The Vital Force Archive

Carol Love makes the case for taking practice outside, from Nature-derived movement names to choosing a spot where uneven ground sharpens balance and birdsong replaces traffic noise.

Fred Lorch credits his ongoing T'ai Chi Chih practice with better balance, flexibility and strength as he ages, plus blood pressure averaging 20 points lower and improved coronary health.

Stephen Thompson takes Loraine Lepine's pronunciation of "E-motion" at the October accreditation as a starting point for how moving first lets the mind rest, separating and reuniting yin and yang Chi.

Amy Tyksinski gathers six UNM college students' written responses to the Softness passage in Justin Stone's Spiritual Odyssey, from bamboo and oak temperaments to jaw clenching, political argument and caring for a crying baby.

Tina Wells traces her path from a first class with Wendy Helms in California to teaching T'ai Chi Chih at Oxford's Restore charity and the Oxfordshire Recovery College, where students use grounding to interrupt panic attacks.

Dorene Krause invites the reader into a moment of ordinary silence, breathing into the soles of the feet, releasing the heaviness of the heart and letting stillness calm the mind.

Adam Lacey describes a year of bringing T'ai Chi Chih into Banbury primary schools, with five-minute videos for teachers and shorter films for families, and asks North American teachers for guidance.

Sandy McAlister pairs a Rick Hanson quotation found in her filing pile with Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" to reframe moral outrage over humanitarian and planetary crises as a form of love.

Judy Hubbell describes teaching T'ai Chi Chih outdoors and at senior centers in the Castro, South Sunset and Ocean Beach, with City College classes for older adults and YouTube sessions for isolated students.

Suzanne Roady-Ross, seventeen years into her practice, describes her grown children's differing responses to T'ai Chi Chih and the lasting friendships her students have built around class and lunch afterward.

Kay Rydeen presented "T'ai Chi Chih for Body, Mind, and Spirit" at a Minnesota occupational therapy conference, teaching two dozen OTs about weight shifts, softness, and joint range of motion.

Regina Otero-Sabogal, a psychologist and Colombian immigrant, describes recruiting students for free Spanish-language T'ai Chi Chih classes at Galería de la Raza's Casa Adelante housing and Berkeley's Latino Family Engagement Program.

Jessica Lewis passes on a disabled Army veteran's account of going medication-free since 2018 and keeping his temper with his teenage son, then records her own sensations after their one-on-one Seijaku session.

Dorene Krause describes the tan t'ien as a rounded bowl of stored Chi rather than a dot, with quotes from Justin Stone and Julie Barrier-O'Grady and instructions for breathing into the center in stillness and in movement.

Carolyn Perkins, writing from Cyprus, managed one group practice and one of Carmen's workshops at the teacher conference despite the time difference, and does six repetitions daily since breaking her neck.

Carmen Brocklehurst recounts a doctor's advice to release teaching stress, her 1976 start with Helen Brungardt Pope, and, in a reprinted 2009 piece, the quiet mind and turning t'an t'ien she found.

Donna McElhose's students describe healing lower back pain and tennis elbow, feeling tingling energy, grounding in the t'an t'ien for balance, and combining silent group practice with meditation before and after class.

Marcella Box introduces Lovena Warren, an 86-year-old accredited teacher whose free weekday Zoom practice restored her daily habit, and who led hurricane evacuees in T'ai Chi Chih from a shelter stage in 2005.

Amy Tyksinski describes the "Flowing River Moments" she offers her high school class, then prints students' own written reflections on self-love, the effort of no effort, polarity and balance.

Monica Motyka Ganzer noticed, while adding dated margin notes to her copy of Spiritual Odyssey, that her once-alarming handwriting had become fluid and even, evidence that peace was no longer something she controlled.

Donna McElhose collected thank-you letters her Illinois students wrote to Justin Stone, describing asthma-friendly movement, circle meditation, a Folsom Prison video, and the struggle to practice alone at home.

Kathy Starrick teaches seated TCC to every class, standing or not, after two major surgeries and a fractured leg left her practising mentally, then seated, with less pain and better sleep.

Terry Gay Puckett's Shih Tzu puppy chewed open a tube of toxic acrylic flow, and the two hours stranded in a vet's exam room became a slow practice of T'ai Chi Chih and Seijaku.

Sue Bitney draws on Justin Stone's writings about circulating and balancing the Chi to argue that practice heals the practitioner and the world, citing students' reflections at their final 2021 practice.

Donna McElhose asked her current students to write to future beginners, and their mostly anonymous letters report a hip that stopped cracking, better balance, new friendships, and calm found in fifteen minutes of daily practice.

Seven letters of thanks addressed to Justin Stone by new students, reporting reduced stress, restful sleep despite sleep apnea, stronger ankles, painless stair climbing, and relief from allergy-related asthma.

Linda Raye, who has had mobility issues since her teens, took up T'ai Chi Chih 25 years ago as a substitute for dancing, followed by beginners' letters thanking Justin Stone.

Linda Robinson of Seattle kept teaching through hip and knee discomfort, and four of her Monday morning students describe how Zoom practice sustained them during the pandemic lockdown.

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 during the social distancing of 2020, Dorene Krause reminds her students that T'ai Chi Chih cannot be learned overnight, that movements soften with time, and that it is practice, not perfect.