Nei Gong Notes, August 2, 2022

Last week was the closest to normal in a while. I finally tested negative for COVID last Wednesday, and I’ve been continuing to feel better; my cough hasn’t gone away yet, but it’s certainly improving, and at times over the last few days I’ve been feeling actively good.

In terms of Nei Gong, I didn’t do any new lessons and I didn’t do extra practice on Wednesdays and Fridays, but I did a solid seated practice session every day (alternating days between the Water and Earth Balancing exercises), and I got back into doing Wu Ji, starting at a minimal amount but ending up at an amount that at least I don’t have to feel ashamed by. The balancing exercises continue to be interesting, I like paying attention to the inside of my body during that. I don’t know for sure if they helped with the post-COVID recovery, but based on my experience, they certainly didn’t hurt, and might have helped?

And I went to Tai Chi on Saturday; I wasn’t quite at my full energy level, so I skipped the Xin Jia part, but otherwise it was good. I do have a noticeable amount of spear to catch up with, and not a lot of time to catch up to it in (we’ll finish the form this week or next, though hopefully we’ll have another week or two where we go over the whole thing?), but I think the bits I missed are going to be manageable; I tried going over them on Sunday with the help of a video, and while I didn’t quite get it all down, I feel like, if I do the same thing tomorrow and Friday, I’ll have a decent chance of being able to follow along well this Saturday.

Tony started his Summer Tuesday course, and this year he’s planning to focus on push hands and on Xingyi. I don’t have any interest in Xingyi, but push hands is something that I’ve been wanting to work on and that hasn’t been happening as regularly on Saturdays as I would like. (That lack is partly because of me, to be sure!) So I attended that tonight, and I’m glad I did; so much in the basics of push hands that I’m just not getting right at all, I really need to keep on chipping away. For now I want to focus on turning a little more, and I think I should make a habit of trying to do some push hands every Saturday after class even on weeks when Tony isn’t formally teaching it.