Last Tuesday evening I did a Nei Gong lesson, on Auric Connection. And I watched the Tai Chi Hurts video and the Path of Daoism lesson from Maryland 2022.

Wednesday: 50m Advanced Dantian Gong. Participated in Rick’s Zoom class; more Dao Palms, quite intense this time.

Thursday: I’m giving my foot a rest (acupuncture Wednesday helped but it’s not clear that it completely fixed the issue) so I skipped Tai Chi in the morning. 25m Dragon 3 in the afternoon, then an interruption came up so that was all the Nei Gong for the day.

(And, unfortunately, the acupuncture really didn’t fix the foot issue – some aspects are better but real problems are still there. So I’m doing much less standing Nei Gong and Tai Chi until that gets better – I want to give my foot as much time as possible to heal before going on vacation in a few weeks.)

Friday: 50m Dantian Gong, 20m Auric Connection.

Saturday: 40m Spleen Hui Chun. I did some of my regular Chen class, but I skipped most of it because of the aforementioned foot problem.

Sunday: No Tai Chi (foot); 35m Calm Abiding.

Monday: Du Stretch; 1h10m Microcosmic Orbit attempt, some Qi eventually made it up there but not a lot

Tuesday: I watched Foundations of Sitting Zoom class. Which was mostly theory, so my actual Nei Gong practice time was low today; the theory seemed familiar, I wonder if it was once in a different section of the library or if it was excerpted into a lesson in the course or if it’s just that he talks about the same thing in multiple places.

And it would be a Tai Chi week but I’m skipping that because of the foot problems. (And because the foot problems mean that I’ve only done Taiji Standing 6 once.)

The Tuesday lesson was Taiji Standing 6 – Shoulder Press. Been a while since I’ve done Taiji Standing, hopefully I’ll be up for it now.

Wednesday: 25m Wu Ji + Coiling Snake; I was surprised how, during the initial Wu Ji part, the front of my torso (Tian Tu and a little below that) wanted to sink decently strongly on its own. I attended Rick’s Zoom course. And I started looking for beta testers for the iPhone app I’m writing that, among other things, I use for suggesting Nei Gong exercises. (Probably everybody reading this saw that announcement, but if not and if you want more info, let me know.)

Thursday: Watched the Yang Taiji Basics Zoom class; I think probably I’ll spend some time going through the IAA Taiji Zoom classes instead of restarting the review of the 37 form videos. I did the 37 form, the Chen sword forms, and the Chen Lao Jia first and second forms. For Nei Gong I did 25m Dragon 3 and watched a recent Zoom class that Anastasia gave about seated Dantian Gong. And I reviewed the Hunyuan 48 in the evening.

Friday: 30m Wu Ji, 1h Dantian Gong and other seated work. I felt tingling not just in my abdomen but in other places, including my thigh, after that; not used to that feeling in my thigh. Though the downside is that, in the evening, the back of my knees ached, which I think is a sign of Jing depletion; not sure if that was because of something about practice or because sleep was bad the previous night.

Saturday: 40m Water Hui Chun; no Chen class today, I’m went to see my TCM doctor to talk about foot pain during that time slot. (Except that he didn’t actually do anything about the foot pain; I understand why but I’m still not thrilled.)

Sunday: The monthly advanced Chen class. 10m of bad Enquiry 3; I keep on bouncing off of that, I think I’ll just give up on it for now. And I started a Calm Abiding attempt but I was too sleepy so I stopped after 15 minutes. (I skipped my nap; was okay for doing normal stuff but not good if I wanted to do Nei Gong.)

Monday: Du Stretch, and 15m Wu Ji. And a 1h15m Microcosmic Orbit attempt; Qi got stuck for quite a while in the normal lower back place, and when it made it past there, it had a hard time making it through various other places in my lower back. It did eventually make it to the top, though; doesn’t feel like it’ll be as effective as it was last week but we’ll see how I feel the next couple of days. (Update from one day later: not completely ineffective but definitely not as strong an effect as the previous week.) At any rate, nice that it succeeded at all.

