Good week. My energy levels are doing better than they have been over the last few months; not sure if it’s that I’m managing my sleep better or if it’s because of the new herbs from my TCM doctor or what, but it doesn’t feel like a random improvement. There’s definitely room for further improvement, and who knows how sustained this will be, but still, yay for good signs.

On Tuesday night I did Shui Gong 2 for the first time in probably over a year; it actually went fine, it didn’t mess up my sleep, and it might even have helped my sleep? I haven’t done it since then, but I’ll definitely want to give that another try.

I did the third Uluwatu session on Wednesday; nice to have a session where I’m not doing my regular stuff and that’s a bit longer than my historical norm. I noticed that my stomach really wanted to move when I was doing Dantian Gong during tat session; another sign that my development is going well. There was a lecture in part of it, and one thing that he said was that, in the internal arts, the body moves in response to the hands, and he noted that this isn’t just a Qi Gong / Nei Gong thing, it applies in Tai Chi too. Which made me think I should try it in Tai Chi, maybe even Chen Tai Chi despite the Chen claim that everything comes from the Dantian: in the Xin Jia form in particular, moves frequently start out with some sort of hand movement, so maybe this is related to that?

I did try that out later in the work. And it does feel like this is relevant, especially in Xin Jia but also in some places in Lao Jia. (It’s less clear to me in Hunyuan.) Basically, I’d move my hand, it would set up tension inside my body somewhere, and responding to that tension would cause my body to move appropriately. I’m honestly not sure if, by doing things that way, I’m doing Chen Tai Chi wrong, or if the sequence is that the hand gives direction to the Dantian and then the Dantian still kicks off the movement or if different people feel differently about whether the Dantian is the source of everything or just has an important guiding force; though Chen Xiaowang is the foremost Xin Jia practitioner in the world and he was pretty clear that movement should come from the Dantian…

At any rate, an interesting exercise. And in general Tai Chi was interesting this week; e.g. when I was doing Jian practice, I was starting to get a feeling along the blade of the Jian, so hopefully I’m making progress there too. I did try out Damo’s Returning Force push hands exercise with my push hands partner on Saturday, and that didn’t work at all; not sure how much that’s because I haven’t been doing his push hands exercises in general and how much is those exercises potentially being at a higher level than it’s reasonable to have attained at that point in the program: they look to me like they’re pretty advanced but maybe if I’d found somebody to do them regularly with then they’d work out fine?

On Sunday, I did an hour of Wu Ji; I got a really strong stretch along my spine, and there was other stuff going on inside too, it might have been the best Wu Ji session I’ve ever had? (At least at a physical level; mentally I was a little more distracted than I would like.) And then I did an hour of Calm Abiding; it honestly didn’t go great, I wasn’t too sleepy but I also didn’t do a great job of relaxing my mind. And my back hurt more than it normally does when I’m doing that; nothing awful but enough to be a distraction, presumably it’s a side effect of how the Wu Ji session was tugging at my spine.

I figured that the right way to work on my mental distractions during Wu Ji was to try to get my mind in a Calm Abiding mode. So I tried that during a (much shorter) Wu Ji session on Monday evening, and honestly it went great: during the session, there was a lot more expansion inside and my mind was noticeably relaxed (I actually went a little longer than I intended because I lost track of my meditation timer going off), and my back and torso felt actively good during the evening. And I did that again today; not quite as dramatic, but it still felt good. So I’m definitely going to stick with that.

And I also felt like I’d done a good job of mixing things up during Nei Gong. I forgot to mention above this week’s lesson, which was another Channel Opening one; not dramatic, but probably a little bit of opening? Though also my sleep was a little iffy in ways that might have been related to that; a Wood Wu Xing session fixed that, though. And I did one or two sessions of stretching my arms from the insides.

Pretty solid week. At least modulo sleep issues – definitely caused by allergies (I’m getting telltale sleep apnea signs), hopefully getting the air ducts cleaned will help with that, that’s scheduled for a week and a half from now. And I’ve bumped up my allergy medicine mix a bit.

Tai Chi week, covering the next move in the form, White Snake Creeps Down. Seemed pretty straightforward, and I was glad that my body is flexible enough for it not to be a problem. I also watched the next Year Three one, Practicing with Incense: my wife is allergic to all sorts of things so I’m not about to burn incense in the house, so I figured I’d just watch it but not worry about it otherwise. Interesting enough, but not so interesting that I’m sad to not be able to easily practice it; honestly, even if my wife weren’t allergic, I don’t know that I’d spend the money on getting incense and an appropriate pot now?

