Nei Gong Notes, December 8, 2020

This week’s lesson from Damo’s course was on the Golden Orb Dao Yin; we’d seen a seated version of it very early on (maybe in the first month of the course, even), but this time we were seeing it standing, and of course with half a year of practice under our belt. I’d seen it briefly in a Saturday class, but it was good to see the lesson on it, too; I don’t know that I’ll do it frequently, but I enjoyed doing it this week, and it seems like a reasonable thing to keep in the mix every few days.

One thing that Damo warned about is to not do Dao Yins when you’re tired; fortunately, last week, my sleep was better than it had been in a while, so I got in several good practice sessions. Unfortunately, it’s been lousy yesterday and today; I have a hypothesis why (boo dust mites), so hopefully I’ll be able to fix it, we’ll see.

Some of the good practice sessions were two 30-minute Wu Ji sessions, one during the Saturday class and one the next day. And one thing I noticed earlier in the week was that I probably wasn’t turning in my feet quite enough, and when I turned them in more, that caused my lower back / Ming Men to spread horizontally. And relaxing into that seemed like an interesting thing to do, so I’ve been working on that; I feel like it’s been helping my sinking and relaxing a noticeable amount, so hopefully sticking with that will help.

Also, when I’ve been walking around the neighborhood this week, my back has been feeling interesting; sometimes just a pleasant tingling, and one day my upper back felt actively warm. So hopefully that’s a sign that something good is happening, that things are opening up.

So, I want to keep this up, and also experiment with longer Wu Ji sessions; hopefully I’ll be able to get enough sleep that I can do 30 minute or longer sessions a couple of times a week, and extend the duration? I don’t have enough time to do that every day, given my work schedule and that I also want to do Dantian Gong a couple of times a week, go through the whole Ji Ben Qi Gong (which I’m now doing in two groups of four instead of four groups of two), and some other miscellaneous stuff (maybe Thickening the Qi, maybe Wu Xing Qi Gong) as well.

In terms of Tai Chi, we’re now at a serious enough COVID level that I don’t feel comfortable going to classes any more. I practiced the first form a few times on Saturday, though, but I forgot to do weapons / Xin Jia / second form practice on Sunday; oops. And I’ve been maintaining a habit recently of going through the full Silk Reeling set twice a week during work meetings; that’s definitely felt good too.