Tuesday: The Chen long weapon forms; my left hand was basically fine, yay. 20m each Taiji Standing 6 and Wu Song Shen Fa 1. And I went through the 37 form and the Chen Xinjia first form. For Nei Gong I did 30m Dragon 2 and 50m of the Being Present / Ming Men sequence.

I didn’t do a new lesson on Tuesday, I was too tired and I hadn’t done enough Tai Chi over the last few weeks to want to progress.

Wednesday: 25m surprisingly strong full moon practice. Then I went through the recording of Rick’s March 21 zoom, and took notes on the Dao Palms. Also, at the start of the recording when settling in, I felt like I was doing a better job of feeling what it means to sink flesh off the bones and to get my mind in that space, hopefully I can get better at that.

Thursday: I went through one of the sections of Practical Tai Chi Training. I did the Chen sword forms, 20m Wu Song Shen Fa 3, the 37 form, and the Chen Laojia first and second forms. For Nei Gong, I did a 20m stretching set, 30m Dragon 3, and 40m Water Hui Chun.

Friday: 25m Wu Ji + Ji Ben 1; 70m Dantian Gong + Qi Thickening + Dao Palms.

Saturday: Regular Chen class. And, unfortunately my left foot is hurting enough that I’m going to dial down standing Nei Gong stuff a bit, I think. (Update from a few days later: my foot is starting to get better, but it’s still not great; hopefully my TCM doctor can help but he’s out of town until Saturday. So, in the meantime, no long Wu Ji sessions.)

Sunday: A couple of hours of push hands. Working with Jason, the inside of my body is working a lot more than it had been – doing more, reacting more instinctively, being more effective. (Or maybe I’m noticing it more? But Jason found it surprising.) So that was very interesting, I hope I can build on that. And I did 35m of Calm Abiding in the afternoon.

Saturday: 1h Spinal Dao Yin, and 80m of my first successful Microcosmic Orbit attempt in months, yay. Things were stuck at the top of my lower back for ages, but my Dantian had felt quite full during the prep part of the attempt, and it felt like things had gone up the spine in a plausible location, so I decided to just sit and wait it out. And after 5-10 minutes (probably closer to 10, but who knows), it finally started moving past that clipping pass; it was still moving very slowly, so it took it ages for it to actually make it up the rest of my back and then to the top of my head (and down the middle of my body), but it did manage it eventually. So that was good, glad to be back at succeeding at that, hopefully I can build on that.

Tuesday: I went through the section in Practical Tai Chi Training on “Drawing Up Perineum on Inhale, Relaxing on Exhale”; surprisingly interesting / useful, it’ll help me in postures with one leg raised, I’d never really felt effects from my perineum before but now it’s starting to connect up in productive ways. I did Chen pole weapons for the first time in several weeks, and they went pretty well, yay; no left hand pain at all when doing the Guan Dao, the staff led to a couple of small jolts and the spear maybe one so things aren’t completely healed but they’re much better. And I went through the Chen Xinjia first form, paying attention to my perineum. For Nei Gong, I did the Du Stretch, 25m of Dragon 1, and I rewatched the Enquiry 3 video.

Tuesday evening’s lesson was a Nei Gong one, on Enquiry 3. Which I was thinking I’d kind of do occasionally, but on the few times when I’ve tried, I feel like I’m not actually doing what the lesson recommends, so I should probably rewatch it? I also watched the Maryland 2022 Errors in Qigong lecture that evening; very relevant to what I was talking about last week, I really should (and have been oven the last week and a half) work on keeping my head raised and having everything hang off of it, and on trying to figure out how to get Bones Up, Flesh Down working in practice.

Wednesday: 40m of Rick’s exercise of relaxing and connecting to sink. And 50m of a not particularly successful Microcosmic Orbit attempt.

