This week’s lesson was on Mixing Kan and Li. It’s pretty interesting, moving Qi a bit higher in your abdomen and then letting it sink back down. And that gave me a much more concrete appreciation for what thickening the Qi means than previous exercises: there was a real tangible feel to it when it was thick, it was moving at its own velocity. And, some days, when I did the exercise, I felt like my Dantian wasn’t doing great to start and I had a hard time feeling the Ming line, and then usually the exercise kind of petered out after a few minutes.

So Qi is starting to feel more concrete? Or at least that kind of Qi? I was actually even feeling it move around this morning when I was just sitting and breathing: I’m used to feeling a certain sensation sink, but it felt a lot more concrete / substantial this time, like there was a substance instead of just a feeling. So hopefully I’m building things up in a way that makes the Microcosmic Orbit possibly within reach?

I’m not going to do the next lesson this week, though: partly because I could use more practice mixing Kan and Li, and partly because I’m planning to get my shingles vaccination tomorrow, and that will probably mess me up. The Microcosmic Orbit lesson is the third one after this; I would like to make it through that lesson before the workshop, because I feel like the workshop might be a place where I’ll be able to accomplish that. But that’s not until June, so I’ve got a couple of spare weeks.

I am also feeling that I could use some more work on my breathing. So, once I make it to the Microcosmic Orbit lesson, I might just take a month or two off from lessons and work on that? Not sure yet.

Not much to say about Tai Chi. No push hands this week, which was disappointing, I hope we don’t stop doing that… And I really should review the Hunyuan stuff more, I’m on the edge of not being able to keep up solidly with that.

This week’s lesson was on the Line of Ming. Which I had definitely been building up to for a month or so: I’d been feeling my Qi Hand and a point on my back, so now I had to feel the line between them.

Which mostly went well? At least it did while I listened to the lesson; not so well in my first practice after that. And then I listened to the lesson again, and realized that I’d forgotten the mudra, but also I think listening to Damo puts me in a mental space where I can practice well? Anyways, I had some decent practices after that, where I was starting to get absorbed in the line; not always going well, sometimes I wasn’t feeling the line, but all in all a pretty good week.

Not a ton going on other than that in my practice. I practiced a decent amount, and like I said last week, I started going on walks a bit more and also frequently reviewed the spine stretch exercise. Still not feeling completely great, but I think not a bad idea?

I also started rereading the Complete Guide. One thing I noticed during its section on Wu Ji was that it talked about sinking your elbows; I realized I wasn’t doing that quite enough, and it did have an effect. Also, while doing abdominal breathing, I might be breathing into my navel instead of my Qi Hai, I should tweak that. And one thing that I happened to notice while doing my Wu Ji one day was that, when I turn my feet in a bit more, I feel more floaty (but in a good way, like my body is supporting itself with minimal effort from me; I’ll want to keep that in mind.

Normal Tai Chi week, nothing in particular going on. The Hunyuan form is sometimes being a little hard for me to memorize, but I’m still pretty much keeping up. And the thing I talked about last week where you open your left foot when stepping forward to Jing Gang is definitely a good idea, it helps me on both of the first two times I see that move.

Pretty solid week, my best in a while. This week’s lesson was a continuation of the one that I’d been working on for the last two weeks, getting your Qi Hai into the action; and I think I’m getting the hang of it, my Dantian is starting to buzz a bit? Which it was doing a month ago, so in some sense I’m just regaining ground that I’d lost; but still.

And the practice on Wednesday went well. I actually didn’t have a huge amount of energy, so while I wasn’t feeling awful, I thought I’d do a standing bit that didn’t take a super long time, and maybe that moved some. But when I got into my Wu Ji at the start, I felt like my legs were solid and my torso was light, so I decided to just stay in Wu Ji; and I actually lasted an hour, for only the second time. So that was really good. I’m still not back up to my 3+ hour practice sessions, but significant progress.

I’m actually thinking I should rethink my Wednesdays and Fridays: maybe I’d have more energy if I went for a walk and/or had a bit of a snack? Not sure, I’ll probably experiment with that some. Also, I should probably review some of the back exercises, and add that as one of my components on my day off, my back feels like it’s not doing as well as it sometimes has.

In terms of Tai Chi, while practicing the Lao Jia Dao, I noticed that, in the step up into Jing Gang, the Dao movements encourage me to open my left Kua more, and that feels better. When I talked with my teacher about that movement, he also mentioned that your left foot should be open instead of straight forward during that movement, I should experiment with that as well.

I repeated the previous lesson from Damo’s course, on Alchemical Breathing, this week. And I’m glad I did: there were a couple of bits about reverse abdominal breathing that it was good to get clarification on, and the extra week of practice was useful. I won’t say that I’m doing it perfectly now, but it feels better, and yesterday I felt an unusual amount of connection between my Huiyin and Dantian while doing it.

So-so week practice week. Pretty good practice on Wednesday, iffy practice the rest of the week. Still trying to figure out what’s going on with sleep stuff; I did review the Shui Gong 2 video, since I felt like I’d been making progress there, and that was kind of interesting. The vibration that you’re supposed to feel is faster than the one I noticed, but also more localized, and he did talk about feeling shaking down your spine, so I might have been feeling the latter? And Shui Gong 2 is target at having you sleep more restfully, so if I can get it to work, it would be really useful; I feel like what’s going on right now is mostly mental rather than physical?

But the flip side is that, if you focus too much while doing it, then you bring Qi to your head, and that can make it harder to sleep more restfully. So it’s possible that, the way I’ve been doing it, Shui Gong 2 is actually counterproductive? At any rate, I’m going to experiment with seeing if I sleep any differently on nights when I do Shui Gong 2 versus nights when I don’t, and also I’ll try to dial back my attention when I am doing it.

In Tai Chi, I got enough people to agree to do Push Hands that my teacher was willing to restart that on Saturday. So that’s good; and I definitely have a lot to learn there…