I finally restarted the regular Nei Gong program last week. Pretty interesting session: it was on mobilizing the Qi using Compressing the Pearl. So you do the exercise some normally, then some compressing down with your Lao Gong stretched and then actively pulling Qi up on the way up, and then some with the active compression but just opening on the way up and letting the rebound of the compressed Qi help you up. And, after doing it for a couple of days, that got pretty surprising: on the third part, it literally felt that my arms were moving without any effort on my side when going up. I don’t know that I’m actively feeling Qi moving (though I do feel an active compression on the way down), but whatever the effect, it was pretty distinctive.

And I had quite good practices on Wednesday and Friday morning; as I mentioned last week, I decided to experiment with eating first, and then I was a little tired / unmotivated, so I goofed off for a while. At first, I was feeling annoyed with myself, but when I finally got going at 11am, I realized that I actually was feeling a lot less tired than I had been, and I got in two solid hours of practice after that on Wednesday. Friday wasn’t quite as good, more like an hour and a half, but still, a pretty solid practice. I didn’t get as strong an effect in my Dantian as I had sometimes a few months back, but still, good to be back in practice.

On Saturday morning, I had a quite good Ting exercise practice; and it felt like the effects of that carried on into Tai Chi class that afternoon, I was feeling stuff inside me more strongly than normal.

Also, this week, I felt like I was paying attention to things inside the body more at random times during the day, which seems like a good evolution. And I think I was maybe getting better at sinking my tailbone when I was practicing?

So, a good week. Though I think this week is going to be a lot worse: I’m feeling stressed because of some home maintenance problems. I’m getting things in motion to hopefully begin resolving it, but I think it’ll be a while…

Pretty good week? I practiced well over lunch on the three work days; I didn’t do a ton of practice on my days off, but some, and in general things feel pretty good. (And the days off were productive in non-Nei Gong ways, that’s important too!) And my skin is feeling pretty strongly connected, I’m getting a kind of visceral understanding of the “wetsuit” concept that Damo talks about.

I missed two weeks of Tai Chi, but I mentioned that to my teacher, and he just did review this past Saturday in the Xinjia portion. He actually went over stuff from right before I went away, so hopefully he’ll review the next bit this weekend, because it seemed like the class had done Part the Wild Horse’s Mane, which I mostly know but not completely.

As mentioned last time, I ended up not restarting the regular Nei Gong course last week, but one of the things I took care of was getting my internet fixed (my cable modem went bad, it turned out), so I can do that after I finish writing this.

Speaking of weekday practice, I’d been trying to practice Nei Gong after taking a shower on my days off, before eating breakfast, because I’m often a little sleepier after eating. But, honestly, that hasn’t been great, for a few reasons. One is that sometimes I’m hungry enough to feel a little weak / distracted, which is a downside. Another is that I’m not doing a great job of practicing immediately instead of goofing off and reading or something for a bit; I can work on that, but still, not the best idea? And the third is that I miss going to Maison Alyzée and getting a baguette for breakfast: I used to do that back when I was working from home, but now that I’m going into the office, I can’t do that. So I think I’m going to experiment with going for a walk, grabbing a baguette, and having a light breakfast before doing my morning Nei Gong; hopefully that will work out well enough, at least not reducing my amount of Nei Gong practice?

No post last week: I was out of town (mostly on vacation) for the last two weeks, and I didn’t feel like writing up a post in the middle of vacation. Especially since I wasn’t doing quite as much Nei Gong / Tai Chi as normal, so I figured I didn’t have so much to talk about.

I did practice most days; not as much as normal, no Tai Chi weapons forms, and no long practice sessions, but hopefully enough to not backslide too much? The one unusual thing I did was walk past a church, notice that it had a labyrinth outside, and then spend maybe 35 minutes slowly walking in and back out of that.

Maybe because of that, one thing I’m wondering about now is whether I’m sinking appropriately when walking. There’s this tension between keeping my head up and hence my spine extended, while still having my pelvis sink; I feel like these days maybe I’m having the upward stretch affect my legs too much? Something to work on.

Because of plane problems, I missed two Tai Chi Saturday classes instead of just one; hopefully that won’t mess up my plans to learn the Xin Jia first form too much. And because of internet problems, I didn’t write this post yesterday and I didn’t start back up on the regular Nei Gong class (which I was planning to do now that I’ve finished the Dragons) videos yesterday, either; and I’m tired enough today that I’m not going to do the Nei Gong video today either, I’ll just wait until next week to start. Though I did get good lunchtime practice on Monday and Tuesday, going through the full Dantian Gong over the course of those two days; because of Delta, the office is almost empty, so I don’t have any hopes of finding people to play board games with over lunch, which is good for my Nei Gong at least.

Done with the Dragons, yay. Definitely glad that I did that; even setting aside potential energetic benefits, it’s definitely been opening up my back, I feel stuff moving around in there. And I do think there’s something going on energetically in my spine, too; I’m finding myself just spending more time in the standing parts of the exercise, because I feel these little unexpected sensations continuing to pop up. This is something that the Lotus Nei Gong folks talk about: it’s okay to do Wu Ji for longer than normal after another exercise if you feel stuff moving around in response to that exercise! But I think I’ve literally never felt that before: not that I don’t feel stuff in Wu Ji, it’s just not in response to an exercise. But Wu Ji (or actually the main standing exercise here is a different one, with your feet close together, I think it’s called Taiyi standing?) definitely has a different feel after you’ve been twisting and opening up your spine.

I still need to get back into longer practice sessions; kind of doing the minimum too many days. Though this week and next week won’t be the times for that, since we’re visiting relatives this week and I’ll be in Ohio next week. And once I get back from that, I’ll get started on arranging for having the carpets removed in our bedroom, hopefully that will give me noticeably more energy.

The one other new thing I’ve done a couple of times now is this version of a walking exercise where you’re paying attention to your environment; I’ve been doing it after my allergy appointments, since they’re on the Stanford campus in a place right next to some forested bits, so I can just wander over there. Nothing particular to report on that yet; and maybe it’s not the best idea to do Nei Gong right after an allergy shot…

In Tai Chi, I’m focusing on learning the second half of the Xin Jia first form; I think I now basically know what’s going on from the first Gao Tan Ma through the Forward / Backward Trick? So that’s progress; hopefully I’ll be able to continue that progress through the end of the form. I’ll be out this week, which is too bad but I think I’m pretty close on Part the Wild Horse’s Mane: I basically know what to do there, there’s just some details I need to memorize. So if they do that this week, I should still be able to catch up okay.