On Wednesday I watched the second Uluwatu video; feels good to sometimes do sessions of that length. (Admittedly, it’s not that much longer than my solo sessions on good days.) And some different stuff than I’m in the habit of doing in my weekly practice, e.g. a shoulder blade loosening exercise. Other than that, pretty normal stuff on Wednesday and Friday; and I did get back on track going through all my forms over the course of the week. And on Sunday I spent some time with the beginning of a video on the Double Dao form, so I think I more or less understand the basics of what I’m supposed to do there; I’ll definitely want to review that but it should be in acceptable shape by the time of the November Sunday class.

On Saturday, I continued focusing on a single Silk Reeling exercise; this time I did Wrist Rotations and Arm Circles. I was surprised how strongly the sensation went from my arm to my hip on the same side: I was expecting it to go to my Dantian but really it kind of touched the Dantian and then moved down to my hip. And when I did it with both hands, it got even stronger, especially on the direction where I was rotating inward; eventually I got to where it was going down my leg and then bouncing off my foot, which is pretty cool. (And vaguely reminiscent of what happens with the Wu Song Shen Fa, but I think the mechanism of force transmission is different.)

I was feeling like I should do more shoulder opening, so I went back to the arm stretching exercise that Rick taught in a workshop that involves stretching via how you put attention in and then above your body. I did that a couple of times; still works, wasn’t as strong as it was during / after that workshop, so I think I’ll keep at it more.

I read an interesting Tai Chi book, The Heart Treasure of Taijiquan by Ren Gang. Honestly kind of inspiring, I liked the view of high level Tai Chi that it provides, and it was nice to see enough in there that was familiar that I felt like I’ve at least taken a couple of steps along that path. But also kind of frustrating, because his guidance as to how to actually progress along that path isn’t nearly as concrete as I’d like: way too much advice to have your teacher show you stuff in picture. And I do like and respect my local Tai Chi teacher, but also I think the route that my Tai Chi Teacher shows for advancing isn’t particularly closely aligned with the details of what Ren Gang is showing, so I don’t think asking my teacher about something specific that Ren Gang mentions will be too helpful? Still, hopefully between my local teacher and the online stuff and that book, I’ll make progress; I certainly feel like I am.

Also on the Tai Chi not, I’d been a little unsure as to whether I would teach the same Silk Reeling Principles course next summer as I taught this summer. But I got another idea today: I’ve been thinking a fair amount about Song recently, and maybe I understand enough about that to help beginners step up their game a bit? So I’ll think about that more, and see if I can flesh that out into a sketch of a course; if it seems plausible, I’ll ask other local students what they think and if they’re more interested in that than in the Silk Reeling Principles course then I’ll give that a try.

It was a Nei Gong week this week, the lesson was on Prostration. I did the sequence there a few times, it was interesting how the changed hand position felt inside my body, but I didn’t actually feel any desire to prostrate. I don’t think I’ll keep this one up at all regularly, I’ve got enough other stuff to work on. (Though admittedly most of the things I really want to work on now are seated work! But I can always stand to do more Wu Ji, and I should continue to work on my shoulders.)

I went through the first Uluwatu video on Friday; nothing super dramatic, just going through Wu Ji, and the video didn’t have us do a long stand or anything. I didn’t feel up for a single long Wu Song Shen Fa session in the afternoon but I did do 20 minutes each of both WSSF 4 and WSSF 5.

On Saturday, instead of doing Silk Reeling along with the class, I did another long Hand Maneuvers session, 10 minutes with each single hand and then 15-20 minutes of both hands. The distinctive thing about the single hand ones was how the four energies showed up; with two hands, it was again how strongly the hand turns after the vertical part translated into a torso turn, and how the back foot’s energy eventually translated into the Peng on the other side. Also I noticed my back getting quite warm, I guess it’s pretty good for my back.

Also on the Chen Tai Chi note, I’m no longer feeling completely at see with the Hunyuan 48. Doesn’t mean that I’ve got it (or the parts of it that we’ve done in class) down particularly solidly, though, so I’m going to stick with reviewing it on Thursday evenings. I did make it through all of my forms this week, so that’s good. Also I’m experimenting with doing the first form without any Fa Jin, to see if I can understand where the power comes from when I’m trying to minimize the use of my muscles; some from coordinated turning and some from expansion. (Maybe just expansion related to Song, maybe some related to what Damo talks about in his Tai Chi course, I’m not sure.) Seems like an experiment worth continuing.

