Nei Gong Notes, October 10, 2023

I went through the opening lesson from the 37 form in Damo’s Tai Chi course. Pretty interesting, a surprising amount of stuff moving through my body; I guess the preparatory exercises have had some effect in terms of preparing me!

On Wednesday, I went through the Spinal Dao Yin again; and, partway through, the feeling there changed. The stretching and relaxation in that exercise felt like it was affecting a much wider area of my back than normal, instead of being strictly localized in my spine. And also the stretch went farther up and down my back than normal.

At the end of acupuncture on Friday, my doctor was very surprised at how strong my Qi levels were. He said that this meant that my channels were opened well; I think that must be related to what I was noticing on Wednesday. Also, starting after last Friday I’ll only go every other week for a while, so I’ll skip acupuncture this week.

On Saturday Tai Chi we did some Angled Bang exercises; basically it turns out to be a way to practice performing / dealing with Qin Na on yourself. Not the most interesting thing to me, I don’t know that I’ll stick with that? Hopefully I’ll like some of the Straight Ruler / Bang exercises better.

Sunday Tai Chi this week; pretty good, I’m keeping up with the staff and noticed a few things in the Xin Jia Yi Lu. I’ve decided to start keeping a directory with notes about particular subtle points of specific moves in the different forms; I’ve been writing those down here, but this isn’t a great location for me to come back and remind myself once more than a few weeks have passed.

I got my COVID vaccine yesterday and am pretty achy today; so probably I won’t do a ton of Nei Gong tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll be back to normal on Friday.