramid poems on silence.

Jerry Jonnson offers teachers a ready-made promotional piece citing Dr. Richard Davidson's neuroscience of well-being, presenting T'ai Chi Chih as an easier moving mindfulness, ending with his outdoor Mt. Cuba Center classes.

Nancy Johnson's poem follows a walker who loses the way to a labyrinth, is set right by three strangers with big dogs, rests at the center, and spirals back out.

Rebecca Paulson describes the third annual T'ai Chi Chih weekend at her family's cabin above the Continental Divide, where teachers and students share meals, stargaze, and practice silently in a pine grove.

Two Widener University students describe what they found on taichichih.org beyond the classroom: photos of practice in public places worldwide, advice to keep practising on vacation, Justin Stone's quotations, and the health benefits reported by students, followed by student pyramid poems on silence.

Diana Bahn's poem carries the sense of ground into a canoe trip, paddling across lake water, portaging over rock, and passing painted Indian glyphs before turning back city bound.

Charles B. Cappel maps Daughter in the Valley onto the Louisiana oak trees in his yard and park, tracing roots, trunk and canopy in the hands' sweep and the Chi's rising polarity.

Shari Holmes describes keeping up daily T'ai Chi Chih with two of her first students during a busy Mekong River cruise through Cambodia and Vietnam, drawing curious passengers on the top deck.

Dorene Krause describes how Push Pull has spoken to her since her beginner days, connecting the forward release and the drawing in of energy to the rhythm of ocean tides where she practices.

Eliza Fulton describes demonstrating T'ai Chi Chih at the Glenwood Springs Downtown Block Party, microphone and gawking crowd included, until three young people with a baby joined her and one bystander signed up for a class.