The Vital Force Archive

Tara Stiles of Sacramento lists eight teaching points for a handout, from yinning and yanging feet and diaphragmatic breathing to relaxed shoulders, rootedness in the legs and quietness within movement.

Steve Ridley advises teachers who learn of a non-accredited person teaching TCC to respond with communication rather than reprimand, offering help toward a future accreditation course and announcing the policy in class.

Three reader tips: Christine Sproehnle-Benson on keeping a clear space at home with a new baby, Gordon Wade on swapping his afternoon power nap for a TCC session, and Hope Ridley's conga-line drill for Working the Pulley.

Carmen Brocklehurst urges teachers to check themselves in a full-length mirror, since students copy exactly what they see, including raised elbows, shoulder-led turns and unsynchronized hands.

Steve Ridley encourages his Denver students, especially those considering teacher training, to sit in on classes with other area teachers, arguing each instructor imparts something unique and that students are not his possession.

Sr. Antonia Cooper describes the Sanskrit greeting Om Namaha Shivaya, exchanged with a bow at the start and end of each class and used to begin her own daily practice.

Justin Stone dismisses debating students over questions like why the right hand leads or how a movement got its name, saying the benefits come from doing T'ai Chi Chih, not talking about it.

Lia Ridley traces her teaching from 4th graders to dance classes, ESL students and conference workshops, finding one constant intent of sharing consciousness-love while facilitating learning rather than directing it.

Ed Altman urges teachers to ground their teaching in daily personal practice, discuss it weekly with students, start them small, and have them practise on lesson days.

Four teachers offer classroom tips: Viola Moriarty's student likened TCC to an inside massage, Hope Ridley used a wristwatch to mark left from right, Ralph Garn passed a rubber bodyball for Carry the Ball hands, and Steve Tang learned his park group wanted movements announced aloud.

A fictitious announcement of a week-long conference at an International T'ai Chi Chih Center in Albuquerque turns out to be a proposal, as local teachers weigh creating a shared teaching space and referral hub.

Joanne Sultar traced students' foot positions onto large paper bags so those struggling with the stance could take a made-to-order guide home, and lays out her hour-and-a-half class schedule.

Viola Moriarty of Denver notices that her students who show up consistently gain more than those who perform the movements well, and finds teaching sharpens her own learning.

Gary Halden describes using a large acupuncture chart in demonstrations and beginning classes, explaining meridians, blockages and the yinning and yanging of the legs as self-acupuncture that circulates chi.

Connie Hyde visits Carmen's weekly Children's T'ai Chi Chih class, where a girl without her fee is welcomed in and half an hour of coaxing and praise has the children trusting what they know.

Barbara Peller ignored warnings that seventh graders would be the worst audience and led two groups of fifty through movements, chi-between-the-hands experiments and questions, then was invited back.

Steve Ridley answers students who ask which movement cures asthma or helps the heart, noting Justin Stone never prescribed outcomes, and giving only general chi influences for a few movements.

Barbara Peller describes her first semester teaching T'ai Chi Chih to seniors at three locations, with mid-class rest breaks, chairs on hand, movements talked through aloud, and students encouraged to advocate for their own bodies.

Luis Sanchez teaches T'ai Chi Chih in two retirement communities and one public class, encouraging seniors to move within comfort and answering questions about softness with "are flowers relaxed?"

Lu Marla Dorn of San Francisco reports private teaching, T'ai Chi Chih moves added to her Senior Fitness classes and a March workshop for CCSF instructors, while George Balliet teaches three weekly classes in Merced.

Gordon Wade reports from Edson, Alberta on restarting his seniors classes and trying half-hour noon-hour sessions for working people, plus praise for The Vital Force's teaching tips on yinning and yanging.

Connie Hyde reports on the New Mexico teachers' January and February meetings, where the group practised together, worked out how to offer nurses Continuing Education credit, and traded intermediate class techniques.

Ellen Tatge of Albuquerque filled all nine of the weekly classes she scheduled and started an ongoing Guided Practice hour so graduates of beginning classes could keep practising together.

An exchange of letters in which Justin Stone stresses the hips and waist in Carry the Ball, the Taffys and Passing Clouds, and Lois Mahaney explains why she says "soft turning" instead of "loose hips" and lays out her opening class sequence.

Joanne Sultar describes her drop-in Saturday class in a Berkeley school yard, her Alameda Parks and Recreation series, and students including a woman with chronic fatigue syndrome who gained energy in one week.

Ruthmarie Arguello-Sheehan reports two new two-hour classes at Arizona State University and a weekly 6:30 am Thursday practice on an island in a desert lake, open to current and former students.

Gord Wade reports from Edson, Alberta on a class of twelve senior women, a weekly evening class for businesswomen, demonstrations at a seniors lodge and TOPS meetings, and Elderhostel sessions booked in Banff.

Mary Naidu reports on the first T'ai Chi Chih class in Hong Kong, held at the Personal Growth Centre in February 1992, where six of ten international students completed the twenty movements.

Drawing on 28 years with Learning Handicapped children, Linda Braga explains how brain dominance patterns produce "hollow" or unsynchronized movement, and recommends Edu-Kinesthetics materials for switching both hemispheres on.

Gary Halden offers eight pointers for teachers, from giving every student an individual correction to reading complaints about sore quadriceps or an aching lower back as signs of leaning too far forward.