The Vital Force Archive

Judy Tretheway's web log from Old Folsom records a cancelled program day, racial tension on the yard, a coming smoking ban, jammed chapel locks, and two inmates practising the whole set for the first time.

Lorraine Levine asks teachers to return the 2005 TCC Teacher Survey by December 31 and publishes teaching tips from the first 55 responses, covering seniors, Parkinson's, dementia care, hospice bereavement groups and deaf children, plus a new Special Requests section.

Mary Schapker's summary of Judy Hendricks' conference breakout session on teaching children, with tactics for grounding them, Tao symbols on the floor, small surprises and getting into after-school programs.

Amy Tyksinki's conference workshop notes on reaching high school students through counseling, history and language departments, and on teaching teens with concrete body cues, a soft cloth passed around, and recordings of Justin Stone.

Mary Pat George describes her Atascadero fitness center class being scheduled back-to-back with body combat sessions, and how newcomers in fatigues unknowingly walked around the circle of energy her students had created.

Lisa Thorburn traces a fourth grade lesson on tone of voice to the way teachers correct students, and suggests tape recording a class, inviting a trusted observer, or rehearsing feedback with another instructor.

Classroom mishaps collected from Cristina Minelli, Sher Dano, Sharon Sirkus and Lisa Thorburn, including an Italian student who thought Sandy's talk of knees meant a missing girl named Denise.

Ellen Tatge recalls how her first teacher, Carolyn Shaw, ended each lesson by turning her back and practising in silence with the class, letting T'ai Chi Chih do the teaching.

Linda Braga asked her continuing class to practice a single movement for as long as it felt complete, and students reported hot vibrating hands, electrical sensations up the spine and twenty-minute Perpetual Motion sessions.

Pat Flynn works through a hypothetical $180 contract at a local center, itemizing mileage, travel time, insurance, CD players and handouts to show teachers how to calculate real hourly earnings.

Asked to teach at the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Research Center, Sher Dano was required to carry professional liability insurance and reports finding affordable coverage through the Tai Chi Arthritis Association of America.

Judy Hendrichs recounts teaching child-parent classes of six- to twelve-year-olds, using yin/yang floor markers, drawing breaks, surprise gifts and endless repetition of yinning and yanging.

Linda Braga recounts the rooms she has taught in, from a smoke-soaked library space and a dizzying geometric carpet to a windowless country club court she privately nicknamed Cell block 7.

Barbara Riley describes 13 years of teaching at Rossmoor, an over-55 community in Walnut Creek, where longtime students stay fit and each class closes with a five-minute seated meditation.

Marise Burger holds a mini-plunger at the navel to show how the t'an t'ien moves us, with the pelvis pictured as a basin of precious fluid not to be spilled.

Debbie Cole recounts the annual New Jersey shore teachers' gathering, where participants from Newfoundland to Missouri swapped teaching tips, from lace-edged plungers to squishing beach balls, and practised trust in the tight parking lot.

A collection of classroom laughs gathered from Sharon Sirkus, Nancy Lecraw and Bobbie Weichman, Kathy Grassel and Rodney Anderson, including a whole class bowing by mistake and juvenile detention students riffing on Working the Pulley.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst recounts Joe, a student who arrived depressed and in a stocking hat, revealed an incurable cancer diagnosis at Week 7, and died months later happy, according to his wife.

Ann Rutherford pairs Lao-Tzu, Justin Stone's Spiritual Odyssey and physicist David Bohm to teach the Matter and Substance sections of Seijaku, asking students to sense the congealed energy rather than resent it.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst describes the every-other-month Saturday review class that draws students of all levels back to basics, including a video-taught beginner who drives four hours and traced the chi's path exactly as Justin taught it.

Freddie Solomon tells newly accredited teachers that accreditation marks the start of learning to teach, and that finding your own voice, personality and laughter matters more than what you say.

Christeen McLain offers teachers the maxim "place principles above personalities" for handling conflict with a student or one's own teacher, recalling the lineage introductions at the early California conferences.

Debbie Cole reports on "CHI by the SEA '03," the second annual New Jersey shore weekend where 21 East Coast teachers traded terminology tips, wrote Pyramid Poetry and shared Sister Antonia Cooper's rededication ceremony.

Sandy McAlister offers a drill for students who turn from the shoulders in side to side movements: hands behind the back, weight shift alone, then waist turn, letting the hands return last.

Justin Stone advises newly accredited teachers on filling classes: speak from personal experience, set a fair fee, use classified ads, and seek radio interviews, recalling the Los Angeles broadcast that produced fifteen weekly classes.

Five anecdotes: Vida Wackerling's male students who scorned then demanded the Joy song, Thuha Bui feeling chi sent from her New York class mid-training, Noel Altman on George Washington's wooden teeth, Arthur's week-long argument, and April Leffler's student who got only as far as Pluto.

Sandy McAlister announces the first retreat devoted to teaching technique, conceived by Sr. Meg Costello after conference discussion, where teachers will examine their own movements and share classroom experience.

Dale Buchanan lays out his hour-by-hour schedule as a full-time T'ai Chi Chih teacher in Washington, DC, from a 4:30am practice to late-night emails, and the promotion needed to fill 10-12 classes a week.

Sharon Sirkis opens her UMBC classes with a name-and-party memory game that takes an hour with 25 students, drawing out fear, perfectionism and the value of repetition for their TCC practice.

Wendy Howard recounts her first year as a new teacher, from handing out attendance certificates to her beginning classes to the after-practice conversations where her continuing students do most of the talking.