I’m having ups and downs with tiredness (and with sleep, I definitely had some sleep apnea one night, I think caused by the heat kicked in, I’ve made an appointment to get the air ducts cleaned in a couple of weeks), but I’m also having several days when I’m feeling like doing noticeably more than the minimum. I already talked about what I did on Friday; on Sunday, I did 30 minutes of prostration, 30 minutes of Anchoring the Breath, 1 hour of Calm Abiding (nothing dramatic but a decent amount of tingling; also, in retrospect, I’m not sure where all the time went, I wasn’t sleepy enough to account for that, so maybe I’m starting to get at where time disappears from the exercise itself??), 40 minutes of Spleen Hui Chun. And today I did an hour of Nei Gong and 20 minutes of WSSF 5, which is more than I normally manage on a week day.

Also on the sleep note, I’m thinking that it probably doesn’t help that my breathing is a little shallow, so I should either work on the exercise where you pay attention to your breath or else work on Anchoring the Breath. So for now I’m trying to work the latter into my routine, not necessarily as a priority (I don’t know that it will fit more than once a week in my regular schedule) but hopefully I can do it on days when I feel like doing extra stuff.

Good week; my sleep is definitely getting better, and my energy is sometimes better too. I think, in my next acupuncture appointment in a week and a half, I’m going to ask my doctor if he can switch my herbs from a Liver/Kidney mixture to something that only focuses on my Kidneys: I haven’t been taking any herbs this month and my sleep is being under control now that it’s not so hot, so I don’t think the Liver part is particularly important these days. I’m actually thinking I should get back to Shui Gong and in particular give Shui Gong 2 a try again (it’s led to bad sleep when I’ve tried it in the past); I reviewed the videos for those but the timing hasn’t worked out right for trying them yet.

Also I feel like my ribcage is opening up. Not sure if that’s related to the Heart medicine that I’ve been taking, or if it’s just that the stretching that I’ve been doing in that area is having an effect; seems healthy either way. And I’m Songing more in daily life; mostly physically but also maybe mentally a bit? I like the way it feels on my spine and neck; I’m also noticing one kind of achy bit in my back, hopefully it’ll start working itself open? I’m trying to be somewhat aware of it but not worrying about it.

Anyways, in terms of specific practice stuff: this week’s lesson was a Tai Chi lesson, on Wu Song Shen Fa 5. Interesting exercise; I feel like the first half of it is going pretty well, but I don’t feel like I’m doing the part right where you rock your foot. I’ll keep up with that, and also hopefully find time to do a long WSSF 4 practice; didn’t happen last week and it won’t happen this week, I had unusual stuff going on both weeks.

That unusual stuff also meant that I didn’t go through all of my Chen Tai Chi forms last week, but this week I’ve already gone through all of the weapons forms I know and the longest of the empty hand forms that I know, so hopefully we won’t have a repeat. I was a little worried that the handle of my new Jian was feeling funny, but it turned out that I just needed to tighten the nut more than I had been; glad the outcome was that simple, I prefer the heavier weight of that Jian in general.

The timing of the Foundations Zoom sessions is horrible for me to participate in them live, but they released the videos of the first of them, so I spent 5 hours on Friday going through them. They covered the Hui Chun exercises; nothing super new, though there were a few details I didn’t do quite right. Maybe I should spend a little more time on those; right now I do the Kidney one once a week and the Spleen one most weeks but I don’t do the others, so conceivably I could try to rotate between the other three, doing one of them a week? But I’m not convinced that that’s the best use of my time right now; honestly I feel like I’d pretty much always prefer to do either Calm Abiding or Concentration 2 instead of those. Still, good to have an excuse to have an extra long Nei Gong day. And now there are some (five? four?, average time around two and a half hours) videos from the first in-person classes that Damo led; presumably there’s significant overlap between what he presented and what Rick presented in person (though who knows), but it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for me to go through one of those a week.

