This week was a Tai Chi week, and the lesson was Ba Men 3, where we add in the four corners to the first four energies. Interesting stuff there, e.g. how Cai is different from what I’m used to; it took me a while to get used to how to perform it, but I think I’ve mostly got it down now, and it felt surprisingly intense when I was going through it yesterday.

I also finished one more of the live lessons that got added to Nei Gong Year 1, so I’m now done with all of those.

My Chen Tai Chi teacher mentioned to me that, when Chen Xiaowang does Zhan Zhuang, he squats down lower if he wants his arms higher, but if he’s standing higher than his arms are lower. So I played around with that, and it makes sense from a mechanical point of view: there’s a natural place where my arms want to be that gets higher the further down I am. So I went down lower on Saturday when I did that, and it ended up being more comfortable.

I had a good Calm Abiding on Sunday morning, which was nice, and a pretty good Channel Opening 1 / 2. I’m realizing that, when doing Wu Ji, I’m slumping a bit, so I think I need to work on Bones Up Flesh Down more.

It probably wasn’t a coincidence that I did well on Sunday after sleeping well on Saturday. I noticed several times this week that my energy ran out part way through the afternoon; if I’m doing Tai Chi in the afternoon and I just don’t feel like it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m lazy, it might be early feedback from my body that I’m running low on energy. So I’m going to pay more attention to that, and figure out how to behave in those situations: what’s more important for me to push through and get done, what should I let slide.

And I had really crappy sleep on Monday – for the first time in a while I got startled awake. I’ve been off of one of my allergy medicines for most of a month, which is when this recent bout of energy level problems started; I wasn’t sure at the time if it was caused by the allergy medicines or by the heat wave, but the heat wave has gone away and the problems are still there. So as of yesterday I’m back on both my allergy medicines, hopefully that will help. I’m also still not sure how much of my energy problems are downstream of bad sleep versus just being caused by allergies taking stuff out of me; my experience on Sunday makes me think that sleep is important, so I should probably try to get to sleep a little earlier? And hopefully as the days get shorter, my dog will start waiting until the alarm before waking us up; the alarm goes off at 6:45 and sunrise tomorrow is at 6:14, so we’re getting close.

This week’s lesson was Channel Opening 2. The first time I did it, I didn’t sleep at all well that night; might have been a coincidence (it was warmer than normal that evening), but I also noticed Damo being a little more explicit about closing down than normal and one of the positions felt like a Liver thing and the other was super high up, so maybe it wasn’t a coincidence? At any rate, I’ve been closing down for quite a bit longer since then, and it hasn’t recurred.

On Wednesday I had my best day of practice for a while; not shockingly good by standards of the year, but I’ve been tired for the last most of a month and it’s been warm enough that I haven’t wanted to go to the park and do a lot of Tai Chi. But on Wednesday I felt good and the weather was fine, so I had a solid Nei Gong session in the morning, I did Ping Heng Gong in the afternoon for the first time in a while, and I practiced Tai Chi for a couple of hours in the park.

My Chen Tai Chi teacher went over my Paochui on Saturday. Aside from telling me to expand more in a few moves, the main advice he gave was around relaxing while doing Fa Jin; I’ll have to play around with that to see if I can put it into practice.

Good Nei Gong on Sunday – the full moon practice, a combined Channel Opening 1 and 2 session that I think went well, and a pretty good Calm Arising.

More tired than I’d like this week; I often feel good at the start of the day but then run out of energy partway through the day, which is kind of annoying. I’m trying out nasal strips, on the hopes that breathing more at night might help, but it hasn’t yet. And I started some Heart-related herbal medicine that might help; no effect yet that I’ve noticed, but it’s only been a day and a half so it’s too early to expect anything from that.

Last week was a Tai Chi lesson, we covered Wu Song Shen Fa 4; I’d been feeling sad that, because of the heat and my tiredness, I had been neglecting my Wu Song Shen Fa, and number 4 seems pretty interesting, so I should definitely get back to those. Nice to feel stuff kind of bouncing off of the bottom of my feet when I do it.

