Nei Gong Notes, July 20, 2021

At first I was thinking this week wasn’t going very well for Nei Gong – I had to work on Wednesday, my practice on Friday morning wasn’t as good as normal. And, thinking about it, in general there have been way too many days where I do 25 minutes of sitting in the morning and then go through the Dragons in the late afternoon; that’s not nothing, but it’s also worse than I’d been doing on days when I’d been working at home regularly. And, when I start going back through the Nei Gong course, it’ll be hard to find time to regularly practice new stuff; of course, I won’t have to practice the Dragons every day then because the Dragons won’t be the new thing that I’m learning, but still.

So I should practice over lunch at work more reliably; but I’m also thinking that, on days off, I should practice a second time in the morning? (Or maybe in the early afternoon, right before lunch.) If I were doing two two hour practices, then one in the morning and one in the afternoon would make sense; but, in practice, I’m always too tired in the afternoon to do a second long practice. So I should figure out if I’m more awake before lunch and, if so, practice then.

Though, having said that, yesterday and today went well. Yesterday I was feeling pretty tired, but I had free time over lunch, and I figured I had the energy to do some Ji Ben Qi Gong; and, actually, I felt a little more awake the rest of the day? Probably coincidence rather than the Qi Gong helping, but still, I wouldn’t complain. And today I was feeling awake all day, and I got in a good Dantian Gong session over lunch, yay.

On Saturday, I asked my Tai Chi teacher about the first Jin Gang; it turns out that, after hooking your opponent with your leg, you should continue turning even further to your right after lowering your leg. (But you should face forward the whole time, because that’s where your opponent mostly is.)

I’m done with the review videos for the first two Dragons; a few things I needed to correct from the first one, though I had the second one basically correct. I’ll do the third one tonight; probably the fourth one on Thursday, though I’m not completely sure since my parents are in town. And then I guess I’ll start back on the Nei Gong course? Though I might wait a bit, since I’ll be on vacation the week after next. Also, I’ll read the Dragon book one more time, this time actually paying attention to the description of the forms, to see if I can pick up more pointers.