Good Chen Tai Chi class on Saturday. Push hands in particular went well: I felt like I wasn’t getting jammed as much as I sometimes do when doing two handed fixed step push hands, and it felt like circles were going between our bodies. And we had the monthly Sunday Tai Chi class; people showed up earlier to do some standing practice, and I decided to do some regular Zhan Zhuang (instead of the lower / gentler variant that I’ve been doing on Saturdays), that went well, I got a good stretch out of that, I’ll probably switch back to doing that variant on Saturdays for a while. And then I randomly decided to do 15 minutes of Hand Maneuvers after that, and that turned out to be a good choice, too: about 5 minutes in, the way my body was doing it changed significantly, with the hand going down actively propelling the turn of my body, so I ended up turned a good amount by the time that hand reached the bottom, before the hand was moving horizontally. Not sure how much of that was from the extra time doing it and how much of it was a side effect of the Zhan Zhuang affecting my internal connections, but it seemed like a good thing either way.

We did the first couple of moves of the Double Dao; we’d done a preparatory practice the last month, and I thought I’d been doing that right, but I think in retrospect I wasn’t, because the same bit showed up in those moves and I was clearly doing that wrong. So I’ll have to figure out exactly what I should be doing there; I ripped the relevant DVD from Chen Qingzhou’s set yesterday, presumably watching that will help.

And that afternoon I had a decent Calm Abiding practice; I think I’m doing better at getting into a Shen Up state, or at least in a “Shen not being so far down as to put me asleep immediately”: I’m trying to not let the source of my attention wander to the lower back of my skull, keeping it more in the middle, and also when I relax my attention, I’m trying to let it expand out (as I do when Songing physically) instead of having my attention sink in a way that collapses.

And then on Monday I had a very good Calm Abiding practice: I was planning to do it for 45 minutes, but it was going well so it ended up more like 65 or 70 minutes. In the last third or half, I was getting this feeling that my mind was everywhere in the upper half of my body (basically everything above my waist), almost like my body was wanting to glow and/or become a pyramid. And there was a very strong tingling sensation and expansion sensation. That definitely felt like progress; on a mental level I maybe didn’t come out of it quite as chill as in my prior best Calm Abiding sessions, but I’m pretty sure that whatever was going on with my body was something useful. The only thing I’m not so sure about was that my sleep last night was weirdly interrupted, in a way that didn’t feel like any of my normal patterns for sleep being interrupted; not sure what’s going on there, maybe it’s just a coincidence or maybe a subtler version of one of the normal problems, but it feels like it’s not completely out of the question for it to be related to the Calm Abiding session? Though if that were the case I would expect it to feel more like Liver Qi rising problems.

Low energy week, with my sleep often being not great. Not sure how much was the COVID vaccine, how much was the heat, how much was something else? I’ve been feeling like I’ve been slacking some on the Spinal Waves, so maybe that’s relevant; I’ve been trying to get back to that the last couple of days, hopefully that will help.

No new lesson last week, because I was definitely feeling the vaccine then.

On Wednesday, while I was doing Calm Abiding, the point from which I was perceiving sunk down in my body; not all the way down to my Dantian, but still, interesting to have happen. It happened to me a few times a few years back, doing Silk Reeling with a particular way of approaching those exercises, but it’s been a while. Though Calm Abiding has been too sleepy; partly my iffy sleep, but I think I need to work on figuring out what Shen Up means in that context.

I’ve decided that Thursday evening is going to be Hunyuan 48 review time, and I’ve done that a couple of times. I still have a pretty large amount there to catch up with, but hopefully I’ll be able to chip away… And I did manage to review all of my Tai Chi forms this week, so that’s good. I noticed my Jian behaving oddly (weight shifting in the handle) while practicing that one, so I emailed the folks who sold it to me about that; fortunately, tightening the bolt at the bottom with a wrench seems to have fixed the problem.

Chen Tai Chi was going well this week; I’m starting to viscerally understand what Silk Reeling means, I think. I definitely got a lot out of figuring out how to present that last lesson in my Silk Reeling course.

This week’s lesson was Channel Opening 4, a seated exercise opening channels from the bottom of the torso up. And my sleep Tuesday night after doing that exercise was crappy, I think too much stuff was going on; I tried it a couple of other times in the week doing Channel Opening 4 followed by Channel Opening 3 and spending more time closing down at the end, and that was better? Still, not my favorite exercise.

Not a particularly notable week; not super energetic this week, so while I got decent amounts of practice done, there wasn’t anything special going on. And I was out of town on Saturday and some of Sunday, so I had less weekend practice than normal. I did make it through all of my Tai Chi forms, at least, so that’s something.

