The Vital Force Archive

Four letters: Bob Slone asks to be relisted, Sr. Marie-Ann Main writes from Durban about teaching 62 third graders, RuthMarie Arguello-Sheehan practises in deep water while her partner undergoes cancer treatment, and Henry C. Smith asks about tingling hands during Light at the Top of the Head.

Louise Bureau writes to Justin Stone about coming to T'ai Chi Chih after an early breast cancer diagnosis, staying calm during her father's emergency bypass surgery, and her accreditation with Ed Altman.

A Grayslake Times piece by Michelle Habrych on Donna McElhose's classes, where students from their 20s to their 70s describe feeling energy in their hands, easing aches, lowering blood pressure and relieving stress.

Richard Detert and two university colleagues tested 35 education professionals who learned T'ai Chi Chih at a weekend workshop, measuring stress manifestations and well-being after four weeks of journaled practice.

Dene Bourne, a student of Wendy Helms, describes buying a restaurant, the consuming neck and shoulder pain that followed, and the two days of burning heat in her back that ended it.

Richard Brier reprints the promotional letter he sends to people in the healing professions, citing his 1980 certification by Justin Stone, 2,000 students aged 7 to 93, and benefits from blood pressure control to shared group harmony.

Jeremy Williams, six weeks into Sharon Sirkis's class, describes using Rocking Motion, Pulling in the Energy, Perpetual Motion and Push Pull before shifts waiting tables at Phillips Seafood in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

Judy Tretheway suggests meeting holiday sorrow and joy by practicing intuitively, in whatever order comes, even just Rocking Motion, letting emotion swell and release like a wave.

Deborah Cole, an at-home mother of two young boys, writes that daily practice brought her patience, calm amid chaos, an end to depression, and relief from psoriasis and carpal tunnel while she waits for teacher training to fit her life.

Writing from a cell block, Tom Bogdan thanks the volunteers who brought T'ai Chi Chih to Folsom Prison, calls it a cosmic life preserver, and asks about groups near Fresno and accreditation.

Viereck's four-panel cartoon has two tired, stressed people respond differently: she decides fatigue is the best time to practise T'ai Chi Chih, while he dozes off in his chair.

James K. Hecker, incarcerated 17 years at Soledad, San Quentin and Old Folsom and formerly a Navy medic, answers the questions he is asked most, and describes practising on a lockdown tier until racial tension broke.

Phil Darghty, a long-term inmate at Folsom State Prison, recounts how a year of twice-daily T'ai Chi Chih with the Contemplative Fellowship eased old shoulder and knee injuries until he stopped needing pain pills.

Tara Stiles describes the shifting permissions for the Folsom Prison program, from five chapel afternoons down to three, plus the remarkable inter-racial mixing, while inmate Steve Wornoff likens practice there to a sleeping bird in a storm.

News from two teachers: Florence Germain-Robin opened a Vitality Center in France with three classes and about twenty students, none of them men, and Gail Collins described assisting Sr. Phyllis Ann Reis at a Franciscan Spiritual Center in Minnesota.

A countdown of holiday practice opportunities, from shopping lines and traffic jams to the moments before the extended family arrives and the morning after the party.

Henry Mattos, skeptical that a gentle discipline could do much, recounts childhood polio, back surgery at thirty-two, and finding T'ai Chi Chih a low-impact workout and stress reducer.

Carolyn L. Errie, a self-described controlling person, recounts how her daily morning practice let her calmly stop a hospital nurse from connecting a glucose drip to her diabetic mother.

Carol Krucoff's San Jose Mercury News column, reprinted here, reports a Johns Hopkins study of 62 sedentary adults over 60 in which t'ai chi lowered systolic blood pressure nearly as much as aerobic exercise.

Nancy Connell of Severna Park, Maryland began T'ai Chi Chih at 57 after losing agility, and within three weeks could balance on one leg to put on her walking shoes, with praise for teacher Sharon Sirkis.

Bill Moore, a horn player and former Integral Yoga teacher, writes to Justin Stone that two years of T'ai Chi Chih slowed his breath, lowered his center of gravity and eased neck and shoulder tension.

Sandy McAlister of Hayward casts the twenty T'ai Chi Chih movements as a tool box, drawing on a few at a time during the day for quick attitude adjustments between formal practice.

A passage from Justin Stone's T'ai Chi Chih! Joy Thru Movement describing serenity in the midst of activity as a firm, unchanging center held during the most hectic times.

Mary Stebbins, a museum educator, found that doing T'ai Chi Chih over her lunch hour changed how a restless boa constrictor behaved during her live animal demonstrations.

A profile of teacher candidate Sue Inteman, a student of Marjorie Peltier who uses T'ai Chi Chih in recovering from left facial paralysis and presented research on TCC and stress reduction to Hospice of Wake County.

Roberta Taggart summarizes a Times report on William Haskell's federally funded Stanford study testing t'ai chi and other unconventional therapies against aging, measuring balance with eyeglass-mounted devices and stress indicators in saliva.

Donna M. Cone, a student of Timothy Stuetz, writes after 35 consecutive days of practice about rising early, losing 10 pounds, steadier balance at 57, and calm during career stress.

Mary Stebbins steps away from a hectic morning to practise in a light snow on her lunch break, moving from awkward uncertainty into tingling, flow and a sense of becoming a dancer of light.

Carmen Brocklehurst, prompted by Justin Stone's writing on vashanas, likens each practice to a computer picture whose squares slowly change, and suggests resistance to that change is why we skip daily practice.

Newspaper clippings from Arizona and Wisconsin cover Lee Campbell's six-week course at Sun Lakes Country Club and Barbara Sommers teaching at the Rice Lake Coffeehouse to students with chronic pain and migraines.