Nei Gong Notes, April 16, 2024

One thing I forgot to mention last week when talking about my trip: I was taking a bus from Cincinnati to northern Ohio, and there were a bunch of Amish (?) people on the bus. I didn’t see anybody in the seat in front of me at first, but then, an hour or so into the trip, I saw a little girl standing up in the seat and looking at me. And the reason why I’m mentioning that here is she had maybe the best neck / head positioning I’ve ever seen; I guess that’s what happens when you’re a kid who doesn’t spend your time hunched over looking at things and are also around adults who don’t spend their time hunched over looking at things? Something to strive for, at any rate: my neck (and upper spine) is in a lot better shape than it once was, but clearly I’ve got a lot of room for improvement.

Anyways, pretty quiet week: end of the trip, and now my wife is on a trip, so still a decent amount of disruption. No new lessons, I’m still reviewing the first chunk of the Yang 37 form. And my body is definitely letting me know that I didn’t move quite enough on my trip; nothing horrible, but I do need to get back into shape, and also be a little better about my sleep. I felt good this morning, though, so that’s a good sign.

Not much to report in general. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned that I’m giving a second iteration of my Silk Reeling Principles course, but I announced that to my local Tai Chi folks a week or so ago; this time I’m doing it once a month for five months, that will start in May. So I’ve been thinking about that, and I’m starting to get excited; hopefully it’ll be better this year? (I mean, it was okay last year, but there’s definitely room for improvement.) And I reread Ken Gullette’s Internal Body Mechanics book; there are some partner drills there that I think I would benefit from working on, and my push hands partner sounded open to that idea, so hopefully I’ll be able to spend time on that?

Bought my plane tickets for Damo’s June workshop in Houston; I’m looking forward to that. Though doing that made me realize how much it will cost for me to attend the Foundations courses; I still think that’s the right idea, but I’ll probably hold off on buying plane tickets until I’ve talked to Rick, just to make sure that he thinks the course would be a good idea for me.