Tai Chi Notes, April 8, 2020

I’m getting back into practice. Not so much Tai Chi: I was going to go through a few forms this weekend, then I noticed it was going to rain soon so I headed outside, then halfway through my first time through the form it started to rain pretty hard. But hey, once is better than none. And actually I’ve been managing to go through the smaller Silk Reeling set most workdays: if there’s a meeting that I don’t need to spend much time talking in, then I do that while listening.

And I’m getting back into Wu Ji: still need to build up my stamina (more mental stamina than physical stamina), but I’m usually managing 15 minutes without too much trouble now, hopefully I’ll manage 20 minutes tomorrow. And hopefully I’ll push beyond that; I’m hoping that I can use this enforced time at home as a reason to get closer to 30 minutes a day. Still haven’t done any Ji Ben Qi Gong or Animal Frolics since my recent break, though.

I had an interesting time doing seated meditation on Sunday; my start-of-the day sitting got cut off at 10 minutes or so, so I did another 15 minutes later, and that 15 minutes was surprisingly intense (in a sinky way, if I remember correctly), much more so than 15 minutes of meditation normally is. Heck, it was probably more intense than 25 minutes of meditation normally is. Not sure if it was just random or if two short sessions is somehow more effective than one longer one?

Damo launched his Internal Arts Academy. I’ve signed up for that, and I’m going to put in regular time; probably not as good as having regular in-person lessons (or at least regular in-person lessons with a good teacher), but I’m sure I’ll get a lot out of it. Means I’ll be spending more time in my evenings on Nei Gong stuff (and probably blogging less), but I think that’s the right choice for me now.

Interesting lecture on perception from a Vipassana point of view. It talks about how, at some point, you start directly perceiving all sorts of things as vibrating; I wonder if that’s related to the Chinese point of view that Jing, Qi, and Shen are all vibrations (at different frequencies)?