Tai Chi Notes, December 31, 2019

I’d said last week that I was sticking with my meditation / Wu Ji even though I had a bit of a cold; might have been a mistake, because on Wednesday evening (?) the back of my knees were aching, which I think is supposed to be a sign of my Jing being depleted. So I stopped the Wu Ji for a few days.

Also, my neck and spine were aching. Might have been the lack of exercise, but I also think it might have been me trying to untilt my neck, and potentially accidentally throwing other stuff out of whack because of that? If that’s the case, then the only hypothesis I had there is that I’m vaguely wondering now if my left leg might be ever so slightly shorter than my right leg; looks that way when I sit down with them stretched out, but I don’t know if my pelvis is straight or not when I do that, and I haven’t pulled out measuring tape. It would explain why I feel sometimes like I’m landing a little heavy on my right leg when walking, though…

I was feeling better again by Saturday, so I started up the Wu Ji again, and went to Tai Chi class like normal; and one big surprise there was how good Silk Reeling felt. Lots of energy moving around, which, honestly, surprised me a little since I’d been skipping other practicing the second half of the week, so I would expect my internal energy level to be low? Maybe it was my body readjusting itself and feeling better as a result, with the energy being able to flow more. Certainly the aches basically disappeared after that.

One pointer from doing the form in class: when moving the left after the sort of reverse Oblique Posture in Diagonal Body-Stroke Fist, I should brush my knee with my left hand, not just put it straight on my waist. Also, I noticed while doing the form that I can move energy to my feet much more easily than I could have a few months back; not yet feeling the sort of stickiness or extra gravity that I sometimes see described, but I’ll keep on working on it; does help a little in keeping my balance, just not dramatically so.

It was raining on Sunday so I didn’t practice Tai Chi outside, but I did a full round of Silk Reeling in addition to my regular Sunday Lotus Nei Gong stuff, and that did feel good.

I was on vacation today, and I decided that I felt like spending a fair amount of it doing Nei Gong and Tai Chi. So I did 30 minutes of seated meditation, some stretching, 30 minutes of Wu Ji, and the Five Animal Frolics; I hadn’t consistently been doing my current Tuesday / Thursday / Sunday target of 30 minutes of Wu Ji for a while, but I’m glad I did today, because I was very surprised when it ended, I wasn’t sure I’d even been going for 20 minutes at that point. And it wasn’t raining and hadn’t been for a couple of days, so I did some Tai Chi outside; the ground was pretty muddy, though, so I only went through the first form once. But I went through the Jian form a few times, because I need to solidify that. (I think we’re maybe two thirds of the way through it on Saturdays, hopefully I’ll be able to learn the whole thing?) One thing I’d been feeling unhappy with was that I felt I was using my arm too much while thrusting; but I found that I could keep my attention more in my Dantian during the form, and that felt better. So I’ll keep on experimenting with that.

Then, at the end of the afternoon, I had some more time, so I decided that things had been going well enough that I’d do a second Wu Ji session, so I put in another 30 minutes. And I’m glad I did; halfway through, I sort of relaxed into a feeling in the lower half of my body, and I got a hard-to-describe tingling sensation through large parts of my body, especially the lower half. And also the lower half was feeling relatively full in general, almost like there was something in my body filling my legs and coming up to a little above my tailbone; and, even weirder, my vision felt less dark even though my eyes were closed, with a feeling of light or something coming from the lower part of my body. (I didn’t actually turn my head down and look, I should try that next time!) So it definitely felt different from just having 60 minutes spread out over multiple days; I won’t say that it was a breakthrough (and, in particular, I still feel like my Live Gate is closed off, which is the next change I’m hoping for, the feeling of fullness definitely stopped below that), but it also feels like my body is getting in shape to make progress? If nothing else, it sure was interesting…