The Vital Force Archive

Daniel Pienciak recalls Pam Towne relaying, at a 2009 Seijaku accreditation, that Justin Stone prized expansion and contraction, and describes feeling that dynamic in the t'an t'ien during every weight shift.

Susan Corey rereads her notes from Laurie Jacobi's "Embracing Emptiness" talk at the 2022 Teacher Conference and finds that waiting inside the pauses brings her weight shift into palpable harmony.

Host Jessica Lewis introduces participant accounts from the March 2023 Zoom Intensive, where teachers and candidates report new sense of the t'an t'ien, fuller weight shifts, relief from knee pain, and reconnection to community.

Connie Shaw describes how her teacher Marie's instruction to keep attention in the feet and belly led, during a weight shift, to the unraveling of her vasanas or habit energies.

April Leffler describes imagining three coins under each foot, two at the ball and one at the heel, to track the weight shift and finally understand Justin Stone's reminder to bring a movement to a graceful conclusion.

Teacher-trainer Daniel Pienciak breaks down Justin Stone's instruction to 'make a graceful conclusion,' describing the full weight commitment, the soundless setting down of the foot, and the pelvic girdle letting go into stillness.

Sandy McAlister describes how a wandering mind lets the Chi rise, bringing headaches and giddiness, and how attention below the waist keeps practice grounded while softness stays shaped rather than limp.

Pam Towne offers a New Year self-check on how you move, using a mirror or cell phone video to test softness, continuity, weight shift, polarity of the palms and focus in the t'an t'ien.

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.

Patty Stupca reports the January Second Saturday discussion of seated practice, including Kay Rydeen's caution to rock from the sitz bones rather than the lower lumbar spine, and chair placement for unsteady students.

Linda Jones teaches seated TCC to beginners and to chemotherapy patients who regained feeling in their fingertips, yet finds mental practice, with its complete weight shifts, the most powerful of all.

Daniel Pienciak explains why he teaches Bass Drum before Around the Platter and Pulling in the Energy, breaking each into hand circle, weight shift, then both, with eyes forward for balance.

Pam Towne teaches Justin Stone's joy song from Meditation for Healing, with its faster weight shift, swinging arms and one syllable per shift, and suggests adapting it for students' balance.

Dorene Krause collects the AHA! discoveries her students report, from feeling energy between the palms to finding the foot's place, alongside the AAH... moments of effortless flow, grounding and calm.

Hannah Hedrick works through the principles she took from the four teacher trainers' presentations at the international conference, from pressing dimes into the floor to using wrists rather than arms in Working the Pulley.

Johnnie Marquez traces the stages of a student's journey from quickly learned movements to the growing intimacy with the feet, total weight shift and moments when the practice seems to do itself.

Carmen L. Brocklehurst recounts how Eliza Fulton and Anita Vestal built a virtual 2022 teacher conference for 156 Zoom participants, and how Patty Stupca's talk sharpened her own teaching of grounding the Chi.

Lynne Roberts recounts the 2022 virtual conference with 60 volunteers and 163 teachers, praising new presenters and April Leffler's tip of mentally placing dimes on the soles of the feet.

Paul Ciske argues from the physics of the center of mass, which shifts with posture and can fall outside the body entirely, that the t'an t'ien is dynamic, empty and representative of the universal.

Lisa Stroyan gathers teachers' views from April Leffler's July Second Saturday practice on whether and how to teach the hip swivel, including Justin's one-finger ellipse and Carmen Brocklehurst's "tiny hula in the tan t'ien."

Ann Rutherford defends the closing position as grounding rather than ornament, recounting a student whose ungrounded chi threw Ann into spasms of pain, plus her lightning-rod and kelp teaching images.

Laurie Jacobi takes a student's description of T'ai Chi Chih as a tool for transformation and applies it to her own foot placement, Push Pull and Passing Clouds, watching physical corrections change corresponding areas of her life.

Hannah Hedrick, managing nearly four decades of chronic back pain and recovering from a third hip surgery, found that seated TCC sharpened her feel for grounding, alignment and the tan t'ien.

Lisa Stroyan recounts how tiny hand movements in a reclined gravity chair restored her Chi in 2015, then details practical seated adjustments: sit-bone weight shifts, arm extension, grounding and "squirm."

Carmen L. Brocklehurst gives practical instruction for seated practice in a straight-back chair, working the weight shift through the sits bones in Rocking Motion and Around the Platter.

Bruce Childs returned to teaching chair-assisted TCC at the Barnstable Adult Community Center after the pandemic, and lists the resources in his toolbox, from Sandy McAlister's DVD to his own Little Guy illustrations.

Christeen McLain recalls recognizing an alpha brain wave state while going Around the Platter with her teacher Jean Katus in 1975, and later dropping a grounding exercise that made students fall over.

Daniel Pienciak takes Justin Stone's reminder that softness means lack of tension into the weight shift, suggesting practitioners feel the receiving knee lead and release rather than stiffen.

Sandy McAlister, in a piece reprinted from 2008, describes how unfocused attention lets the Chi rise into headaches and giddiness, and how attention below the waist keeps softness anchored in grounding.

Daniel Pienciak turns attention away from favorite movements and toward the middle of the weight shift itself, the bending and straightening legs and the grounding stillness between sets.