Mexico & Chicago TCC Constellations Come Full Circle

The most rewarding gift of T’ai Chi Chih (TCC) is this community in Ajijic, Mexico devoted to a twice weekly practice. I have spent five months here each year for the past three years and old timers return for classes.

Hope to see everyone at 2024 teacher conference. Hannah Hedrick is my roommate, as usual. In 1985 she threatened that I wouldn’t see much of her unless we did TCC together. It worked out that we were certified together in 1987 and could be anywhere in the world 37 years later and remain connected to TCC and each other.

By Hannah Hedrick, Hawaii

I love Daryl’s remembrance that when I came back from my initial TCC classes at Rancho Rio Caliente with Theda Gillespie in Mexico, I did tell her, Steven Everett, and Don Peterson that they would see very little of me if they did not support my commitment to becoming a TCC teacher. All four of us were accredited at the same time, and we formed our own supportive TCC community.

Here’s how it happened. Theda Gillespie, from Oklahoma and New Zealand, had been teaching TCC for several years at Rancho Rio Caliente outside Guadalajara, Mexico, when Chicago’s beloved Becky Love organized a yoga teachers’ retreat there in 1985. I attended to assist Becky and was able to attend six or seven TCC classes with Theda. Two minutes into the first class, I knew that this was the T’ai Chi for me, having struggled with T’ai Chi Ch’uan for two years.

Knowing that there were no TCC teachers in Chicago, I asked Theda if I could buy the book she used to teach the class. She said she would sell it to me only if I promised to become accredited as a teacher. Period. I confessed that was unlikely, given that I worked full-time, taught several yoga classes, and volunteered with AIDS and cancer groups.

Theda took a chance on me, as did Justin, when he accredited me and my three best friends the following year, far before we were proficient in TCC. He sensed our teh and understood that we would attend teacher trainings and conferences to move more deeply into the principles and the movements themselves. I missed only a handful of conferences and, with Daryl, organized an annual conference just outside of Chicago in 1993.

Justin’s confidence in our original Chicago constellation is manifested in the pictures and comments describing Daryl Isenberg’s Mexico classes in this issue.

Fellow TCC teachers throughout the world, please convey to potential teachers that this is a process. Sometimes we aspire to a greater level of proficiency than is necessary to enfold others in our proliferating TCC constellations.

A postscript to vibrant energy resonations: That’s what I felt when we concluded our Monday practice with longtime students Gail and Stacy — the coordinator of the Warriors Against Diabetes program that focused on T’ai Chi Chih (TCC) more than a decade ago who is now a TCC teacher candidate. I felt a palpable presence of the TCC teachers who have supported our Big Island program, beginning with Daryl Eisenberg and Stephen Everett in 200l, followed by Michael Martin, Sister Alice, Donna McElhose, KG, Lisa Otero, Linda Prosche, and Katy Cole. This constellation experience extended to the many states and countries in which these teachers have created TCC communities.

The beat of our communal heart goes on and on . . .