I got vaccinations yesterday and I’m definitely feeling the effects of it, so I’m going to skip doing a new lesson this week. I think I’m over the worst of it now, but still, no sense pushing things.

Pretty good week. It’s a Nei Gong week, I learned Cloud Hands; I spent some time on it as an isolated exercise, it’s coming together, though I’m definitely still learning something from it. E.g. partway through today’s practice I got the feeling that the Jin from my leg was both going down the opposite side to the An and my leg but also up in the same arm and turning into the Peng.

And I’ve done the Jade Pillow exercise most days, sometimes adding it in as a second seated exercise even when I was mostly working on something else. It might be helping with my sleep; maybe it’s just a coincidence, but I’ve noticed that, at bed time, I’m feeling quite sleepy in a healthy way, like my body is sending the right signals. I’ll probably start dialing down the frequency of the exercise, but I’ll keep it up occasionally for a little while longer.

I can’t remember what all I was doing on Wednesday; not much Tai Chi because I normally do that in the afternoons but I had an allergy shot appointment that kind of got in the way. Friday was good, though: I did a version of an arm / shoulder expansion exercise that Rick taught in a workshop a year or two back, and I’m glad I did that variant: definitely effective, but there’s more to do there, I remember it going deeper when I was focusing on it before (it hit my bone once), and I remember Rick even saying that it could go inside your bone. So I think I’ll start throwing that back into the mix.

And then I had a very good Calm Abiding session. I was worried that I was too sleepy to have a good session, and honestly I was dozing off some during the first 30 minutes. But then I woke up and I had 40 quite solid minutes after that.

Not as much Tai Chi as I’d hoped on Friday afternoon – I was starting to get tired in a specific way that I’ve noticed happens when I do a lot of Tai Chi or internal work, so I thought I shouldn’t push myself, so I didn’t put in my hour of Wu Song Shen Fa that I’ve been doing most weeks. But I did do my regular form work, so I got in all of the forms I know this week for the first time in a month or so. Still work to do: there are bits of the staff form that I need to solidify and one bit of the guan dao. And there is a bunch of the Hunyuan 48 that I have not learned at all solidly; I have to make a decision as to whether I’m really learning it or not this time, and if I am going to try that, I need to find significant time to carve out and work on videos. (Hmm, maybe Thursday evenings would work for that?)

My Chen teacher reviewed my form on Saturday, and I got some useful advice from him. He said that I shouldn’t be so external and I shouldn’t telegraph my movements so much: e.g. if I’m going to do something to the left, don’t move right first, keep that inside. And he said to expand a wider range of my body inside. I tried that second one out while he was talking, and it was pretty interesting; I think it might be a way into understand how to build and use Qi in a Chen Tai Chi context?

I was feeling energized after the Calm Abiding on Friday and a good Zhan Zhuang on Saturday, so I decided to try kicking off the Microcosmic Orbit on Sunday for the first time since the beginning of the summer. The prep stuff went okay but it didn’t seem quite as thick as I would have liked, so I wasn’t too surprised when stuff got stuck in the middle of my back. It probably also didn’t help that I was rushing stuff so I didn’t prepare as much as I should have, maybe it would have been different if I’d stretched out my back some first…

And I taught the final lesson of my Silk Reeling course on Sunday, about connecting up your body. I’m pleased with how that lesson went: while writing up the notes, there’s one exercise in particular that I figured out how to show mechanically how rotational movement has effects across your body; definitely helped my understand, and hopefully it made sense to my students too? And it’s having a real effect on my form, too: e.g. my body is moving quite differently now in the second move of the form. We’ll see if I teach the course again next year or if I decide to take a year off; depends on how much interest I can drum up, I guess.

My arms are wanting to sink pretty heavily during Wu Ji now; I wonder if this is related to the form of Zi Fa Gong where people fall prostrate? My arms are often ending up a little forward, which feels like it’s collapsing my body; I don’t think the forward pull is a Zi Fa Gong thing, though, I think it’s just bad positioning? So I’m moving my arms back further to my side, so the pull goes straight down my torso. That then raises the question of how worried I should be about my spine compressing; sometimes I’m trying to pull up physically more than I normally want to do, but on Monday I also experimented with letting the sink really make it down my spine into my pelvis and that was interesting, that felt like the way to go. Even with that, though, stuff might be compressing too much; maybe the answer there is to put my attention into my whole torso and hope that that leads to an inflation that protects me? I’ll see how it goes.

