The Vital Force Archive

Becky B Watkins recounts a free eight-week class at her downtown Louisiana library, where Irma, a student with no fingers, rode the bus through pouring rain and practised Rocking Motion softly and beautifully.

Celia Ortenberg remembers being pushed on the beach swings by her father and finds the same pause of weightlessness at the turn of Rocking Motion, with gratitude for her life and practice.

Sharon Sullivan moves through the form one movement at a time, casting Around the Platter as a cosmic Eucharistic chalice, Bass Drum as an invitation to the feast, and the Six Healing Sounds as amen.

Nancy Rolph-Johnson likens Rocking Motion to a room full of rocking chairs, wooden arms sheltering the sitter, thoughts gliding away in a silent lullaby of moving meditation.

Amy Tyksinski cautions against turning the hands forward before the backward weight shift completes in Rocking Motion and Push Pull, locating continuity instead in the t'an t'ien's expansion and contraction.

Daniel Pienciak, with Sandy and Pam, passes on the movement corrections they gave at conference: releasing the knees in Rocking Motion, bending the back leg fully, and keeping the hips from swinging side to side.

Dorene Krause traces a T'ai Chi Ch'uan Classics quotation she copied down as a new student in 2001 to her 2017 conference breakout session on letting the t'an t'ien lift the body in vertical movements.

Pyramid poems by Leya Cragin, Veronica Fleming, Brock, Jerry G., Larry Saun, Corine, Joyce Veerkamp and Donovan on Rocking Motion, Bird Flaps Its Wings, Bass Drum and Around the Platter.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst takes the 2016 teacher conference theme of Letting Go back to the open hands of Rocking Motion, argues that teh or inner sincerity is the easy way to let go, and closes with Pyramid Poems from conference participants.

Daniel Pienciak passes along the techniques he uses most in accreditation courses and intensives: sliding down the wall to loosen the waist, starting beginners on Rocking Motion seated, and leading the weight shift from the knee.

Sheryl Adair pauses on a rock above a bend in the Chattahoochee to practice Rocking Motion, watching two Canada geese drift into white water and paddle furiously through.

Julie Heryet recounts the 3rd Annual T'ai Chi Chih Banquet at Folsom State Prison, where exonerated former inmate Franky Carrillo returned, then practised at 2pm under the oak tree he once watched from inside.

Daniel Pienciak, told a year after accreditation that his wrists needed more softness, shows where give belongs in the wrist joint using Bass Drum, Push Pull and Rocking Motion.

Alice Holden remembers Texas teachers Renza Moscatelli Baker, who came to T'ai Chi Chih after cancer weakened her legs, and Richard Cutler, honored at his wake with nine rounds of Rocking Motion.

Mary Frances Reis describes how a three-month stay at an eco-spirituality center led her to match the nineteen movements to Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry's universe story, from Rocking Motion as the flaring forth onward.

Justin Stone gives teachers the keys to the first five movements, from flattening the feet before raising the toes in Rocking Motion to keeping the hands a steady distance apart in Bass Drum.

Caroline Guillot recounts how Dora Derzon's advice at a Minnesota conference to really ground at the end of Rocking Motion turned her 'Hovering Conclusion' into a 'Landing Conclusion' and cleared her headache.

Pauline Pike, partway through a Seijaku course, found that adding hardness made softness something to welcome rather than strive for, and steadied her long-troublesome Rocking Motion; Pyramid Poems follow.

Linda Braga, a special education teacher for 40 years, introduces "think alouds," in which teachers speak aloud what they see, feel and sense while moving, with a full worked example using Rocking Motion.

Students in Sue Bitney's Minneapolis classes describe why they came and stayed, from rheumatoid arthritis and post-stroke practice to using Rocking Motion, physically or mentally, to steady themselves under stress.

Judy Hendricks describes teaching T'ai Chi Chih to over 80 kindergarten through fifth graders in an after-care program, emphasizing grounding, Six Healing Sounds, Zen stories, and one reluctant girl's turnaround.

Stephen M. Steffan, six to eight months into study with Gale Rublee Portman, combined his longtime labyrinth walking with TCC and found Rocking Motion starting on its own, followed by a strong electrical tingling and an unusually deep prayer session.

Janet Mayers recounts her first year of classes with teacher Lisa, from sore knees in Rocking Motion and over-turning in Pulling Taffy to naming the movements to fall asleep.

Chris Weber, an artist of 60 who had spent years as a busy bee, came home from an Albuquerque retreet with a painting called "Vital Force" and a sonnet on Rocking Motion.

Peter Gregory plays carnival barker, pitching chi as free renewable energy with no pills or ruby slippers required, then steps the reader into Rocking Motion and quotes Justin Stone's Spiritual Odyssey.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst uses Justin Stone's instruction to notice your posture without changing it, then traces Rocking Motion from swinging arms to palms to mind to the t'an t'ien itself.

Laurie Jacobi, a wool textile artist sent to Kazakhstan as a US Embassy cultural envoy, taught T'ai Chi Chih each morning in a noisy Shymkent parking area and did Rocking Motion at the ruins of Otrar.

Max Wan lays out his personal Spiritual Code of T'ai Chi Chih, assigning a meaning to each movement from Rocking Motion's surrender to the Cosmic Consciousness Pose's image of wholeness.

Caroline Guillot recalls Justin Stone answering her request for corrections with "T'ai Chi Chih is all continuous," and her own Rocking Motion in a crowded airport, soft, rooted, and briefly silent.

Judy Hendricks found that straightening her arms in Rocking Motion, corrected at Carmen Brocklehurst's retreat, unblocked the Chi, and reading Richard Schiffman's book on Sri Ramakrishna deepened her daily joy.