Thursday: I reviewed Tear Tiger to Finish, so now I’m done with my second time (first review) of the 37 form videos. (I’ll probably start the form review from the beginning again next week!) I did Chen spear form; my finger is getting better but not completely healed, so I’m holding off on staff and Guan Dao for now. And 20m of WSSF1 for the first time in maybe two months; the 37 form twice, trying to do some Jin Strengthening on one of them; and the Lao Jia first and second forms. (And then a walk, and I ended up sitting in a church and spending about 20m paying attention to my breath.) In the afternoon, I went through Roni’s preparatory stretch video and an old Zoom session on Dantian Gong.

And then there was a Foundations workshop; Friday was a travel day, Saturday and Sunday were workshop days.

Monday: Du Stretch; and 25m Earth Hui Chun. (I got in quite late, so I was pretty sleepy.)

Tuesday: 20m of Dragon 2; 65m Dantian Gong combined with other seated stuff. No Tai Chi, because of an allergy shot appointment; and I got surprisingly tired at the end of the day, not sure if I had a stronger reaction to the allergy shots than normal or if it’s still travel sleep debt or if I’m coming down with something. So I won’t do a new lesson tonight.

No lesson on Tuesday: I hadn’t done nearly as much Tai Chi as normal over the previous two weeks, so I figured I should just punt on that for another couple of weeks.

Wednesday: 15m Enquiry 2 and 30m Calm Abiding; I should do that latter one more, it really is a good practice. (Hopefully I actually will, I’ve added it to my list in an app that I’m writing to, among other things, remind me of stuff like that!) And I attended Rick’s Zoom class; mostly pretty familiar stuff, but there was one exercise I hadn’t seen before.

Thursday: I eviewed Sweep and Kick from the 37 Form. I went through the 37 form once, the Chen sword weapon forms, and the Chen Lao Jia 1/2 first and second form. I think I need to work more on bones up, flesh down (I think doing that wrong is hurting my Spleen Qi and leading to fatigue); I did 35 minutes of Wu Ji / Coiling Snake today with that in mind, and 65 minutes of Dantian Gong + Qi Thickening (with the extra five minutes being trying to do the extra bit that Rick showed us yesterday), and that all went quite well.

Friday: I followed along with the waterfall stretch video, and did 10m Enquiry 2, 15m Balancing Upper and Lower, and 20m Wu Ji. And then I spent 50m going through the Being Present / Ming Men exercise from a recent Zoom class, but from my notes instead of following the video.

Saturday: 30m Advanced Dantian Gong. I attended my regular Chen class; I led Silk Reeling at the start, that was pleasant enough, though I really do do things more slowly than my classmates. And I did 30m of Dragon 2.

Sunday: I did 15m Dragon 1, and 75m push hands; I didn’t get to push with my favorite person, but I learned some stuff from the other two people I pushed with, so that’s okay. And I did 40m of Water Hui Chun (again with trying to stretch out a bit more), it felt good.

Monday: Talking with my TCM doctor; he’s convincing me that I should sink less to my feet, that right now I should focus on lifting my head and having everything fall off of that in a relaxed way, to avoid too much internal compression / stress. (Which relates to what I talked about in the Thursday section.) I did the Du Stretch, and then 45m Wu Ji, focusing on having everything fall off of my head. Which took some playing around at first, but I think I ended up some place plausible; interestingly, I simultaneously felt like I was floating on my feet but also, as the stand went on, that there was a pretty strong downward pressure on my feet anyways! (Not sure what my doctor would think about that.) And then, 30 minutes in, my body started expanding internally; I don’t normally get Qi building that way so early, so that seemed like a good sign too. But, once the expansion happened and I started feeling puffy, I honestly couldn’t tell if I was hanging off of my head or not, my body wasn’t loose in the right way. Anyways, I think that was a good experiment; and then I did 40m of Dantian Gong after that.

