Nei Gong Notes, March 28, 2023

Pretty solid week. In terms of Nei Gong, there’s a workshop with Rick coming up in a few weeks, so I figured I’d get back to stretching my arms by moving my attention in and out of my arms instead of by using physical force; surprisingly strong, I’ll keep that up. And I did a Line of Ming practice that might be starting to have an effect beyond just feeling where the line is, it felt like my back was moving in a bit when I did that. So nothing super spectacular or anything, but it felt like quiet progress.

Also in terms of progress, I’m doing a better job of feeling when my body is asymmetric from side to side. Which is progress, but it’s kind of annoying progress, because it’s basically always the case (it’s my body’s default resting position these days) and because I don’t really know what to do about it. For now, I’m just trying to be at least somewhat correctly positioned while in Wu Ji and hoping that the Spinal Dao Yin loosens up my spine and adjacent muscles in a way that helps with the situation. (Which I’m somewhat optimistic about, because when I was doing that solidly a few months back, I had a week or two when my spine felt loose and it seemed like other things were hanging better from it.)

As to Tai Chi, I made progress on the Guan Dao; I’m back to caught up with where I had been, and I’ve started learning the next section. So I’m pretty optimistic that I’ll be caught up with the class by the April Sunday class. And I also had a decent practice of a few of the other forms; my goal has been to go through every form I know every week and to focus extra on the new forms, but, with all the rain this winter (and with me not always feeling good), it’s been ages since I’ve done that. And I didn’t do that this past week, either, but I’m coming closer than I had been, maybe I’ll even manage it this week? Depends on the rain and on how I feel…

And on Saturday I gave a speech to try to convince more people to sign up for the push hands course; hopefully it had an effect. And we did some push hands at the end of the class, with a decently wide range of people participating, good to see that.