Nei Gong Notes, March 26, 2024

Tai Chi week for the IAA; I’m still reviewing the first road. One thing I noticed (and it’s come up in a couple of videos): in Gong Bu, the bottom half of your front leg should be going straight down to the foot, but I’m often going farther forward than that. Probably would help my knee if I stop doing that (and I assume I do that in Chen Tai Chi too); I’m still feeling out what I’m supposed to do instead, am I supposed to be standing higher, am I supposed to be stepping further forward, am I supposed to be sinking more into my Kua to get down to the right depth?

For most of the week, I felt a little off, maybe even on the edge of getting sick, but for some reason it didn’t feel too discouraging? I hear people talk about how they feel sick for a few days after clearing out stuff with Dao Yins; that might be what I’m going through? And I’m also still dialing in how food affects me, that might be part of what’s going on too. And also I had to get up a few times in some of the nights, because of my dog asking for something, which didn’t help; though even there I’m optimistic because I feel like I’m getting good control over Liver Heat stuff, so if I don’t have my dog keeping me up, my sleep is going pretty well. But at any rate I was doing kind of minimal practices most of the week, smaller practices than normal on Wednesday and Friday mornings in particular.

But on Sunday morning I’d slept well and felt nice and energetic. So I figured I’d try kicking off the MCO; I didn’t really expect it to work super well, because I hadn’t been particularly actively working on building up Qi that week, but my Dantian did at least have a little bit of signs of activity? And it actually worked, though just barely: Qi was going up my spine very slowly, it took about five minutes to make it up there, but it did finally reach my Baihui. Interesting feeling: my Baihui felt like a big hole, and the inside of my body felt relaxed and nourished after doing that. I think it’s actually the most successful I’ve been at doing the MCO at home; still a lot to work on, I think I must have been at the bare minimum of fullness for my Dantian for it to work at all, but still, I’ll take getting one successful cycle. And also this must be evidence that my work on my back has been paying off: it wasn’t moving quickly up my back but it also didn’t feel like it was hitting blockages.

So I’ll definitely want to keep on trying that, and also to work on getting more Qi in my Dantian. Also, I think I’ll dial down the frequency of doing Coiling Snake, because I’m no longer getting strong effects from doing that, so I feel like it’s done its work. In general I’m just feeling a spontaneous desire to Song in my back a lot of the time when I’m standing around, which is also a good sign for the back; though with that I am also starting to notice tightness in my chest now. So I think I should switch my Dao Yin focus and spend some time with the Lotus Dao Yin, that should help with that.