Merging into Wholeness

Judy Tretheway

Sacramento, CA

I’m back teaching T’ai Chi Chih inside the various yards of New and Old Folsom prisons three days a week and starting spiritual support and study groups to complement the movement classes.

Here are a few student quotes from a recent class:

“I’m going to say it even if you all think I’m crazy, but I felt us all move as one.”

“I feel the whole space of the chapel participating.”

“It was as if we all were one heartbeat.”

“I felt it more when we slowed. I could be more mindful.”

“When I am aware of tension escalating on the yard, or in our cells, I release this feeling we cultivate here in T’ai Chi Chih class, this energy of harmony. It’s not that I send it to those fighting. It is more of a simple release. Usually things calm down.”

My poem from after that same class:

Currents of Consciousness

Drop in together —

You, me and the universe

Listening, feeling, finding

A movement

A stillness

Pulsing

Pulsing off the ceiling

Pulsing off the stars

Rising from the ground of being

Orchestrated by sinew and bone

Alive in the transfiguration of the moment

Perceptions peering

inside out

outside in

Finding no difference

Finding only flow