Tuesday: I went through the Chen sword forms (I’m still holding off on the pole while my left middle finger heals); the 37 form, with some Strengthening the Jin Line mixed in; and the Chen Xinjia first form. And I followed along with the recording of Rick’s March 14 Zoom class. And then I did 25m Wu Ji / Coiling Snake and 10m Enquiry 2.

The Tuesday lesson was Enquiry 2 (Nei Gong). Typing that reminds me that I haven’t actually done any of that over the last week, I should fix that…

Wednesday: 50m of relaxing and connecting to sink, i.e. trying to do the exercise from Rick’s February Zoom classes by following my notes instead of the video. I rewatched the video for The Subtle Body; hope I’m getting the Yang Qi part right, I’m less sure about the Yin Qi part.

Thursday: I went through the Chen sword forms, and did a decently slow 37 form in a Continual Jin direction. 25m Dragon 1, 1h Dantian Gong + thickening. And I reviewed the Hunyuan 48 in the evening.

Friday: 20m Wu Ji, 50m Microcomic Orbit attempt. Not enough juice, but good to be trying again. (Hmm, I should ramp my Wu Ji back up…)

Saturday: 30m Advanced Dantian Gong (yay for not having acupuncture in the weekends). My regular Saturday Chen class. And I went through all four Dragons.

Sunday: 90m push hands. 40m Water Hui Chun.

Monday: Du Stretch; 40m Earth Hui Chun.

Tuesday: I tried doing the spear but it was a bad idea; I should get some padding on the finger that’s messed up. I did a decently slow 37 form, and I went through the Xin Jia first form trying (but only spottily succeeding) to pay attention to my feet. I did 45m Wu Ji; was thinking of going an hour but that seemed like it might be a bit too much stress on my system. (Which worries me a bit, hopefully once I get back to doing it more then that’ll get better?) And 40m Dantian Gong.

A random thought: I should stretch more before doing Nei Gong, I’ve been slacking off on that.

And I’m going to skip doing a lesson tonight: I’ve done an unusually small amount of Tai Chi over the last couple of weeks, so I don’t think I should move on there yet.

The Tuesday lesson was a Tai Chi one, on Strengthening the Jin Line. Seems pretty interesting, though I need to put more time on Continual Jin first.

Wednesday: My feet were a bit achy today, as were my knees; maybe related to the walking yesterday? Not so worried about the feet, though having knees that hurt isn’t great. Still, things weren’t bad enough to make me want to really avoid standing work, so I did 30m of Wu Ji as well as 40m DTG.

Thursday: Acupuncture ended up giving me a leg cramp today, so I didn’t do any Tai Chi or standing work; I just did 20m sleepy Enquiry 1, 30m DTG. And, looking ahead, the acupuncture made my big toe feel bruised on Friday and Saturday, though not in a way that really stopped me from doing anything.

Friday: 25m Wu Ji + Coiling Snake; 40m Kidney Hui Chun. It felt good, I might have done more stuff if I hadn’t mismanaged my time this afternoon.

Saturday: I had my regular Chen class. And this was my last scheduled weekend acupuncture (I’m dialing back from three times a week to twice a week), so hopefully I’ll be able to get my Saturdays back to normal.

Sunday: Monthly Chen class. One finger of my left hand was hurting (I think because of Acupunture on Monday), so I mostly sat out the Guan Dao. And I did 10m of Enquiry 1.

Monday: I did the Du Stretch, and I went through the Ming Men zoom exercise again; I took notes, I’ll try doing this once a week for a while.

Tuesday: A bruised toe again (again caused by acupuncture), so I skipped Tai Chi. But solid Nei Gong: 25m Dragon 2, 1h DTG + thickening.

(Since I’ve mentioned acupuncture a few times above: my current TCM doctor also does something called “tension release” where he actively works to loosen up various spots in my body. Which usually doesn’t cause any more problems than any other form of acupuncture, but it turns out that both my left hand and right foot have unusual amounts of hard material inside, which took a lot of work (and will still require more work, especially on my right foot). So that required quite a lot of poking around in those part of my body, and also probably stuff shifted around more, and those body parts can feel it. But I’m pretty sure the problems are temporary.)

