This week’s lesson was a Tai Chi lesson, on Fair Maidens Weave the Shuttle. Not much to say about that, just progressing through the form. I’m a little iffy on the details of the last few bits of the form, but I know basically how it works; I’ll definitely want to spend time consolidating that when I’m done with the form. (Which isn’t all that far from now!)

On Wednesday I did 1h45m of Wu Ji, my first time at that length. It wasn’t too tedious, given that; didn’t go nearly as well as last week, though, for whatever reason I had a hard time getting into anything like a Calm Abiding state. But hey, at least I’m getting used to these longer periods; 2h honestly feels like it will be not particularly pleasant but manageable. At least with bells going off (the bells in my last attempt were 35 minutes apart, so two bells in the middle); a 2h stand without any intermediate bells still feels like it might not be so great.

On Friday I went through the Spinal Dao Yin.

On Saturday I’ve normally been doing long single exercise Silk Reeling sessions but I skipped that this week, I wasn’t feeling great on Saturday. In general sleep has been off, though it’s been getting better – my younger dog is getting much better at sleeping through the night, and my older dog had something funny going on with his gut that was causing him to need to go out multiple times in the night for several days, but that’s done now. Though I noticed that my sleep was still not at its best, so I did a Wood Wu Xing session and a Jade Pillow session on Monday, hopefully that will get things back on a good pattern.

I also have been realizing that I haven’t been keeping up with several exercises – not doing Spinal Waves as frequently as much as I was for a while, or that Du channel stretch from the Nei Gong program. And also I haven’t been doing the Taiji standalone exercises, just the form. But I’m getting back to that now – for whatever reason, my brain was actually okay doing more of those yesterday even though I was pretty tired, so I did some WSSF 1 then and more back stretches, and some WSSF 3 today and more back stretches. So hopefully I can re-establish those habits. And they’re definitely necessary: my WSSF 1 wasn’t nearly as strong as it had been for a while, and even the level it had been was only starting to get interesting, there’s a lot more work in my body that I need to do to really build good Yang Taiji skills.

Another Foundations program this weekend, I’m looking forward to that. Will also be nice to see some people in person that I’ve been interacting with online in regards to my 2h Wu Ji attempts.

As noted in my last post, I was on a work trip in the middle of last week, so not as much Nei Gong as normal and much less Tai Chi than normal. And I didn’t find time to do a new lesson last week, either. I did keep up my daily Nei Gong, so it wasn’t a skipped week, but definitely a light one.

Having said that, the weekend was pretty solid. I had Tai Chi classes on both Saturday and Sunday; on Saturday, my long silk reeling exercise this week was Elbow Rotations. There wasn’t much of interest going on in the single arm versions, but the double arm version was pretty interesting, with a rather strong unfolding feeling going out through my chest to my elbows in the outward direction, and on the inward direction there was an unfolding lower down in my body. Other than that, nothing in particular to report; I am glad that we’re going through the Xin Jia first form pretty seriously in the Sunday class, though, there are details that I was getting wrong.

And I did do a long Wu Ji on Sunday; 1h30m again this time, but with 30 minute bell intervals instead of 15 minute. And it was surprisingly okay; it continued the pattern of a given duration not being particularly bad the second time I do it, even with the less frequent bells. I still think that no bells is going to be a problem, but hey, maybe I’m wrong about that?

I’m feeling a decent amount of ambient fullness in my spine during the day, and also there might be something interesting going on in my shoulders? (Maybe more Qi being present, maybe just more space being present.)

I’m going on a work trip on Tuesday and tomorrow is a little busy, so I’ll just do my weekly post today. And we’ll see if I do a new lesson this week or not; I might have time for that tomorrow, I’ll see. A Nei Gong class this week, Dredging the Channels 2; not much to say about that. On Wednesday I was sleepy enough that I didn’t want to try a long Wu Ji; I tried to do a decent length Calm Abiding, but I was sleepy enough that it wasn’t particularly effective. I got some good Tai Chi in during the afternoon, though; my first Wu Song Shen Fa for a while (20 minutes of WSSF1) and I also did 20 minutes of that exercise where you try to relax beneath the surface of the ground.

On Friday I was a little sleepy but not too bad so I decided to do a long Wu Ji; I ended up doing an hour and 30 minutes for the first time, so I guess that was a good choice! Not a particularly good long Wu Ji session, certainly not as good as the previous week, but it was fine until the last 15 minutes, and I stuck it out. Not sure if I’ll do 1h45m next week or stick with 1h30m but set my timer interval to 30 minutes instead of 15 minutes, but I’m leaning to the latter.

I didn’t have as much time for Advanced Dantian Gong a normal on Saturday so I wasn’t optimistic as to how it would go, but actually I felt a surprisingly strong connection between my hands and Dantian. (Maybe because of the Wu Ji the previous day.) And I had a good Calm Abiding session today; not the longest but pretty strong.

