The Vital Force Archive

Nancy Frost's four-hour drive to a Cape Cod church for Jessica Lewis's weekend retreat ends among nearly 30 practitioners, where teaching each movement seated first becomes a new awareness.

Linda Braga read a podiatrist's brochure on plantar fasciitis and found its recommended lunge stretch and heel-walking exercises already present in the Six Healing Sounds, Anchor Taffy and Rocking Motion.

Sue Kenney describes a student returning to George Manning's Tuesday class at Hope Cooperative's mental health program after two years away with long COVID, recalling the Taffy variations and finishing seated.

Daniel Pienciak traces how incomplete weight shifts left him wobbling and leaning in Perpetual Motion Taffy, and how finishing the knee bend, hip and heel placement corrected it for him and his students.

Karen Silva recalls Justin Stone demonstrating grounding in Basic Pulling Taffy, the pulling hand crossing diagonally to end parallel to the ground, an explanation she still uses in her classes.

April Leffler recounts an intuitive nudge to focus on the Taffies at her YMCA class, and the fellow teacher who arrived that morning with a box of salt water taffy, as evidence of prajna at work.

Abby Molino, a nurse since 1976, describes the right-left confusion that flummoxed her during Pulling Taffy's Anchor variation, with coping strategies and mirroring tips for instructors; four poems by Beverly Miles follow.

Rebecca Paulson turned a snow day into imagery of snowballs for every circular movement and ball of energy, then pretended Working the Pulley launched them at a seniors class; Linda Braga adds how ten Chinese-speaking beginners learned by watching alone.

Sandy McAlister explains why she left Anchor Taffy and Working the Pulley out of her seated TCC DVD, and why she now believes both belong in the practice with safe adaptations.

Sharon Sirkis of Columbia, Maryland collects classroom moments: two seniors interlocking fingers during Around the Platter, one wanting to push away worries, and a student pulling taffy at red lights.

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's photo text notes on the three Pulling Taffy variations, Working the Pulley, Joyous Breath, Passing Clouds and the Cosmic Consciousness Pose, followed by his account of habit energies, karma and chi.

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.

Connie Shaw describes hearing the Chi Sound and feeling two warm torsion-rings encircle her t'an t'ien and heart during Pulling Taffy in Marie Dotts' Johnstown class, plus TheLea Brooks' vision of the sharing circle as a many-colored bonfire.

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.

Daniel Pienciak recalls his accreditation trainer's disappointment at a sloppy Anchor Taffy repetition, and how doing thirty-six Rocking Motions at the start of practice brought a new grounded feeling through every weight shift.

Bev Chandley handed each of her 31 senior students at Shell Point Retirement Community a polished stone to hold palm up, and not one hand turned over while learning Pulling Taffy.

Suzanne Roady-Ross breaks the taffies down for confused students, starting with the lower scooping palm during Carry the Ball to the Side, then the windup, the opening hands and the sinking leg that raises the upper hand.

Sandy McAlister lays out how she runs a weekly class where students range from 17 years of practice to one day, from the opening "good news" circle to slowed-down Pulling Taffy and one-hand Working the Pulley.

Donna McElhose lays out the wall, flashlight, partner-touch and hip-rotation exercises she uses to prepare students for the T'ai Chi side step, then details foot angle and holding the t'an t'ien wind-up through the step.

Caroline Guillot's conference presentation on feeling the chi through Rocking Motion, Daughter in the Valley and Pulling Taffy, letting go before and after each movement and noticing polarity between the palms.

Susan Roady-Ross breaks Pulling Taffy Perpetual Motion into smaller steps and arm circles, using the cue "pull, reverse, heel touch" and naming the heel touch as the key to perpetual motion.

Carol Nelson-Selby draws on neuroscience findings about body movement changing the brain to argue that TCC hand gestures, from Pulling Taffy's welcoming palm to the rising hand of Daughter in the Valley, are universally self-affirming.

Mary Donaldson-Evans recounts how she and her husband, after Movin' to Motown and Chair Yoga failed to stick, were hooked by April Leffler's class, where movement names conjure New Jersey beach vacations.

Carmen Brocklehurst recounts years of Justin Stone correcting her waist turn, one instruction at a time, until she held a chair, felt the hips trace an oval, and energy moved knee to knee.

Maggie Breimhurst describes avoiding the four Pulling Taffy movements, then connecting them to Justin Stone's writing on vashanas and samskaras, and cutting two to six repetitions to befriend them.

Sheryl Adair's morning sunlight cast a shadow partner on the floor, letting her watch and correct an egoless "student" whose weight shift was even but whose close was rushed.

Justin Stone's teaching keys for Pulling in the Energy and all four Pulling Taffy variations, correcting flat feet, horizontal palms, waist turns and weight shifts timed to the pulling hand.

Sandy McAlister opens with a 17-year student who found fuller weight shift by moving her underneath hand an inch farther in Pulling Taffy, then argues Justin Stone's photo text and DVD should stand unchanged.

Michele R. Dapelo of Baltimore strings the names of the movements, from rocking motion through the taffy variations to the Cosmic Consciousness Pose, into a narrative of one ordinary day as a memory aid for the sequence.