Nei Gong Notes, September 12, 2023

Good week, at least by post-puppy/broken hand standards. I felt like either the extra Hui Chuns, the longer spinal waves, or both are paying off: awake much more during the days. And when I went to see my TCM doctor, he said that my Kidneys were being well behaved, a noticeable difference from the previous week. So I’ll keep that up; I’m actually hoping that I might even have enough energy on Wednesdays / Fridays / Sundays to work in some more seated Nei Gong beyond whatever Hui Chun I’m doing that day? We’ll see how it goes, though, both in terms of my energy level and in terms of whether Velvet is being mellow for long enough. (It also helps that her housebreaking is improving significantly, that makes a big difference with my sleep and also means fewer distractions during the day.)

And I’m getting more energized about Tai Chi. I still didn’t do it a ton last week, but I did do some Ma Bu for the first time in a while, so hopefully I can start working on my conditioning. And on the monthly Sunday Tai Chi class I was pleased to see that my left hand let me work on the staff, so I should be able to practice that; and we did some Xin Jia practice that went over some bits that I could use review on. So my hope is that, this week, I’ll be able to review the staff and the Xin Jia first form some, instead of just the Lao Jia first form.

Also I was paying attention to my Kua while doing Tai Chi; I’m doing a good job in terms of relaxing it in a way that has my pelvis slide under to some extent. So I think I’m starting to fairly reliably do what people refer to as tucking my tailbone; and my tailbone does end up being tucked, it’s just that it doesn’t come from a tucking impetus or even a relaxing impetus. At any rate, very useful, I feel a lot more stable while doing that.

And something during one of the Tai Chi classes made me think that I should pay more attention to the way my Dantian gets involved when doing the form, so I’ll try to spend time on that next.

Also in terms of random stuff: my legs are not behaving how I would like in multiple ways, not enough sinking, not good enough balance, etc. Nothing new, but I should work on that; in particular, I want to work on relaxing them more while standing. (Though sinking into the Kua / tucking my tailbone is helping.) And I read through Byron Jacobs’ Xing Yi book; interesting, even though I’m not actually doing Xing Yi, but if I were, there’s definitely stuff there that I would want to pay attention to. And, among other things, it gave me a nudge to think about having my tongue touch the top of the mouth; I’d been thinking that I didn’t feel anything when I did that, but actually I do, it’s just kind of subdued? So I should do that more, or at least think about whether or not I’m doing that; I think I might actually be doing it by default some of the time.