The Vital Force Archive

Daniel Pienciak recalls his accreditation trainer's disappointment at a sloppy Anchor Taffy repetition, and how doing thirty-six Rocking Motions at the start of practice brought a new grounded feeling through every weight shift.

Rev. Rick Davis traces an early bad habit of leaving weight in the yang leg and rushing to the next movement, and links completing the shift to living attentively in the present rather than in the past or in worry.

Robert Delano, diagnosed with Young Onset Parkinson's Disease, tracked down his late mother's teacher Sheryl Adair and found that daily practice left him yinning and yanging while vacuuming.

Kent Jarratt describes two years of weekly practice in a long-term care facility with Jerry, 99, and two blind residents, adapting movements for wheelchairs, painful shoulders, stroke paralysis and oxygen masks.

Dan Pienciak lists six awareness points drawn from Justin Stone's Spiritual Odyssey: natural breathing, releasing tension in the joints, feeling the t'an t'ien, continuous knee movement, waist and wrists moving as one, and even weight in the soles.

Diana Bahn's poem carries the sense of ground into a canoe trip, paddling across lake water, portaging over rock, and passing painted Indian glyphs before turning back city bound.

Psychologist Bruce Eisenmenger draws on Robert Scaer's trauma research to argue that the rhythmic bilateral weight shift and attention to the Bubbling Spring quiet the amygdala and sympathetic nervous system.

Daniel Pienciak defines softness as lack of tension and continuity as movement without abrupt starts, stops or slippery spots, naming the lunge-and-return habit in Daughter on the Mountaintop and offering the basin-of-water image for an even weight shift.

Carol Selby describes teaching students with Parkinson's disease and poor balance to seek the brief secure moment when both feet are flat and the hands pass in front of the body.

Dan Pienciak returned to teaching after three family deaths, and used Gene Kelly's remarks about being grounded to the earth and dancing from the waist down to re-focus his classes on grounding, softness in the upper body, and surrender.

Amy Moody came away from Pam's accreditation course with steadier grounding, noticeably softer movement absorbed from a week beside the teacher-auditors, and unexpected bonding for a self-described private person.

Told she must be a slow learner, Caroline Guilott answers with twenty years of the same 19 movements and one pose, a retreat with Carmen Brocklehurst, and the slow discovery of grounding in the soles of her feet.

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.

Dora Wiemann unpacks flowing and emptiness at the 2018 conference, sharing the lists her teacher prep students made of their own markers for feeling ungrounded and grounded, then asks whether a plant sprouting from a rock at Folsom flows from emptiness.

Stephen Thompson's conference notes give three partner exercises: a paper plate shared between Pulling in the Energy and Around the Platter, mirrored Working the Pulley, and a hand-hovering energy circle with weight shifts.

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.

Bob Poland, a diabetic whose fingertips are calloused from daily blood sugar tests, describes feeling energy through his palms for the first time, plus relaxing his knees and fully unweighting the opposite foot.

Daniel Pienciak compares the forward and back weight shift to shifting a car through neutral, using Sandy McAlister's phrase "glide and arrive" to show that stillness on one foot does not break continuity.

Lisa Stroyan revisits a note to herself about trust and the present moment, describing how rushing the close or moving hands ahead of the weight shift creates tension, and citing Linda Braga's booklet on synchronicity.

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.

Laurin McDonald recounts flying from England through blizzards to Philadelphia for her March 2018 accreditation with Daniel, the refinements on weight shift and Rocking Motion, and new UK classes starting in April.

Donna McElhose collected her advanced students' written responses to the 2019 conference theme Flowing from Emptiness, including Gloria G. on emptying the cup, Kathy L. on yinning and yanging, and Jan K.'s poem.

Donna Deffenbaugh's word poem takes the stubborn root of a pulled weed as a figure for grounding, holding fast through waves of worry, gusts of grief and tides of temper.

Amy Tyksinski cautions against turning the hands forward before the backward weight shift completes in Rocking Motion and Push Pull, locating continuity instead in the t'an t'ien's expansion and contraction.

Daniel Pienciak describes the stillness that arrives when grounding in palms-down position and in the fleeting pause at the end of each weight shift, where the pelvis fully releases weight into the feet.

Marie Dotts treats alignment as the key to downward chi flow, recounting her own breakthrough with a resistant right hip and leading conference participants through an alignment exercise and weight shift checks.

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.

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.

Daniel Pienciak breaks down how he teaches the hip swivel, starting with a full lateral weight shift and waist turn, then the pelvic tilt, the elliptical path, and why men and women may feel it differently.

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.