Share the Wonder

The Vital Force allows us teachers and students of T’ai Chi Chih to share our experiences of hope that flow out of our practice. Many of my students enjoy your contributions, so I hope you will remember the wonder and continue to send in your stories. Whenever I take stock of what has happened, I am more likely to be in a grateful frame of mind. From that place working together, creating and encouraging one another becomes so much easier.

Did you know that from the least promising places can come the biggest surprises? Over the past six months I have been teaching TCC at a health club where the classes—according to club policy—are open and ongoing. Students there do not necessarily have a personal investment or commitment to TCC. Any given Tuesday or Saturday I am faced with a few new students whose level of preparation and commitment can vary wildly. But the chi works in remarkable ways!

Out of this class of students several wishing greater commitment have come forward. One is a head nurse for the St. Louis County Health Department who has brought me to her place of work to share TCC with her much-stressed colleagues twice a week. Another is an elementary school teacher who together with five of her fellow instructors is writing a grant proposal for me to teach TCC in the fall to ten-year-olds experiencing disciplinary problems. She was fascinated by the Vital Force stories of the effects of TCC on men at Folsom [Prison] and the schoolchildren practicing TCC on the beach in South Africa and included copies of both as part of the grant proposal. If we channel chi correctly, it is unstoppable.

Yet another example was the student who made a gift to her friend and her friend’s family of two private lessons of TCC and one of Justin’s videos. Her friend has breast cancer and my student thought that the TCC could help her friend relax and remain positively focused. On Saturday morning, May 23, her friend, her friend’s husband and their two teenage sons were in my living room all doing TCC together. They flowed so beautifully and respectfully with one another and with the chi! After the lesson was over, I could feel the powerful bond they had created by all reaching a state of balanced chi together at the same time. I felt so privileged to witness this, I felt my house blessed that morning by a transforming event and wanted to sob for joy at the love and beauty it signified. I will remember the wonder of this moment for the rest of my life.