Tuesday lesson was a Nei Gong one, Qi Emission 1. Which is something that I have no interest in trying (and I would be quite surprised if I could get it to work); fortunately, with the IAA rework, I didn’t have to wait a week for the next lesson to unlock, so on Thursday evening I watched Enquiry 1.

Wednesday: I watched the video of Rick’s February 21 Zoom class, and I did 10m of Balancing Upper and Lower.

Thursday: 15m Balancing Upper and Lower; 30m Wu Ji; 30m Dragon 2; 10m Wood Wu Xing. As mentioned above, I watched the Enquiry 1 lesson in the evening. And I also noticed an unusual feeling of heat in my armpits while I was sitting in preparation for that; maybe a side effect of the Balancing Upper and Lower? Or maybe a side effect of the weirdly warm torso stuff that I mentioned in last week’s post.

Friday: 40m Dantian Gong. My Nei Gong time has lessened noticeably recently, and in particular I haven’t been doing Dantian Gong at all frequently; I should get back to that. (But also it would be good if I more often had enough energy that I wanted to practice more; hopefully moving out of Winter and into Spring will help…)

Saturday: My regular Chen Tai Chi class.

Sunday: 1.5h push hands. One thing that came out of that is that the person I learn the most from there (Jason) was talking again about your legs as the source of energy, your waist / Dantian as something that decides how to use the energy and how to direct it, and your arms / hands as something that senses your opponent and where stuff comes out. And he says that I’m too stiff; when I try it his way with his help, it does feel better / more effective. But also I’m working on connecting things up inside, and when I do that, energy goes into my torso and arms in ways that make things feel more full but also less flexible. So I’m genuinely not entirely sure what to do here – how much is me doing things wrong, how much is a difference in styles between how Jason does things and how Lotus Nei Gong does things?

Monday: Du Stretch; 30m Full Moon.

Tuesday: I reviewed Step Back to Ride the Tiger, and did the 37 form and the Chen pole weapon forms. For Nei Gnog, I did 20m Dragon 1, a bit of Balancing Upper and Lower, and 20m of Enquiry 1. And I read an article on Zhan Zhuang, which is I think relevant to what I was thinking about on Sunday; note the bit about the lower body being full / naturally pulled down and the upper body floating. So at first I thought it was saying the same thing as Jason, but thinking about it a bit more, I’m not sure: the upper body floating isn’t clearly related to the upper body being more flexible / directing traffic more. But at any rate both agree that the lower body should be quite full, and I’ve known for a while that I’ve got too much tension in my legs in a way that interferes with that, so for now I should focus on that, I think. In the afternoon, I walked quite a bit, going to and from lunch and a doctor’s appointment, so I practiced trying to soak into my legs a bit more and relax / fill them up; hopefully that helped? And I paid attention to how that was affecting my torso and arms (and my shoulders, too, I was actually feeling stuff there a decent amount); if I relaxed in the right way they did feel more light, but maybe more in a way that was like the Zhan Zhuang article than the discussion from Sunday?

Anyways, interesting week, stuff to work on.

I was visiting my parents for most of this week, and I did very little Nei Gong or Tai Chi while I was there, so not a ton to say.

Tuesday evening: no lesson; I mentioned last week that I did a late Anchoring the Breath, and I also did Shui Gong 2, and I think that one or the other of those (both of which felt quite strong) made it it hard for me to fall asleep.

Wednesday: No Nei Gong. And my sleep was messed up in an unusual way: I went to sleep fine but I woke up at like 5am and just could not get back to sleep. (And I was changing time zones, but in the other direction!)

Thursday: I did a bit of Wood Wu Xing in case that helped with the sleep problems I’d been having. (Feels like it matched the Tuesday problem but not the Wednesday one?) And my sleep was better the rest of the visit.

