Nei Gong Notes, January 9, 2024

Pretty good week. Health wise, I was feeling like I was starting to feel a little tired, and then on Friday I was definitely feeling it during my Nei Gong practice; I had acupuncture that day, and my doctor noticed one part in my spine that wasn’t quite right, so maybe I’d been being sloppy with how I hold my back? Though I’d done Spinal Dao Yins a couple of days before, I would have expected that to last.

Anyways, he adjusted my back a bit, and then on Saturday I was doing the Dragons and my energy started to feel better in the middle of that, so I think that must have been it. (The other hypothesis I had was Ping Heng Gong, which I hadn’t done as much recently because of the rain.) And I’ve been focusing on proper alignment on my lower back; I’m pretty sure that’s been helping. When I make that adjustment while doing Nei Gong, it feels like the lower half of my torso is like a cylinder (or maybe a cyclinder-like thing with an oval cross section); interesting feeling, but I’ll take that as a good sign.

My Chen Tai Chi is going well; I’m feeling like both my Xin Jia first form and my Lao Jia second form are getting to a shape where I know them pretty well and can work on doing them better. (At least except for Sweeping the Hall…) And I feel like I’m making progress with the Hunyuan Dao and the Jian, too: circles everywhere in the Hunyuan Dao form, and for the Jian, I’d been feeling connection between my hands and Dantian during the empty handed form and I’m starting to see how I can get a connection like that extending out the Jian, too.

I did the next bit in the form from Damo’s Tai Chi class last Tuesday, seems fine.