Nei Gong Notes, November 17, 2020

One thing I forgot to mention last week: just as you’re supposed to work on noticing when you fall asleep, you’re also supposed to notice when you wake up. Still no real progress on the former, but I actually was, I think, completely successful on the latter once: I thought “I just woke up” right when I woke up and could actually trace the feelings in my mind back to right before I woke up, so I did really feel like I was aware of the transition itself.

Anyways, sleep-wise, this week hasn’t been good. (Though last night was just fine, at least.) Still don’t really know what’s going on there; I think it’s allergy side effects, but I’m not completely sure. So I didn’t get quite as much practice done this week, but still, I did something every day.

On which note, I guess I might as well write down my regular practice routine. 20 minutes of seated meditation in the morning; these days I’m doing the Calm-Abiding exercise. Which is super interesting: not currently getting the blissed-out state that I sometimes got with it, but it feels good, and my Dantian is buzzing, with some of the latter continuing (mildly, admittedly) into the rest of the day. So I’m really liking that, and feeling that it’s useful; on days when I have more time I’m spending more than 20 minutes on it.

Then, over lunch, I do standing work. Some stretching, some Wu Ji, something else. I go through the Ji Ben Qi Gong over the course of the week, two at a time; I try to do Thickening the Qi once, and I try to do Dantian Gong once (split over two days). And sometimes I do the Wu Xing.

If I’m tired, the stretching is short, I do 15 or even 10 minutes of Wu Ji plus some Ji Ben; 25 minutes or so in total. If I had a good night’s sleep, I do the Dantian Gong, because it’s the most work; unfortunately, this last week, I only managed to do half the Dantian Gong, because I just wasn’t up for it other days. Which is too bad, that exercise really is useful, if I were more awake I’d try to go through it twice a week instead of once (and twice for Thickening the Qi too), but that’s not where I’m at right now.

And, if work gets done reasonably early, then I’ll spend 15 minutes or so doing some back stuff.

Also, recently I’ve been getting more disciplined about going through Silk Reeling during work meetings, doing that twice a week; that feels good, I really think it’s helping. And it helps me pay attention in meetings, too, it’s great for meetings where I don’t have to talk but I do want to listen, because it means I can’t switch over to Slack or pull out my iPad or whatever.

Anyways, enough about the general practice routine, back to this week. Sleepy, but I kept going, and seated meditation and Silk Reeling were actively good. This week’s lesson in Damo’s course was around gratitude; I didn’t find as much time to practice that as I should have, probably because it doesn’t fit quite so neatly into either seated meditation or into standing work. So I guess I should do that a little more this week? Though temperamentally I’m not feeling super drawn to it. (Maybe that’s a sign I need to practice it more…)

In the Saturday Nei Gong class, in the Wu Ji at the start, I ended up feeling significantly more pressurized on the soles of my feet than I normally did. So I was relaxing better, or something, I should try to build on that? I’m trying to bring that back to my Wu Ji practice in general, in particular working on relaxing my diaphragm, relaxing my kua, and relaxing my pelvis; I feel like I’m getting better but am still feeling things out, and I haven’t yet repeated that pressurized feeling. It might be starting to help with my leaning, though.

As to Tai Chi, we started the Lao Jia Dao this week. And I did get in a decent practice on Sunday. Not so much the Lao Jia first form, but practicing the stuff that’s newer that I need to solidify: the Lao Jia second form, the Xin Jia first form, and the Jian. Though Santa Clara County’s COVID restrictions have gone up again, so I don’t know if we’ll be able to keep on doing Tai Chi in the group in the park, we’ll see…