The Vital Force Archive

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.

Laurie Jacobi arrived at the 2023 teacher conference convinced 24 years of practice had taught her all there was to know about body mechanics, then came away with new refinements in Bird Flaps Its Wings, Around the Platter and the Six Healing Sounds.

Julie Schuster's class at Friendship Village of Bloomington spent weeks practicing a single chosen movement, and students recorded what came of it: Push Pull turning into a mantra, Six Healing Sounds cleansing breath, and Daughter on the Mountain Top easing anxiety at bedtime.

Sak's paired poems, TCC Feet and TCC Hands, trace rocking from heel to toe, stepping side to side, palms gathering and letting go, and the healing sounds Ho, Hu, Szu, Hsu, Hsi, Chui.

Sharon Sirkis reprints four classroom jokes from December 2000, including a senior worried his big belly would stall the waist's engine and a hubcap that became the Seventh Healing Sound.

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.

Sharon Sirkis collects three classroom moments: a student telling her late, flustered teacher to get grounded, a class inventing its own Six Healing Sounds, and Howard's jigsaw puzzle Show and Tell.

Writing under stay-at-home orders, Carmen Brocklehurst retells the parable of the Plague and its companions Fear and Doubt, then quotes Justin Stone on chi and on voicing the Six Healing Sounds from the t'an t'ien.

Jim Shorr gathers first-person testimony from residents and guests at Creekside Village in Beaverton, Oregon, who describe calm, loosened muscles, better balance and the group's shared Six Healing Sounds.

April Leffler taught T'ai Chi Chih to 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders at a Catholic school in Chester, and the boisterous third grade class did Six Healing Sounds for her dying dog.

Lynn Porzig recounts her accreditation course as both thrill and agony, from effortless Chi flow in "aha" moments to movements falling apart while mirroring the Six Healing Sounds.

Daniel Pienciak lists practical lessons from years leading two senior memory loss groups: speak loudly, repeat movements six or eight times, walk to each person, and return to favorites like Six Healing Sounds and the Joy Song.

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.

Sharon Sirkis recounts three classroom mishaps and puns, including a student who insisted she had taught only variations of the Six Healing Sounds and a Working the Pulley question that turned into a Supremes singalong.

Kent Jarratt used the Six Healing Sounds while waiting in a car during a police sting to recover his stolen laptop, then visualized the whole practice after heart ablation surgery.

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.

Roseann Heinrich, co-hosting the 2016 Teacher Conference with Lucinda Kutsko, recalls her first conference in 2001 and lists the Seattle sights she plans to visit with her daughter.

H.B. recounts being raped at sixteen, the back pain and involuntary muscle spasms that followed, and the class with instructor Sharon Sirkis where the Six Healing Sounds gave her back herself.

Judy Hendricks discovered that a school's new director had changed her once-silent elementary students into chatterers, and that setting clear expectations with teachers and children made every class move well.

Justin Stone's booklet excerpt gives the keys to six movements, from the full 180-degree waist turn in Working the Pulley to the ancient Chinese origins of the Six Healing Sounds and the ankle placement in Cosmic Consciousness Pose.

Carolyn Shelley watched a flock of ravens circling overhead during an autumn outdoor practice and drew a metaphor from the collective nouns constable, unkindness and conspiracy for what TCC offers.

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.

Paula Weiner recounts her 1995 accreditation and volunteer teaching at Sunrise Assisted Living, where prima ballerina Maria Tallchief became a devoted student who practiced Six Healing Sounds daily until her death at 88.

Pyramid poems on silence and on Justin Stone from Jeneth Rundle, Joyce Veerkamp and others, plus Sharon Sirkis on a student hearing "sushi" in the Six Healing Sounds and Terry Slaney on volunteering at a cancer resource center.

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.

Melinda Antoon Cormier, a 56-year-old artist practising in Lake Charles, mentally ran through the Six Healing Sounds during a resting stress test, and her angioplasty revealed a naturally grown bypass around a minor blockage.

Ron Richardson practices each morning among oak, pine and magnolia trees, naming Six Healing Sounds his new favorite movement as geese squawk overhead and his immune system grows stronger.

Amy Tyksinski's teacher trainer tip on the Six Healing Sounds: cottonmouth signals a shift toward yin, the body is a symphony, and a troubled organ calls for repeating its sound.

Sharon Sirkis gathers written comments from her college students, who describe discovering what grounding feels like, using Pulling in the Energy to focus while tired, and easing an asthma attack with the Six Healing Sounds.

Linda Braga taught a crowded Hayward class where half the students spoke only Chinese, using gestures, one-on-one silent demonstration and the Six Healing Sounds to teach without shared words.