Nei Gong Notes, May 28, 2024
Tai Chi week this week; I reviewed the next-to-last lesson from the First Road, and then on Friday I reviewed the last lesson, so I can get back to new lessons from that course now. I actually realized in the middle of the week that I forgot to hit the blue button on the Nei Gong course, so I could potentially do Tai Chi today; but given that there were new year 1 lessons released recently for the Nei Gong course, I think I’ll do one of those instead.
I wasn’t feeling 100% on Wednesday so I didn’t do my MCO prep exercise then; I did it on Friday and Sunday, though, and Monday was a holiday, so I took advantage of that to try kicking off the MCO again. I wasn’t super optimistic at the start of that (I felt fine but not any more energized than the previous week) but actually my Dantian got pretty tingly during the prep? Unusual feeling when I got to the bit while I was actively trying to kick it off: felt like there was a massive blob of stuff going up my back. It didn’t go up particularly far, though; not sure what was going on there, not going to spend much time thinking about it. My Dantian did feel nice and active this morning while doing the Kidney Hui Chun, though, which was nice; we’ll see how this week goes.
As to Chen Tai Chi, I went to a workshop on Saturday with Zhu Tiancai and Zhu Xiangqian. They’re from Chen village; their form was a little different from my teacher’s (Zhu Tiancai is from the same generation as my teacher’s teacher), but basically the same Lao Jia first form. Most of the class was talking about Silk Reeling; their take is interestingly different from what I’m used to, with sudden Fa Jin followed by relaxation in the middle of each movement. I’m not entirely sure what I think about that, but it feels worth poking at to understand the pros and cons; and my shoulders and elbows were aching a bit the next day or two, so it was opening things up. I don’t think I’ll make time to try that out any time soon, though, because I’ve got enough else going on; I do have a video of the set saved on my phone if I want to do so at some point, though.