Nei Gong Notes, June 1, 2021

Decent week, maybe even a pretty good one? I’m still dealing with my energy levels on my days off, but I’m getting some practice done there while also not worrying too much when “some practice” doesn’t mean “4 hours of Nei Gong and 2 hours of Tai Chi”. And I had an extra day off this week because of Memorial Day; slept in quite a bit, which helped with my energy level for the start-of-day practice, and then I mostly goofed off the rest of the day, which is also appropriate for a holiday!

Though I did make sure to do a round of silk reeling – I’d skipped that the previous week, and then my back wasn’t feeling good, so I have to remember: always do silk reeling at least twice a week, I guess that holds even when I’m doing Tai Chi more days than I had been.

And, for whatever reason (the extra Nei Gong from the days off? the silk reeling), today’s Nei Gong practice was kind of intense: not a great sleep day, so all I did in the middle of the day was the second half of the Ji Ben, but my body was feeling it inside much more than normal, especially on the fifth and sixth exercises. So that was nice, good to feel that I’m making progress.

And I’m making progress with the dragons, too; now I know the stepping parts of all four, and the opening and closing exercises. And the stepping on the first dragon feels pretty smooth most of the time; I’m definitely improving on the third one as well, it’s not quite as good but it’s getting closer. So I’m getting the foot movements down; and it might also be the case that focusing more on having my feet close to a straight line on those two helps? And the fourth dragon is going fine, it’s not as hard, and it’s interesting to try to feel a little off balance. Tonight I’ll start working on the other parts of things, it’ll be interesting to see what the full exercises are like.

Not much to report on the Tai Chi front; basically going well, and I continue to think that I want to work on my Jian in particular. I think at least I’m starting to get a little better at Sweeping the Hall Leg in the second form, I’m getting crisper about shifting my balance and that’s making a difference.