Nei Gong Notes, September 5, 2023

Pretty good week. To be sure, it started off with some warning signs: puppy-related sleep problems, and my TCM doctor said that my Kidney Qi is backsliding. And I think those are related (and of course it didn’t help that I couldn’t use my hands properly for a month): I think (in part because of my tiredness) that I haven’t been spending enough time looking after my back (there was one part that was unexpectedly sore, in particular), and also I need to do more nourishing Qigong.

So I’ve been being better about stretching out my back a bit in various ways during the day (e.g. touching my toes in a way that gives a bit of a back stretch), and I’ve switched my standing practice to not only always include some spinal waves, but to switch from a single 5 minute session of that to 15 minutes on it, normally then slowly then not moving but sensing and actively Songing up my spine. And I’ve also been doing more Hui Chuns, I did 40 minute Kidney and Spleen ones twice each this week.

And I think it’s helping. My sleep last night was fine by post-puppy standards but iffy by historical standards, but I still had a decent amount of energy today, I certainly didn’t feel like I needed to take a nap in the middle of the morning. And Velvet’s housebreaking has improved noticeably and we’ve come up with a plan for working on overnight specifically, so I’m pretty optimistic there.

Last week I’d strained myself a bit much at Tai Chi; I decided to go to class this week but take it really easy, and that worked fine. And I did some single hand push hands with my right hand after class, nice to get back to that. I also talked to one of the other senior students about my vague idea to get some sort of senior student study group together; she had some ideas but it unfortunately didn’t work too well with what I wanted. I think I’m going to listen again to the podcast with my teacher that kicked off my thinking about that, and if the bit there about having a mutual study group that comments on each other’s forms does actually sound like he recommends then I’ll see if people are up to that as a one-off thing.