The Vital Force Archive

Linda Minor describes preparing to teach a seated class for seniors aging in place, practising seated herself, attending Carmen Brocklehurst's retreat entirely seated, and checking the room for armless chairs.

Margery Erickson gathers four teaching moments that made her chi smile, including a beginner who nearly walked out, a mother sharing energy with her handicapped son, and a student off her antidepressant.

Parker Reynolds traces a two-year intention to teach youth back to a video of Sister Christa and April Leffler at Drexel Neumann Academy, and to the church youth group class that finally resulted.

Dr Jerry C. Jonnson offers two handouts he wrote to promote his classes: a plain description of T'ai Chi Chih with a list of researched benefits, and a basics card weighting shifting at 80 percent, posture 15 and hands 5.

Amy Tyksinski describes teaching Nei Kung to beginning students midway through each semester and shares notes from Justin Stone's Saturday night teshos on Original Face, motivation, patience and confidence in the Chi.

Stephan Koblick, drawing on his sports and karate background, describes how he reframes T'ai Chi Chih for reluctant male students by comparing the weight shift and chi transfer to a golf swing or a thrown baseball.

Suzanne Roady-Ross breaks the taffies down for confused students, starting with the lower scooping palm during Carry the Ball to the Side, then the windup, the opening hands and the sinking leg that raises the upper hand.

Dora Wiemann's beginner class sank into moving meditation during Daughter on the Mountaintop and stayed there through Daughter in the Valley, emerging only when Carry the Ball to the Side's instructions intervened.

Becky B Watkins recounts a free eight-week class at her downtown Louisiana library, where Irma, a student with no fingers, rode the bus through pouring rain and practised Rocking Motion softly and beautifully.

Sandy McAlister lays out how she runs a weekly class where students range from 17 years of practice to one day, from the opening "good news" circle to slowed-down Pulling Taffy and one-hand Working the Pulley.

Lisa Otero explains how she runs drop-in classes at fitness centers, a church and a park, placing experienced students in front rows and using a circle-within-a-circle formation for large group practices.

Darlene Karasik reports from a conference breakout session on seated practice, explaining how sitz-bone weight shifts, elbow training and delayed hand movements teach students to move from the t'an t'ien.

Donna McElhose lays out the wall, flashlight, partner-touch and hip-rotation exercises she uses to prepare students for the T'ai Chi side step, then details foot angle and holding the t'an t'ien wind-up through the step.

Pat Finstad names five constants she reviews at the start of every class: the soft rounded hand shape, shoulders down, head up, vertical spine, and elbows always pointing down.

Dora Wiemann breaks the forward and back weight shift into three repeated words for new students, bend, shift the weight, set the foot out, with hands resting on the t'an t'ien.

Kent Jarratt rides a four-hour local bus home from his April accreditation in Aston, sizing up every passenger as a future student, then watches his enthusiasm turn to fear until his barber becomes his first weekly student.

First-year teacher Nikol Price describes using essential oil sprays and albums like Misty Forest Morning to mask Student Union noise and make her class an experience rather than exercise.

Eliza Fulton adapts a yoga strap trick for teaching the weight shift, holding a belt across the kidneys so students feel the hip flexors open and close as they yin and yang.

Lisa Stroyan, one month into teaching, watches a student discover she can feel her feet standing but not moving, and answers the question of how T'ai Chi Chih feels with images of sand, carousels and waterfalls.

Lucinda Kutsko recounts teaching an after-school TCC enrichment class to eight first and second graders, from snack-time chaos and taped Xs on the floor to their surprisingly poised family performance.

Stu Goldman, uneasy about repeating what "Justin would say," describes building his own teaching phrases like "I came for the movement; I stayed in the moment," and recalls a silent correction from Carmen Brocklehurst.

Stu Goldman rebuts the adage that those who cannot do teach, describing his use of humor, props and mirroring, and urging teachers to notice what works and build a consistent personal style.

Three stages new students pass through: repetition until the body knows the movements, a grounding into weight shifts with help from Judy George, and finally letting the Chi move them.

Carol Nelson-Selby, a former attorney, describes the joyous epiphanies that still arrive after years of practice, returning to the soles of the feet and the ounce-by-ounce weight shift she teaches beginners.

Stan Corwin opens a new column with a step-by-step way to teach the forward and back weight shift, then tells how a neighbor with multiple myeloma reached remission after taking up daily practice.

Sheryl Adair recounts eleven years of persistence at Temple Sinai, from an unanswered volunteer offer in 2004 to a women's retreat session, a home class, and finally a six-week series in the chapel.

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.

Dixie Adeniran, accredited in October 2014, recounts finishing her first beginner series at a senior center, from business licenses and flyers to the silent circle practice with music.

Carol Nelson-Selby teaches health club classes with ever-changing attendance, so she drills the full weight shift using Carry the Ball to the Side, hands behind the back, and lets the t'an t'ien tow the arms.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst recalls her first teacher Helen Brungardt Pope's words about life as a circle, links yin and yang alternation to natural change, and describes introducing four movements at a 400-person community event.