My long silk reeling exercise this week was Chest Opening and Closing. Didn’t feel much in terms of reeling the silk; my Yong Quan got a good workout, at least, and my lower back was surprisingly warm at the end, so that’s something.

This coming week is supposed to be rainy, so, between that and the trip, we’ll see how much Tai Chi practice I manage.

Good week; sleepier than I would like, Ulli is still having an effect, but manageable. I did the next Tai Chi class in Damo’s course: the straight line section of the form, plus a push hands exercise involving spreading your lower back. I can actually feel my back rearrange in a way that goes out my arms when I do that, so it seemed like something that I might be able to work; I tried it out on Saturday, though, and my push hands partner didn’t feel anything. So that reinforces my feeling that, if I’m going to ever get those to work, then I need to spend significantly more time on that course…

Anyways, on Wednesday I was a little sleepy so I just did some Wu Ji and 40 minutes of breathing exercises from the December workshop. I did a good amount of Tai Chi in the afternoon, though. And similarly on Friday (different Nei Gong but still not all that much for a day off); I finished going through my list of forms, and I’m starting to feel like the Hunyuan 48 and Yang 37 sequences are familiar, at least, even though I’m also getting a lot of the details wrong.

That feeling tired meant that I hadn’t done a long Wu Ji yet this week; so on Sunday I took a little bit of a nap and then tried to get back to doing a 1h15min Wu Ji. And it went quite well, possibly my best Wu Ji session ever? I had a good back stretch starting from the beginning, and I had a decent amount of internal inflation as well. I still need to try to get longer stretches of Calm Abiding during Wu Ji, but even short bits have an effect. (No long sitting Calm Abiding this week, alas.) I’ll try to do a 1h30min session of Wu Ji this week.

In terms of Chen Tai Chi, on Saturday I continued my long silk reeling, this time trying out Shoulder Rotations. I was planning to do it in 5 minute sections (adding to 50 minutes, because there are 10 parts to that one), but my shoulder was feeling a little funny so I dialed it down to 3. And at least I didn’t overstress myself, but also I got very little actual feeling of reeling the silk during that one. Which didn’t shock me too much, that one feels more about loosening up the joints than connecting the body.

Getting back to normal. I had a good sleep on Tuesday night, so I did a 1 hour Wu Ji session on Wednesday, it went fine. And I did some Tai Chi in the afternoon, too. On Friday I hadn’t slept as well; I did a sort of half-assed Spinal Dao Yin, a sleepy Calm Abiding, and no Tai Chi; still, something, better than the previous weeks.

On Saturday I continued to work on long versions of my teacher’s Silk Reeling Exercises. I’ve run out of the ones that clearly seem like good ideas, so I’m just doing the ones I haven’t done before starting in order. Which meant Neck Rotations today; I was thinking I might just do it for 20 minutes instead of 40, I was worried that it might overstress my joints. But then actually the first half of it, where I’m moving my chin from one shoulder to the other, really did feel like it was reeling the silk. So I did that for a full 20 minutes; and then I did 20 minutes of the second half, rotating my head (10 minutes in each direction). My TCM doctor has me do that (though not nearly as long), so I figured either doing it for a while would be extra helpful or a quite bad idea, and I hoped I could tell if it was the latter. And it seemed fine at the time, but then, later on in the class, my lower back started spasming a little; maybe it’s unrelated, but I assume it was caused by one part or the other of the silk reeling, with the head movements affecting my lower back? Nothing too bad, fortunately; annoying at the time but not a big deal, and I’m pretty much better now.

I had a pretty good Calm Abiding on Sunday; not one of my very best but entirely reasonable. I didn’t feel like doing Tai Chi on Sunday but I did some on Monday, we’ll see if I go through all the forms this week.

And I reviewed the last Nei Gong lesson this weekend and the last lesson from Damo’s Tai Chi course earlier in the week, so I’ll start doing new lessons again; today is a Tai Chi day. Though I will say that I’m not doing great at Damo’s form; ideally, I’d spend more time on that. And also ideally I’d get back to doing more of those various standing practices and the Wu Song Shen Fa, I’ve definitely been slacking there.

I was exhausted through Tuesday last week because of the (excellent) new puppy, but starting from Tuesday night my sleep started to get a little better. Yesterday I actually felt pretty awake even compared to pre-puppy days; that was an outlier, but being just manageably tired seems reasonable to expect now. I’m still not going to get back to lessons this week, but I think I might review my last Nei Gong and Tai Chi lessons this week with a goal of restarting lessons next week.

And similarly I didn’t do any long standing this week; I did a 30 minute session and some 20 minute sessions, but that’s it. Though actually those sessions felt surprisingly active inside, so hopefully I’m still in decent shape? My goal this week is to do a 1-hour session; I won’t sweat it if I’m not up for that, though.