Good week. It was a Nei Gong week, and this week’s lesson was on The Jade Pillow; neck exercises, I think it’s helpful? Though honestly I’m not sure, because I’ve been feeling like things have been going well for a while, basically since I started doing a hundred or so Spinal Waves a day, but also it’s just getting easier to Song my neck. There’s still some noticeable tiredness in the background, but it’s not in the foreground, and my sleep is doing better; at first I thought the Jade Pillow exercises might have actually worked a bit against that, but I did a good Wood Wu Xing set and the last couple of nights have been good. And I’m feeling my back responding more when twisting it after sitting, so I think something in my spine is opening up; I don’t know if it’s related but also I’m feeling random little tingles over my body, similar to how I used to feel when the Ming Line was doing well, so hopefully that’s a sign that I’m building Qi?

I did an hour of Wu Ji on Wednesday, and no particular problem; that was a pleasant surprise, I expected it to be a bit more of a trouble. It might have helped that I entered the position in a way that Rick taught us in a workshop a year or two ago, by a certain sequence of relaxing, I felt more supported in my legs? I was also working on Wu Ji later in the week, focusing on putting my mind in my whole body instead of either in my Dantian or letting it bounce around at random; my torso definitely inflates when I do that, so I should keep that up.

I did an hour of Wu Song Shen Fa 3 on Wednesday afternoon, and this time it did actually feel a little different from when I do it for 20 minutes. About 25 minutes in, the sides of my chest started feeling more open than normal; and about 55 minutes in, the turn of my hips and the way I sink into my Kua got more pronounced. So that was cool; and I did a 20 minute WSSF 4 session and rewatched the WSSF 4 video this week since I hadn’t been doing it super regularly and it’ll be next on the list.

I didn’t do as much on Friday as on Wednesday, but I did at least do a ten minute Pushing the Tides session; first time in a while for that. Which reminds me that I should get back to trying the arm stretch that Rick taught once about putting your mind inside and then moving it. Also I’m continuing to do push-ups on Wednesday and Friday, just to get up to a bare minimum level of arm strength; I honestly wasn’t sure if doing that only two days would have me make any progress at all, but it is, I’m up to 20 pushups now.

Good week; nothing individually as good as the Calm Abiding the previous week, and I’ve been a little tired many days, but not super tired, and things feel like they’re going well inside my body? E.g. when doing Wu Ji I’m getting a nice tingly feeling much more quickly than I used to; it feels like my body is making space and getting some Qi inside
Anyways, a Tai Chi week this week; another part of the 37 form, Repulse Monkey into Diagonal Flying. Went fine, and I think I have things okay in my memory.

On Wednesday morning I did Concentration 2, Channel Opening 1 and 2, and a noticeably sleepy Calm Abiding in the morning. In the afternoon I did an hour of Wu Song Shen Fa 2; I’m still not convinced that the hour-long WSSF sessions are pulling their weight, though I’ll probably stick with them until I’ve given all of them an hour? And of course I practiced the parts of the 37 form that I’m up to. I can’t remember what I did on Friday, nothing particularly distinctive. It was still pretty hot last week, so no Chen weapons form practice (because there isn’t shade in front of our house where I practice those), though I did at least go through the Xin Jia first form. So I need to get back to weapons forms, and also to really go through the Hunyuan 48, because I definitely don’t have the last several movements there properly memorized.

On Saturday I had the regular Tai Chi class. I continued to do the Chen Xiaowang version of Zhan Zhuang before it, and I continue to like it. Paying attention to it, it sets up a bit of a stretch in my Yellow Court, presumably because of the hand position? And it gets me a decent feeling of stuff opening up inside; nothing super strong or anything, but it’s noticeable, and I feel like Tai Chi after that is more productive. I led Silk Reeling, which went decently well; one thing I’m noticing while doing Silk Reeling these days is that I’m feeling more in my shoulder than I used to, presumably because of the shoulder opening work. Also on the Silk Reeling note I started writing up notes for the fifth and final class that I’ll be giving on that in a few weeks, with that topic being on connecting the body; I’m pleased how the writeup is going, I think I can give good examples of exercises that connect the hand to the arm to the shoulder to the Dantian, and also ones that show the effects of twisting the hands and what that connects to.

