A wet week, with extra vacation days because of Christmas. I used the wetness as an excuse to not do Tai Chi much, and Christmas was on Saturday so no Tai Chi class, though I did at least do the exercises I’ve learned in Damo’s Tai Chi course most days I had off. In terms of Nei Gong, I used the holiday (plus not feeling 100%, maybe because of allergy experiments) as an excuse to not do as much Nei Gong as I could, but I did put in two and a half hours of practice on Monday, so it all balanced out to a pretty normal practice week. Nothing huge to report there, though when I did the exercise about standing and concentrating Qi in your Dantian, I felt a mild but, I think, real bouncing around in there. I’m going to try to get in the habit of doing that one twice a week to maintain it; if it gets stronger, then I’ll rewatch the second and third lessons for that one.

Another theoretical lesson in Damo’s course; on Feelings, nothing particular to report there.

Good week, now that we’re not a construction zone any more. Damo’s Nei Gong course continued with the Bellows Breathing / Hong mantra exercise, this time telling you to use the Bao Yuan mudra and giving more pointers on that mudra. Not much new in that mudra, though he did point out that you should spread open your Lao Gong while holding the mudra; not the most natural thing to do, I’ll have to work on that.

Anyways, it was good to be given more time to keep on working on that combo; I’m still not particularly good at that mantra, I could use extra practice. (The latest thing I want to try: not going so low in the pitch, staying closer to the middle of my range.) Also, he nudged us to keep up that exercise for longer, an hour or even two, alternating between Bellows Breathing and Hong as the mood took us. And I did put in a couple of hour-long sessions; I did the exercise for about 45 minutes but then I just felt like sitting for a bit, and it was another 15 minutes before I felt like I was done with that. I’ll want to keep all of that up this week; this week is another theory week, so I won’t have any new exercise to practice.

And on Wednesday I had a section that was probably around two and a half hours; I went through the full seated five elements exercise that I’d been doing, and I also did the standing exercise from the end of year one about gathering bouncy bits in your Dantian. Neither of those had me feeling stuff the way I have in the past; I’m chalking that down to not having practiced so much the previous couple of weeks and needing to get back into shape. And on Friday I had a good two hour session; I tried doing the whole standing Dantian Gong in a single session, and while I didn’t manage all of that, I did make it through 8 of the 10 exercises, whereas the most I’ve done before is 6. (Or maybe 7 once?) And my session on Sunday morning was a little over an hour and a half, which is longer than I normally manage on that day.

In Damo’s Tai Chi course, he covered Tai Yi standing; it’s a way of standing with your feet together, bringing attention to your spine. I’d seen a version of that before in the Nei Gong course, as part of the Dragon Dao Yin; significant differences here, though. I haven’t practiced it much yet, I’ll need to give it another week, and probably watch the video again.

In general, I didn’t do much Tai Chi this past week; I think it was raining on Wednesday, and on Friday afternoon, I got pulled into a work escalation, so I didn’t get to practice Tai Chi then either. And on Saturday, Tony was out, so it was a review day in class.

As expected, not much practice this week, because of the house construction; I kept up a minimal level of daily practice, but I didn’t have any long sessions, and I didn’t start any new lessons in either the Nei Gong or the Tai Chi course.

We had both Saturday and Sunday Tai Chi this week; but we were recording a video for some special celebration, so that ate into a fair amount of time on Saturday and a bit of time on Sunday. We did start the actual spear form on Saturday (we’d been doing just the isolated full marshal until then); the start of that form is a little odd. And on Sunday, we did go a little bit farther in Xin Jia, so now I’m more solid with the bit right after the second Gao Tan Ma; not sure if it’s one or two sessions left until we’re completely done, but hopefully in a couple of months we’ll be done? And it looks like they’re almost done with the Double Dao; one more month of that, but probably in February I’ll start learning the Guan Dao.

Mostly a write-off week: we’re having work on our house done that means that I’m home all day with lots of noise in the background and with my usual practice locations occupied, and on Thursday I got my booster shot, which mostly knocked me out on Friday and had me tentative on Saturday. I was worried that I’d backslide, but fortunately, my Dantian continued to feel a little active when I was paying attention to it, so I think I’m doing okay? And I eased back into action yesterday and today, I had a solid Dantian Gong session over lunch today in particular. At any rate, I’m not planning to move onto new lessons this week, I’ll just repeat the previous week.

Anyways, this week’s lesson in the Nei Gong course was a lecture on Memory Distortion; didn’t make a big impression, and I didn’t do my normal re-listen yet, so it’s good that I’m not moving on! In Damo’s Tai Chi course, there was a sort of silk-reeling-ish exercise, loosening your joints but also getting energy into and back out of your legs; that was pretty interesting. (So actually I think maybe it’s not that much like silk reeling? I don’t want to map everything to Chen Tai Ji, that will cut me off from some of what I’m trying to learn by taking that course.) And I’m getting better at doing the Tai Chi version of Wu Ji, though I’ll certainly want to keep on plugging away at that.

As for the Saturday Tai Chi course, we didn’t do anything new, but Tony gave us lots of feedback for the start of the Xin Jia first form. Lots of little things that I should work on there…

One thing that I forgot to mention last week: I watched a video from Damo on Ting in meditation, and one thing he talked about there was doing the Ting via your breath instead of your senses; interesting thing to try, it’s been pretty intense once or twice when I did try it.