Last week’s cold was pretty bad but I’m almost completely over it now; an occasional cough, but that’s about it. Still building my Nei Gong practice back up, though; I haven’t seriously tried the Microcosmic Orbit preparation steps again, and I really haven’t been feeling like doing much standing, for whatever reason. Time to start getting back into that, though, I’ll be flying out to the retreat next week.

And time to work on my Tai Chi, especially the Hunyuan 48 and the Guan Dao. I think it shouldn’t be too hard to get back on the Guan Dao, and even to learn the bit from the class that I’ll have to miss. But the Hunyuan 48 is a real challenge, I am not at all confident that I’ll be able to learn that one the first time through. I’ll keep on chipping away, though…

This week’s lesson was on actually kicking off the Microcosmic Orbit. I still have some prepwork before putting it into place, but good to see what’s left. Not a lot, actually, though who knows how long the last couple of steps will take; and I felt like there had been one or two other steps in the series of videos about it that he’d made publicly available? I should watch those again to remind myself of that, in particular I think there was one on the Clipping Passes that could be useful.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to work on this more, because I came down with a fairly nasty cold a couple of days later. (Or maybe COVID? The tests have been negative, though.) So it’s been a holding pattern week; I think I’m starting to get slightly better, but we’ll see how long it takes before I can practice again. I had to skip Tai Chi lessons this week, too; hopefully I’ll be feeling good enough to be able to go to class this Saturday.

This week’s lesson was a preparatory exercise opening up stuff for the Microcosmic Orbit. Specifically, it’s a 5-minute thing you can add to the end of other seated exercises; easy enough to work into things?

In terms of my practice, I feel like things have been building up a bit, but I’m certainly not getting the mini version of the orbit to trigger. And I’m still not feeling like my Qi is as thick as it was when I first saw the Mixing Kan and Li lesson, though it’s moving in that direction. This week’s lesson is about the Orbit itself; I’ll watch that, but I imagine I’ll spend the next several weeks (months?) going back over the lessons building up to that.

In the Saturday Tai Chi class, we got back to push hands, doing the single-arm inside-of-the-arm exercise. Which I’d been not understanding at all the last time, but this time I was doing better, doing a Peng into my partner’s shoulder. Still felt like I was probably not doing things quite right, but hopefully that’s progress?

And it was the Sunday Tai Chi class this week, and I learned that I’d missed a part of the Guan Dao form last month. And next month I’ll be out of town on the Sunday of the class. So I guess I’ll be watching the video of that form a lot this month, trying to catch up and move ahead. Not the hardest form, so hopefully that’ll be possible…

This week’s lesson was on a smaller version of the Microcosmic Orbit, with the rotation within your abdomen. Damo warns that there’s a good chance that we’re not quite ready for it yet, and says, if you’re not able to trigger the orbit, then you shouldn’t try it out every day, instead maybe every third day? (Maybe practicing Mixing Kan and Li and Anchoring the Breath the other two days.) So that’s what I’ve been doing (working in some Bellows Breathing and occasional Advanced Dantian Gong, too); I imagine that I’ll keep up that routine for the indefinite future, though we’ll see what the next two lessons (on preparing for and actually doing the Microcosmic Orbit) contain.

As for standing work, I’ve mostly been doing the Qi Mobilization lessons, and haven’t done the non-advanced Dantian Gong the last week or two. In general I feel like right now I want to spend most of my time on seated work, though I’m still doing some standing practice each day. And my energy levels still aren’t great; hopefully the TCM treatments will help with that.

Also means that I haven’t done as much Tai Chi as I’d like; it would be good to get back to that? Still chipping away at the Hunyuan 48, but at least I feel like I’m not falling further behind: kind of in a steady state where I don’t feel great about the last 2-3 weeks but the stuff before that is solid enough.

When I was going through the Dragons on Saturday, the first one felt off, so I watched the video, and I really had forgotten a few of the details. So if I do pause on new lessons in the class while trying to get the Microcosmic Orbit going, I should consider reviewing those videos to get those in a better shape.

I decided not to do a new Nei Gong lesson this week, to try to build the Qi in my Dantian back up. Which I think I’m making progress at, though Mixing Kan and Li still isn’t feeling like was when I first learned it. So, most days, I’ve been doing Bellows Breathing, with some Advanced Dantian Gong and some Mixing Kan and Li mixed in; and some days I managed to work in a second sitting session, even during days when I don’t normally do that.

I also asked a question about what sitting practice Damo was referring to when he said in a recent video that his school had one key standing and one key sitting practice; it turns out that the sitting practice is Anchoring the Breath plus applying attention.

Pretty normal Tai Chi; I’m still hanging in there on the Hunyuan 48. We did get back to push hands this week, continuing through the single handed set; this time, doing Ji and Lu with the inside of the arm, and I really was not able to do the Lu part. Hopefully we can review that on Saturday.

I went to a TCM doctor today, hoping that I can get help with my tiredness issues. He said that I have Liver Heat leading to a Spleen deficiency; hopefully the acupuncture will help. And I talked to him about some of the body stuff I have (weirdness in my right foot / leg in particular), he gave me some body positioning suggestions for that.