Letter to Teachers from Justin Stone

I was very much interested to read the interesting letter Ray Watson shared with us in the last Vital Force (March Issue). His account of the benefits received by a partially-paralyzed woman, from T’ai Chi Chih (or “High C”, as she called it!), recalled to me a similar experience I had in 1975, shortly before the first Teachers’ Training Course in Los Angeles. My good friend, Dick Bock (now deceased) arranged for me to give a talk at Kushi West in Los Angeles (Macrobiotics), and he and I had dinner at their headquarters beforehand. From this talk came several group Courses at their place, and I was surprised to find myself working with several partially-paralyzed people, among others. I told them to imagine the leg movements, while they did the arm movements from a wheelchair. Well, do I remember the complete surprise of several of them when they began to have sensation in the legs!

As Ray describes, this began with a feeling of pain where they had had no feeling before, and this greatly excited them. When I had finished the Courses there (they were charged a group fee, including as many students as they wanted), I unfortunately, had no further contact, and I left Los Angeles shortly thereafter, to return only for the first Teacher’s Course in August. As a result I do not know (1) if they continued to practice TCC, and (2) whether they continued to receive benefits from their practice.

This type of letter, from Ray, illustrates what I feel is the greatest benefit of Vital Force, the sharing of teaching experiences. It’s to be hoped that any other teacher who has interesting happenings to report will take the trouble to write similar letters to the VFJ.