Friday: Sleep last night was good; I used nose strips for the first time in ages, clearly I should do that more often. I did the Chen Lao Jia first and second forms; it was quite windy outside, otherwise I would have done more. And I did the Du Stretch exercise. (I’ve been sitting down way too much this week, but hopefully that will help a little…)

Saturday: Travel day, I didn’t do any practice.

Sunday: I went to a Tai Chi marathon: I did the Lao Jia first form 6 times, and the Xin Jia first form 4 times. My Xin Jia wasn’t feeling that great and after an hour of Lao Jia and not starting from a super high energy level, I wasn’t really in the mood to focus on the Xin Jia properly; I need to get back to working on it again.

Monday: I went through Damo’s latest Foundations Zoom sessions. (The Being Present videos.) I should do the practice session again, I was half asleep during the first half of that video. Also, when talking to my acupuncturist that day, he was talking about patients who had gotten a lot better after retiring, which made me think that I’m running my life in too organized a way; and having a goal of two hours of Nei Gong a day plus significant amounts of Tai Chi four days a week is a sign of that. Not exactly sure where that leads me, I’ll probably have to write a post on my main blog so that I can think about it meore.

Tuesday: Reviewed Up to Seven Stars. I did a Continual Jin run-through of the 37 form, and a nice slow Xin Jia first form, it went much better than on Sunday. My torso is feeling weirdly warm; not sure if it’s allergies or the effect of the tension release from acupuncture yesterday or from the Zoom class or just the change in outside weather, but if I had to guess, maybe it’s the tension release? (It doesn’t feel super Ming Men localized.) And in the afternoon I did the Du Stretch, and I repeated the practice portion of that Zoom class that I went through yesterday. I got a pretty strong stretch in my spine at the end, and actually now I’m a little less sure that what I’m feeling isn’t Ming Fire related, who knows.

Tuesday lesson was a Taiji one, on Continual Jin. Interesting; I haven’t yet had much time to play with it, but I definitely will.

Wednesday: I attended Rick’s Zoom class, we basically went through the relaxing / internal stretch exercise that we did in the Foundations class. (Not as long, but still a while.) It was good to feel; my body is continuing to feel stretchier inside.

Thursday: I went through the Chen sword weapons, but otherwise I didn’t have time for Tai Chi. In the afternoon I did 25m Dragon 1, I rewatched Wood Wu Xing video, and an extra 10 minutes or so of the exercise after that, and I did 40m of Dantian Gong. And I wached the Taiji Pushing Hands – Opening the Joints / Yao Stretching lesson. (The recent IAA rejigger caused almost all the push hands lesson to be marked as incomplete; all the other ones up through here contained videos that I’d seen, but this one was new.) And I did a bit of Hunyuan 48 review in the evening

Friday: Went through video of Rick’s February 7 Zoom class. This time it was super intense – same stuff as Wednesday, I guess doing it twice in close succession was additive? I felt more pressure in my feet leading to connectivity up my legs and through my body than normal, and I felt more of a stretch in my Huiyin than I basically ever have. So I will certainly want to spend more time doing this; I took some notes on how Rick was guiding us through the process, so hopefully I’ll be able to do a decent job of trying it on my own? (And it would surprise me if he came back to that on future Zoom classes this month; if not, I can always rewatch the first two February videos.)

Saturday: My regular Chen class.

Sunday: An hour and a half of push hands; my main takeaway there was that I should spend more time (both when doing push hands and when going through the form) with my attention in my legs, and then extending up my body). And 25m of Calm Abiding in the afternoon.

Monday: I’m visiting my parents this week, so this was a travel day; I did 30m of attention to breath, but that’s it.

Tuesday: Mostly spending time with my parents (and my brother), though I did do 30m of Anchoring the Breath. It had actually been a while since I’d done that; I noticed that my breathing slowed down and deepened basically as soon as I started this, so I guess the other breath work that I’d been doing has had an effect, even if it’s not retraining my habitual breathing as much as I’d like. And the exercise got decently intense at the end.

No lesson today, since I’m visiting my parents.