Nei Gong Notes, December 22, 2020

This week’s lesson was labeled as part 2 of Drawing Down Heaven, but it turned out to be a seated exercise focusing on a mudra from that Dao Yin, where you have your hands together in a sort of prayer position, stretching your middle finger up. Which turned out to be a rather interesting exercise: it really does feel different inside your body with that finger stretched rather than relaxed (it’s supposed to help you feel your Central Channel), especially when I had my hands up in front of my forehead. By the end of the exercise, I’d feel a fairly persistent sensation in the back of the middle of my head and a tickling in my Bai Hui.

Good week of practice in general. Did the regular stuff over lunch, and every afternoon (or maybe almost every afternoon) I did a little bit extra at the end of the day, some back stretches or a Dao Yin or something. Not much to say about the Saturday class this week, other than that I’m sticking to my plan of pausing those for a while, while I build up my strength and/or get my sleep a little more under control.

And, speaking of building up strength, I was thinking I’d do 35 minutes of Wu Ji on Sunday (and try 40 next week), but it was going well, so I ended up going for 40 minutes. Felt pretty good, too, like my bones were kind of setting itself into a frame-like structure with the help of my tendons or something, as opposed to having my muscles do all the work; hopefully that’s a sign of progress and I’ll be able to get that feeling more often? Not sure that I was sinking quite as much as I do during the Saturday classes, but it still felt like I was doing a decent job with that, too.

And I didn’t do a huge amount of Tai Chi but I did some on both Saturday and Sunday (as well as Silk Reeling twice during the week), enough to make me feel like I’m holding steady enough with that. Still not sure what was going on with the back annoyance fro the start of the week, but that’s gotten better again.