Nei Gong Notes, August 31, 2021

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…