Nei Gong Notes, December 20, 2022

Mostly a sick week, unfortunately. I felt better, so I did my regular long Nei Gong practice on Wednesday morning. And I could tell part way through that that was a mistake, and the cold did indeed get worse again after that. Who knows if it would have gotten worse anyways or if the Nei Gong contributed because it was a little strenuous or if the Nei Gong contributed because it was moving stuff around inside, but at any rate: whoops.

Not a horrible relapse of the cold or anything: ultimately, it was just a cold, and the symptoms never got particularly bad. (They lingered a bit more in the second part of the cold, but probably was a little less severe than the first part of the cold, and the first part wasn’t severe either?) But, because of that experience, I figured I should put off doing Nei Gong, so I didn’t do any until today. Today I did a bit of sitting and just 15 minutes of Wu Ji; felt fine, and while my Wu Ji wasn’t as productive as it had been in the prior weeks, it felt like it was having a little bit of an effect, at least? So I’ll do something longer tomorrow; probably not as much as my regular Wednesday session, maybe 20 or 25 minutes of Wu Ji plus a 25 minute Hui Chun? (And maybe a bit of work on my back, too.)

I did do Tai Chi on Saturday, though; nice to have it not be raining this week, the previous two weeks had been rather wet. And I was glad I did that; my body actually felt more active inside than it normally does when I’m doing Tai Chi. Not sure what was going on there; maybe my system was just glad that I was doing some sort of internal work? In terms of stuff that I noticed, I should continue to pay more attention to how my weight goes down my body, especially on the right side. And my right knee position is occasionally a little off (too far inside) during Grab and Tuck Robe; I thought I’d fixed that but apparently not quite.

Also, I saw a post from somebody talking about how doing cardio work had helped his Nei Gong, and that’s a real gap in my exercise. I don’t really want to make time for some new addition to my practice regimen, but I figured that I spend some amount of time just going for walks, and I could replace some of that with some jogging? So I did that on Friday, because I wasn’t going to do Nei Gong in the morning like normal, and I lasted longer while jogging than I expected; and I went out on Saturday and Sunday again, and actually on Sunday I made it farther still. I did try jogging soon after moving out here a couple of decades back, and I don’t remember it getting better as quickly back then as it did this time; maybe my memory is wrong, but also maybe I wasn’t doing it every day, and maybe that makes a difference? So I actually went jogging on Monday and today as well, during lunchtime at work; and today I made it quite a bit farther again. (I was at home today instead of the office, so I could compare the distance more easily.) Nothing that would be at all impressive to anybody who jogs regularly, let alone runs regularly, but I made it up to a mile today in about 11 and a half minutes, and I definitely was not expecting to reach that distance so quickly.

So I’ll keep that up. I still don’t like jogging, but I also feel like maybe I’m better now at dealing with unpleasantness? Hard to say; and it’s not like I’m going out of my way to push through, either. (I am using the previous day’s distance as my goal for the next day, and I’m trying to tack on another block or so onto it, basically; but if I really wanted to run until I was ready to drop, I could definitely go noticeably farther.) We’ll see if my Nei Gong changes.

I did go to my regular TCM appointment on Friday; my doctor was quite pleased at the improvement in my Kidney, and he thought my back was opening up in ways that helped with that. So that’s nice; hopefully that means that we’re approaching a level where I won’t need to go in every week, because I’ve been doing that for a while now and I don’t want to be doing that forever. (Well, it’s not like I need to go in every week now; I’m just doing that because it still seems to be helping. And helping is good! But if things plateau at an improved level, then I’ll be happy to declare victory.)