Nei Gong Notes, July 25, 2023

Another week dominated by having a new puppy; no long practice sessions, and sleep was interrupted that even my shorter practice sessions weren’t great! They did happen, though. But I should be careful with not backsliding on my back; e.g. I’d been letting up on stretching my back while touching my toes, I should get back to that. Though actually I’m doing a decent amount of stretching my back by squatting, there’s frequently time to do that while Velvet is sniffing around outside.

My TCM doctor thinks things are going well, at least; he says that my right Kidney is at the target level that he’s looking for. Hopefully the left Kidney will be there soon; I think probably either way I’ll stop soon, or significantly slow down my rate of appointments.

I had something interesting happen when I went through the Dragons on Saturday: during one of the Wu Ji sections during that, I felt a pretty strong line on both arms, going up from my thumb. Looking at diagrams, I think it was probably related to the Lung channel? And there was a quite noticeable feeling of wind inside my body along my hand, near the base of the thumb / wrist, especially on the right side. No idea what triggered that, but presumably it’s useful progress.

I did a decent amount of Tai Chi practice on Sunday, at least; not sure if I’m going to hit every form this week but it was a good start. One thing I noticed was that I was off balance when stepping up in Jing Gang but I could fix that by turning forward / closing my left Kua and opening my right Kua before stepping up. Which I feel like I’ve noticed in the past, but it’s time for me to notice that again!

In Damo’s Tai Chi course the lesson was Wu Song Shen Fa 2, which also has the first Push Hands video, on receiving force. I don’t know that that Wu Song Shen Fa exercise had a big impact on me; maybe I’m doing a slightly better job of releasing my feet, but I’m still not great at that? I should try out the receiving force exercise with my Tai Chi partner (we’ve tried it out once before but haven’t made it part of my routine), but we had other stuff that we wanted to work on last Saturday and probably will this Saturday as well.