In my Saturday Tai Chi class, I started doing the version of Wu Ji that my Chen Tai Chi teacher teaches; not too dissimilar from the Tai Chi Wu Ji in Damo’s class, though some details are different. Nothing too much to report there, though I’m glad I’m doing it. And I got back to doing my long silk reeling, this time spending 40 minutes on Diagonal Circles and Lie Splitting. Decently interesting, definitely worth spending the time on; though I feel like I’m approaching the end of the exercises in that set that will work well in a longer format. We’ll see; I’m planning to go through them all, though if some of them feel like they’re not a good idea then I won’t press them. There’s one in particular that’s a lower back opening exercise that I feel like wasn’t actually great for my back when I tried doing extra of it in the past; we’ll see how that one goes this time, but even if it doesn’t cause problems, I don’t know that it will actually help with developing the silk inside my body.

It was a Sunday Tai Chi week; went pretty well, and one of my fellow students was commenting that my Xin Jia was looking good, glad too see that my effort there is paying off visibly.

Basically nothing to report this week. I was taking it easy on Wednesday and Friday because of aftermath of the cold, and we got a new puppy on Saturday; he’s excellent, but also that meant no Tai Chi on Saturday and it’s basically wrecked my sleep. (And depleted my Jing, based on the way the back of my knees feel.) I haven’t been completely skipping my Nei Gong, but I’ve also only been doing the minimum.

No lesson last week because of the cold, and I won’t do one this week either: I’m going to hunker down and be in maintenance mode until sleep is better. We’ll see whether things get better before the February Foundation course; but if they don’t, they don’t, they will eventually.

This week’s lesson was a Nei Gong one on Dredging the Channels. Turned out to be a Hunyuan exercise that I’d seen last summer and that I’d been curious about, so I’m glad to have made it up to it in the course.

I had a good Calm Abiding on Wednesday – I was worried I’d fall asleep, but that was fine, and I was getting tons of Qi. I set the timer for an hour but I kept going for half an hour after that, honestly I would have kept on going longer if there hadn’t been Christmas-related stuff that I had to do.

I wanted to do an hour and a half of Wu Ji on Friday, but I only lasted an hour and 15 minutes, and it was really rough at the end. I’d thought at the start that I was a little tired but not out of the norm (honestly, just being a little tired is a pretty good day, I’ve had perfectly fine Wu Ji sessions like that), but clearly I was wrong and I pushed it too far. And, in fact, on Sunday I came down with a mild cold; I’m not sure if my experience on Friday was an early warning sign of the cold or if Friday was just tiredness and pushing it too far made me vulnerable to getting sick; either way, the lesson is that I should be more attentive to my body in situations like that.

My Chen Tai Chi teacher went over my Xin Jia form for the first time on Saturday. Lots of good advice; I was correct that I know it well enough for it to be worth showing him, but that also I’ll learn a lot from showing it to him. I’ll probably keep that up as my default form to show him for the next few times.

I took it easy on Sunday and Monday: I didn’t avoid Nei Gong as much as I would have if I were sicker, but I tried to avoid going into my body too much. So I mostly went through the new breathing exercises and the Jade Pillow neck stretches. I was feeling better this morning, so I did a little more Nei Gong today, but not like a usual day off; hopefully by Friday I’ll be feeling good enough to have a regular session, we’ll see.

And then on Saturday we’re getting another puppy, so that will throw another wrench into things. But I like puppies, so it will be a good change even so!

A Tai Chi lesson this week: Turn Body, Chop, and Push. Seems fine, though I should work on it more (and, honestly, the previous bit of the form too); reminds me a little bit of the silk connections I get from Chen Tai Chi.

I did a 1h15m Wu Ji session on Wednesday. It went fine, I kept my head up and got a stretch on my back, so that nicely solved the back pain. (My lower back actually ached a little bit from the stretch, but that was entirely manageable and, I’m fairly sure, healthy.) Mentally, it was fine too; I wanted it to end more than I’d like but it was manageable; I’ll bump it up to 1h30m next time. I worked on the Reverse Breathing upgrade in the afternoon; probably haven’t done that as much as I should, to be honest. I was also hoping to do a fair amount of the Chen Xin Jia first form that afternoon, but it was feeling a little off, so I stopped after going through the form twice, and honestly I didn’t go through it as seriously as I would have liked during those two times through the form.

I did some Shui Gong 2 on Wednesday night; I fell asleep before I finished, it didn’t particularly help or hinder sleep. And I did it last night; the quality of my awareness has changed there, in ways that I think are related to it no longer causing me sleep problems. Still isn’t actively helping with sleep, but I no longer feel like I have to careful about when I try that one. Which reminds me that I should start Shui Gong 3 at some point; I think I’ll keep on going with 1 and 2 for a while before I start that, though.

