The Vital Force Archive

After ten years of T'ai Chi Chih, Mary H. Schultz took up Seijaku with Jungmin Lee and found that grounding her feet released the back tension and let the t'an t'ien lead.

Rebecca Paulson recounts being asked for a Diversity Statement when applying to teach T'ai Chi Chih in a community college Continuing Education program, and the answer she wrote about centering, self-acceptance and receptivity.

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.

Bruce Lee describes how moving softly and slowly as though flowing in a dream draws attention out of the head into the body, letting thoughts float by and revealing the divinity within.

Seven short pieces from Justin Stone's journal writings between 1985 and 1992, including Paul Reps' ten minutes of just sitting, watching wrists and waist for tension, his three steps on the Way, and his answer to a question about reincarnation.

Daniel Pienciak recounts the panic episodes and hypervigilance he faced during COVID-19 quarantine, and how Justin Stone's Maximum Chi Program, Seijaku and forty minutes of daily meditation restored him.

Rick Davis finds time in the subtle pressure against the soles of the feet, arguing that each weight shift, settling and return marks one moment from the next during pandemic uncertainty.

Justin Stone lays out the four observations of the Satipatthana or Way of Mindfulness practice - breath, state of mind, feeling-sensation and objects of mind - and recommends a half hour daily.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst writes on what practitioners say after taking up the 19 movements and one pose, and argues that amid COVID-19 uncertainty TCC people can lead with peace and equanimity.

Denise Emanuel Clemen lists the 2020 trips she canceled, from Oaxaca to Athens, each month returning to practice in her condo on Dakota land taken by the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux.

Lisa Stroyan replaced canceled travel with a birthday "staycation" of naps, nature walks and a distanced picnic, then invited her Zoom class to wear vacation clothes and travel inward.

Sandy McAlister describes her own holding pattern during the COVID-19 shutdown, the nudge from Pam Towne that ended it, and how teachers turned to parks, mailed lesson plans and Zoom.

Rick Davis wakes with chest pain and a whisper of fear, then finds during the next evening's neighborhood walk that his grounded weight shift has turned walking into moving devotion and gratitude.

Deanna Shapiro answers talk of enforced stillness during shelter in place with seven stanzas likening stillness to a giving tree, a summer breeze, clear water, a loving friend and an orchestra's harmony.

Diana Daffner addresses fellow teachers directly, listing what a TCC teacher actually does: holding a space of love, reminding students to breathe, demonstrating continuous circles, and learning alongside them.

Gail Terriff describes practising in a sunbeam at her lake home during COVID-19 self-isolation, finding layer upon layer of stillness and the chi rippling outward as a blanket of love.

S. Becky Shinas draws on Justin Stone's Spiritual Odyssey to argue that the disrupted, uncertain time of COVID-19 is Kairos time, and that kindness in ordinary acts reveals our own divinity.

Connie Krumrai describes the COVID-19 shutdown reaching Fort Collins as a contraction, an exhale she rests in while letting go of commitments, control and habit energies, and finally breaking her resistance to daily practice.

Unemployed as a non-essential worker during the pandemic, Neal Roy practices on waking and tracks the uneven weight in his feet, finding that softening his knees and sinking lower evens the shift.

Connie B. Shaw describes the clear tone she calls the sound of the Chi, or Sacred Pranava, heard in the head while attention rests on the t'an t'ien, and gives a week-long listening practice.

Patricia Winger passes along a church-service parable about a jostled cup of coffee spilling whatever it holds, and says T'ai Chi Chih makes her more confident about what is in hers.

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.

Julie Buffalo's unpunctuated poem invites practitioners to rest on their feet, let the ground flow up to hold them, and feel the head suspended while the spine lengthens.

Lisa Stroyan writes from the early weeks of the pandemic, disoriented by fear and media, deaths at her father's former nursing home, and finds grounding in Zoom practices, Justin's books and the Nei Kung.

Justin Stone asks readers to notice posture and passing states of mind without correcting them, reading tension in the wrists and waist, and to feel the exact instant weight shifts between feet.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst noticed she had cut short the arm curve in Around the Platter during Seijaku practice, repeated it fully, and drew from that completeness a lesson about awareness in daily life.

Cristina R. Fridenstine recounts joining a beginner class at Senior Amigos in Las Cruces in 2018, drawn by memories of T'ai Chi along Hong Kong's harbor, and her growing wish to teach young people.

Rev. Richard Davis uses his daughter's mispronounced "cumpf-ter-full" to show how uncorrected habits linger, then argues that counting repetitions traps awareness in the head instead of in the moving, grounded body.

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.

Aphorisms from Justin Stone on the needs we manufacture, the unreality of memory, the ice cream cone as America's tea ceremony, Dogen on spring, and Joshu Sasaki's five fingers.