The Vital Force Archive
Forty years of The Vital Force (1985-2025), the journal of the T’ai Chi Chih community. Search for a word, a teacher, a movement or a place, or browse by category and topic.
Recovery Programs
T’ai Chi Chih has found a place in addiction recovery, rehabilitation and support programs, where the soft, repeated movements offer a way to steady body and mind. These articles gather teachers’ accounts of classes in recovery settings and students’ descriptions of how the practice carries them through daily difficulties.
Elizabeth Tyler of Lake Oswego describes the flyer she uses to promote classes, her twelfth eight-week series, early morning classes for school district teachers, and a presentation to fifty inmates at a Portland prison.
Teacher updates from Gordon Wade on Elderhostel classes in Banff, Sister Trinitas on retired nuns' balance and walking, Pat Graves teaching at a Santa Fe half-way house, the Sanchezes' move to Lake Tahoe, and Dorcas Hueners' master's thesis.
Four short letters from participants in the June 1993 teacher training in Alameda, including Rosa Santamaria Fallon on a classmate who credited T'ai Chi Chih with ending her addictions.
Patrick Lenard's newsletter clipping invites the community to 12-step meetings at the Isla Vista Recovery Center, and reports his own 1992 teacher accreditation and planned further training in San Francisco.
Patrick Lenard
Merry Lynn Noble describes receiving her teacher's certificate in June 1992 after a week-long training with Steve, thanking Justin Stone, Pat Hill and Bryan James, and planning to bring TCC into her psychotherapy practice.
Bryan James argues that circulating the chi stirs up emotional energy stored from childhood abuse and old trauma, explaining why some students and teachers suddenly quit, and urging compassion plus active recovery work.
Diana Daffner, who came to T'ai Chi Chih after twenty years teaching aikido, massage and meditation, describes beach practice, a sunset anniversary session with forty friends, and classes at an addiction rehabilitation center.
Norma Schaumann adds T'ai Chi Chih to a prenatal childbirth course, Christeen McCurran's mother teaches her first class to her sisters in Norway, and Pam Towne reports on the Denver teacher training and the $600 she was paid by a Long Beach computer company.