I did the Spinal Dao Yin on Friday. And I had an acupuncture appointment, and my doctor complained again about my neck vertebrae; so maybe I should get back to the Jade Pillow exercise? I did that a couple of times over the last week, and my sleep might actually be getting better; also, I’m feeling really tired right around when I should be going to sleep, I remember that happening before when Jade Pillow was helping me get things in order. So maybe that theory is correct, and I should work Jade Pillow into my regular routine (once a week? or when I’m noticing sleep problems?) instead of assuming that I’ve accomplished what it is designed to do.

I was hoping that my Tai Chi teacher would go over my Xin Jia form this Saturday, but he was out on holiday; hopefully he’ll be able to do that this week, but we’ll see, sometimes it takes him a while to catch up to skipped weeks. Wouldn’t hurt for me to have more time to practice it.

On Sunday I had a so-so arm stretch session, but a pretty good Calm Abiding session. Not as good as the one two weeks earlier, but better than any other one I’ve had since then.

Today I went through the new class on Breathwork for Qigong. My main takeaway there is that I really do have problems with the basics of that: my breathing is too fast and shallow. Which I’ve kind of known but it hasn’t been a priority; healthy to get a nudge, and to get a wider range of exercises to attack that, but I’m not yet committing to spending time on that. (Especially since I need to make time for doing Jade Pillow a little more often.)

Nei Gong lesson week, with the topic being Reverse Breathing Upgrade. Seemed pretty straightforward, and I think I could feel what it’s going for to some extent, but I’ll definitely want to practice it a decent amount more. (Cue ongoing refrain that I have too many seated exercises that I want to work on.)

I did Wu Ji for 1h15m on Wednesday, my first time doing it that long at home. It mostly went well; my back started aching a bit 45 minutes in, and around 55 minutes in my legs deflated noticeably, but I managed to re-establish the inflation. Around 65 minutes in, my body started feeling full and connected. I kept my eyes closed the whole time, so while I certainly wasn’t free from mental turmoil, it was manageable.

After thinking about it a bit, I suspected that the back ache meant that I’m not raising my head enough during Wu Ji, so my lower back is getting compressed instead of hanging off; and a more senior (I think?) student on the IAA Discord suggested the same thing. So I focused on that during a (much shorter) Wu Ji session later on in the week; sure enough, there’s a lot more room for me to maintain stretch in my back. Definitely something to work on next time; I’ll keep the 1h15m duration, we’ll see how much more comfortable it is.

And I think the feeling of connection was a sign of more Qi getting into my body? It’s hard to say 100% for sure, because I’d already been feeling a little full because of the really good Calm Abiding in the previous week, but I think the Wu Ji topped me up again.

I also did Shui Gong 2 that night for the first time in a while. At first I thought that it had gone kind of badly, keeping me awake a little bit, but then my sleep was fine, maybe even a little better than normal? So something to keep on experimenting with.

On Thursday I had a pretty good Ji Ben 2, and I did find time to work in Concentration 2; maybe I’ll be able to get in the habit of doing that on Thursday evenings, though I don’t know that doing it once a week will be enough for that to matter. And I’m also a little worried that doing it in the evenings might affect sleep; I did it then because Damo recommended it for that specific exercise, but still. My sleep wasn’t good, at any rate, though it could just have been congestion, hard to say.

On Friday, I had an okay arm stretch, but my Calm Abiding was bad, probably because my sleep was short. On Sunday my Calm Abiding was better, but still not great; I’m also wondering if doing Calm Abiding late in the morning (which is where it often ends up on Wednesdays and Fridays, often not even starting until around noon) is actually just a bad idea for my body’s rhythms, and so I should do it in the afternoon after lunch and after a brief nap if I’m sleepy? Not sure, I might experiment with that this week.

Today I was doing the Spleen Hui Chun, and, inspired by Calm Abiding, I decided to soften my attention more (e.g. during the bit with my hands on my Yellow Court), and it felt like it strengthened that exercise. So I should do that more, in a wider range of exercises.

Not much to say about Chen Tai Ji; I kept on plugging away, nothing particularly special happened. It was my week to lead the silk reeling at the start of class, so I didn’t do a long silk reeling exercise; and that means that my teacher will review my form next week. I’m planning to show him the Xin Jia first form the first time, so I’ll spend extra time reviewing that this week, even if it means that I don’t review all the other forms.

I started rereading Chen Taijiquan: Masters and Methods, which is a series of interviews with famous Chen masters. It’s really good, and there were some bits that connected specifically to stuff I’ve been thinking about recently, e.g. a couple of bits about Song and one bit about using Wu Ji to build Qi. Those topics are both quite relevant to a course I was thinking of giving next year, so it’s really good to get the take of people who know so much more about the subject than I ever will.