Nei Gong Notes, January 5, 2021

Damo’s lesson this week was on eating. Interesting enough, but I don’t think it’ll particularly change my behavior at all; food is a group thing, and nothing I saw made me want to lobby for changes in what we eat.

Two extra days off again, which was kind of interesting; I really don’t manage to do as much Nei Gong as I’d like on Saturdays or Sundays, because of the habits around how we spend our weekend mornings, whereas Thursday and Friday were good days, even though I had to do a little extra napping / sleeping in so I didn’t feel tired. I did 40 minutes of Wu Ji on one of them, and in retrospect I wish I’d gone for 45 minutes, I wasn’t so exhausted or anything.

That was actually a kind of surprising Wu Ji session, because my legs weren’t happy from fairly early on. Normally, when that happens, I don’t last much longer, but this time, I kept on going for another 25 minutes or so. So maybe my stance and levels of habitual tension and what not have changed in such a way that, even though I’m standing lower and my legs notice that, the parts of my legs that are getting stressed are ones that have more of a reserve?

The down side is that my energy level was low enough over the weekend that I didn’t manage a second long session. And the other downside is that my legs are still feeling like they’ve been stressed a bit; though that’s probably as much upside as downside, because that’s how muscles adapt. I also still don’t feel like my stance is quite right in the shorter sessions: things get into place on the longer sessions in a way that I haven’t really learned to capture.

The other good thing this week is that I’m starting to get a better feel for an imbalance in my body: I’ve known for a while that my Wu Ji is tilted in a way that I can fix by relaxing my right kua, but now I’m realizing that that imbalance is present even when I’m basically standing straight up, and that’s helping me feel it better. So, still something I have to actively work on, but at least now I’m starting to be able to feel it better instead of depending on the mirror, which should help?