Nei Gong Notes, January 3, 2023

Okay week, but nothing to write home about. I had a four day weekend, which might lead to me getting more practice than normal done; I got an okay amount of Nei Gong done, but not as much as I’d hoped, and much less Tai Chi practice than I would have expected. It was raining a lot, which limited the amount of time I was going to spend outside, and also my brother was visiting, so I wanted to spend a decent amount of my free time with him.

Also, my sleep was not great several days, and really lousy on one of them, which had a noticeable effect on my practice time. I’m not thrilled with that regression: I’d thought that I was close to having that basically fixed, but it’s really not? And neither the Liver nor the Spleen Hui Chun seemed to really help. Yesterday I did get back to the Heart Hui Chun, on the theory that I should see how all of them affect me these days; I didn’t notice any big effect while I was doing it, though I can’t say for sure how it affected my sleep, because I’d gotten such lousy sleep the previous night that I decided to do a significant length Wood Wu Xing session as well. So, while I did sleep a more or less acceptable amount last night, I don’t know for sure which of those made a difference (or, for that matter, whether it was just random variance); but, based on my sensations while doing the exercise, I think it was the Wood Wu Xing, my head did seem to calm down a bit while doing that.

Having said all of that, I did get in a fairly solid amount of Nei Gong, at least. I got back to working on my spine, doing the spine bits of the Clipping Passes exercise most days; I haven’t seen any specific effects from doing that yet, but my spine at least feels nice and warm from doing it. I kept up the Wu Ji but they were mostly around 20 minutes, I’m not sure any reached 30 minutes; and no particularly unusual sensations from that this week. (And more fiddling around than I’d like getting my alignment right, but maybe I’m getting a little better at that again?)

Also, the Clipping Passes session is only 15 minutes, which is pretty short for the sitting part of my daily practice; on days when I normally do longer sessions, I’d just add in a 40 minute Hui Chun, but I didn’t have as many work meetings as normal this week, so even on days when I was working, I usually added in a 25 minute Hui Chun. Though today I was feeling good so I decided to do an Advanced Dan Tian Gong session. I’m not 100% sure I was doing things right, so I should rewatch the video, but it’s nice to get back to the pre-Microcosmic Orbit exercises. Given the sleep issues, I should still focus on health, I think, but I also feel like the work that my doctor has been doing on my Kidneys and spine is setting me up pretty well to get back to the Microcosmic Orbit.

As to Tai Chi, the Saturday class was wet, so we didn’t do most of the regular bits: we went through the first form a couple of times, but the rest of the time my teacher was just answering questions. I asked about the transition from Oblique Posture to Flash the Back, because I was watching a video of him doing it and it was different than how I did it; it turns out that you should do a Lu there before the first flash, whereas I was going straight into the two flashes. Also he talked a bit about another difference that I’d noticed: in Dantian Change, when you’re expanding out near the end, it’s not a Peng: your body expands upwards more, so your hips go up instead of down, before you sink your whole body in the Song at the end.

One thing I forgot to mention last week: my left shoulder is remaining slightly tight. If I relax I can still get it to the right position, but I’ve regressed a bit after the work on opening it up from the workshop with Rick. Still, that work lasted longer than I expected, and still has a noticeable effect: I now know where my left shoulder should be, it just needs a bit more help, and my right shoulder is still behaving well. And I’ve got another workshop with Rick in two and a half weeks, and one with Joyce two weeks after that, so hopefully either I’ll get those back to shape or I’ll improve in some other way!

And when watching one of Damo’s recent videos on Youtube the recommendations included this older video of his; interesting discussion of the six harmonies of Bagua / Tai Chi, I’d never seen the first three in particular presented in that way. (Especially the first one.)