The monthly Tai Chi class was on Sunday; it went really well, I felt like, both during the Pao Chui part and the Xin Jia part, my body was feeling really connected and coherent inside. And we started the Double Dao; once I’ve learned that, I’ll know all the weapons forms that my teacher teaches. I also decided to start following along with the Xin Jia Pao Chui, since we’re starting from the beginning; I’m not going to try to learn it this time, since two new Chen forms (the Hunyuan 48 and the Double Dao) is enough, but hopefully following along will give me a leg up when I do try to actually learn it the next time we restart it. And when I got home it was cool enough that I went through half of my weapons forms, so hopefully I’ll be able to go through them all this week. And fortunately none of them were disastrous.

This morning my Concentration 2 practice was better than normal, about halfway through my mind started feeling a bit quieter? There was still a bunch of chatter going on, it wasn’t like my concentration was actually good or anything, but at least the chatter wasn’t as loud?

A couple of things I forgot to mention last week: in the Foundations course, Rick mentioned getting the correct height when doing Wu Ji by paying attention to when your stomach muscles tighten up. And I started some different kinds of heart-related herbal medicines, plus one which is supposed to give me more energy; we’ll see if those help. (The latter one doesn’t actively make me feel more energetic while I take it, but I’m open to the possibility that it is helping over the course of the day.

This week’s lesson was a Nei Gong one, Channel Opening 3. A seated one; I kind of wish it were standing, because I’ve got other stuff that I want to work on while sitting! (In particular it’s making it harder to find time to keep up with Concentration 2.) It’s going decently well so far: sometimes I feel like something is relaxing physically inside me in a way that seems consistent with whatever bit I’m stretching? Not 100% sure whether that’s the main goal of the exercise or if it’ll eventually add in an active feeling of Qi movement, I’ll keep at it.

Anyways, it’s actually been a quite good practice week this week: maybe the Foundations course has given me a boost, maybe the new herbal supplements have made me less tired, who knows. On Wednesday morning I did Spinal Dao Yin, 30 minutes of Calm Abiding (I wish I’d had time for 60), and 30 minutes of Channel Opening 3, that all felt solid. Basically no time for Tai Chi in the afternoon, though, because I had an allergy shot. Friday wasn’t as good in terms of Nei Gong practice in the morning (I was noticeably more tired), and I had acupuncture, so, again, not much Tai Chi in the afternoon. Which is kind of a problem: I don’t want to lose the progress I’ve been making on forms with weapons, I definitely need to catch up with learning the Hunyuan 48, and I was doing some of Damo’s Tai Chi today and realized that I’d forgotten the last bit again. Though I did find time on a couple of days to do Damo’s 8 Energies drill, I continue to be impressed as to how strong that one feels inside of my body.

Saturday’s Chen Taiji class went well, I might actually be starting to connect to my Dantian in a productive way? And on Sunday there was a special Xinjia review class, that went really well too: it was useful in terms of reminding me of some of the details of the movements from the Chen Xiaowang workshop, but also, bits of my abdomen (some around my Dantian, some around my Yellow Court) were tingling a bit? I did some of the Zhan Zhuang variant that Chen Xiaowang taught us before both practice sessions, so that might well have helped, I’ll definitely want to keep that up. And then when I got home on Sunday, I did an hour of Calm Abiding; that was the best Calm Abiding session that I’ve had, my body was pretty perky inside while I was doing that and that feeling kept up for a while. Certainly helped that my energy level was good that day; I don’t know how much of that is the new medicines, how much is me being better at opening up my spine, how much is me actually managing to build Qi, but I’m not complaining either way.

And, speaking of opening up my spine, I’ve been good about doing a hundred or so spinal waves a day, I think that’s helping? (I might have been slacking a bit on touching my toes, I should make sure to continue with that, though.) And Wu Ji feels more interesting / productive: more of an active, healthy-feeling stretch inside my body, more of a feeling of Qi building or something inside there. I’ve also noticed that I’m sweating more than normal while practicing, even though I don’t feel like I’m working harder; if I’m optimistic, maybe that’s another sign of setting up better stretches inside my body, and perhaps of opening up space; heck, for all I know I’m managing to build Qi in that space, and the sweating is a byproduct of that? (No repeat of the feeling of warm liquid from last week, though.)

Definitely looking forward to this week; I wish it weren’t quite so hot, though, because I could really stand to spend a decent amount of time doing Tai Chi on Wednesday and Friday. Hopefully there will be a cool enough space in the park for that.