Nei Gong Notes, April 30, 2024

This week’s lesson was a Taiji review lesson; nothing much to report there.

I’d mentioned last week that I’d been feeling tired recently; and this past Wednesday my sleep had been interrupted, so I expected to feel like I’d need a nap at some point during the day. But actually it went fine: I was a little tired, but not actually that much given how my sleep had gone. I was trying to keep my spine open that day, and I think that helped. I had a good session of the Zhan Zhuang precursor exercise (about sinking flesh from bone), I’m definitely going to be keeping that up. Thursday started off very well, I had a good Spleen Hui Chun session and felt active and stretchy inside, so that was good too; a bit more yawning later in the day than I would have liked. And on Friday I went to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco; on the drive up I was doing a good job of sinking inside my torso, and I kept that state during the museum visit. Saturday I again had bad sleep and was pretty tired but I still managed to do all my usual practice and I felt like it turned out pretty well, e.g. a good Zhan Zhuang session (the regular version, not the precursor exercise), and I was feeling my and my partner’s bodies pretty well during push hands. Good sleep Saturday night, and then on Sunday I did an hour-long MCO prep exercise and that went well, I’m glad I did that. So in general I’m seeing a good number of positive signs; it would still be nice if my energy levels were better (I’ll try to ask Damo about that in June), but there are enough other signs of progress that I’m not particularly discouraged.