Nei Gong Notes, March 16, 2021

A good amount of practice this week: on multiple days I did meditation in the morning, Dantian Gong plus something else over lunch, and yet another thing at the end of the day. And I did go through the full Dantian Gong set twice standing and twice sitting over the course of the week, which is my goal.

Not that I’m seeing a lot of effects of that Dantian Gong work; in particular, still feeling nothing interesting during Jing Gong. But that will come eventually, I hope? And, in a bit of a bummer, I didn’t have a repeat of something interesting happening while doing Song Breathing: both times I did that this week, I was back to having it be pleasant but not leading to any unusual relaxation.

I’m trying to work on my relaxation during Wu Ji more: I think I’d been tensing slightly in my kua area, holding myself up too much. So I’m trying to find a connected feeling there and, I think, mostly being successful at that?

This week’s lesson in Damo’s class was on another Shui Gong practice. Which I tried to do, but I’m actually not sure if I managed to go through the entire new practice a single time this week, I kept on falling asleep. Which isn’t the worst thing to have happen, admittedly! Anyways, I think I’ll keep those up, probably alternating nights between Shui Gong 1 and Shui Gong 2.

Tony looked at my form on Saturday; he actually said the upper half of my body looked pretty good, but I needed to sink more, so he told me to practice relaxing and sinking at the end of moves. And I practiced Tai Chi today over lunch, and focused on that, and wow, things really feel different for me: I feel a lot heavier, with a feeling of that heaviness going down into the ground. So if I can keep that up, I think that’ll make a big difference; and hopefully it will dovetail well with what I’m working on in my Wu Ji.

Also I think I just barely saw enough of the Lao Jia Dao form last Saturday and this Saturday to have that back in my head; I’ll add that to my weekly practice routine, so hopefully it will stay there. And, looking for videos online, I found a playlist of Chen Qingzhou videos that included a Dao form, as well as two recordings of the Jian form (one of which I’d seen but one of which was new to me), one of the spear, and one of the Guan Dao. So that’s very useful; and, watching those Jian forms, I think I might have my legs switched when walking back in a few places.

There was Sunday Tai Chi as well this week; not much to report, though I think I’ll start trying to get better at Sweeping the Hall Leg, instead of just doing the high version.