I’m continuing to think that Calm Abiding is a good thing for me to do: my mental state feels better after doing it, and I was feeling my Yellow Court being more active on Sunday after doing it. And on Saturday I was doing some Advanced Dantian Gong and my Ming Line was pretty noticeable. So hopefully I’m building some amount of Qi, despite the tiredness?

My Tai Chi feels pretty good, I like how my body is working together. Also on the note of my body, I’m putting in more time on stretching my hamstrings, and they’re aching in a way that makes me think maybe it’ll help? We’ll see, though, I don’t yet have a noticeably longer range of motion…

I’m enjoying the Xin Jia review sessions in preparation for the Chen Xiaowang workshop, the form is starting to feel good, and I’m picking up on subtler points.

Annoyingly tired week. (And strangely so, some days I’d start out fine and then just run out of energy halfway through the day.) Not sure what was going on, but my best guess is that it might be something related to the heat, because Monday was fine and it was noticeably cooler the previous night and that day compared to the rest of the week?

Anyways, last week was a Nei Gong week, and the lesson was Forgiveness 1. Seemed like a potentially useful exercise, but I’m actually finding myself not annoyed at very many things right now, so I was having a surprisingly hard time coming up with slights that I wanted to forgive? I’ll keep on chipping away at it.

I didn’t practice nearly as much Tai Chi as normal this week, because it was so hot out and because I was tired enough that I wasn’t going to exert myself a ton. Class was fine on Sunday, though, and we’re starting the staff; happy to be reviewing that one, I’m kind of on the edge of forgetting bits of it. And today I went to an extra Tai Chi class, going through the Xin Jia first form in preparation for a workshop with Chen Xiaowang next month, good to pick up some pointers.

I taught my Silk Reeling course on Sunday; people continue to be very involved and have a lot of questions, which is nice. The topic this time was using your Kua to move back and forth.

Good Calm Abiding on Sunday, I should find time to do that more often. Honestly, right now I should prioritize it over MCO prep, until I get to where I’m feeling energetic enough that MCO prep is actually going to turn into successfully doing the MCO.

The week started off iffy, with me tired more than I’d like; I think I got my food out of whack during the workshop? Nothing horrible or anything, but between working a normal day on Wednesday and being a little tired, I didn’t do as much Nei Gong as normal. Though actually on Wednesday I did make time for a decent length Calm Abiding session, and I think it went well; good effects on my mind and body, and I think I’m getting a better feel for what it means to relax my mind?

And my practice on Sunday was quite good: almost an hour of standing practice (mostly Wu Ji but a decent amount of Channel Opening 1), about an hour of Calm Abiding (admittedly, a little sleepier than I’d like), and an hour of MCO prep (nothing super exciting there but it felt solid enough). And yesterday and today my practice has gone well too (though I’ve been working so I only had so much time), and my energy levels have been pretty good.

The other interesting thing this week is that I’ve felt Zi Fa Gong for the first time, which I’d never really felt until now. It’s been manifesting itself as brief, sudden spasms; no particular effect beyond that, and it’s not happening particularly frequently, though it did happen more than once this week.

Anyways, this week’s lesson was a Nei Gong lesson, finally making progress again on the 37 Form: Return Tiger to Mountain this time. I’m actually feeling slightly rusty on the form, I guess I wasn’t practicing it enough?

I got some beef pills that Rick recommended for Kidney stuff; they are definitely beefy, my dog is interested in them. Not sure if they’ve been helping, but they might have; like I said, I’ve been feeling decently energetic since the end of the week, maybe that’s related? Hopefully that will continue; we’ll see what my TCM doctor say when I see him on Friday. And I’ll ping Rick soon to see if I can get some Heart-related herbs.

We’re starting the Staff form in my Chen Tai Chi class, it’ll be good to have a refresher on that. And I definitely need to work on the Hunyuan 48 – I’m keeping up, but only just barely, and we’re getting to the part of the form that I don’t really know as well. But at least I did enough practicing along with videos during evenings of the workshop that I’m not behind, so that’s good.

Quite hot week, so we’ll see how much Tai Chi practice I can do, I don’t really want to practice outside when it’s in the mid 90s. Should be fine for Nei Gong, though, and I can work on the Yang 37 and the Hunyuan 48 inside if I have to.

I’m teaching the third lesson in my Silk Reeling Principles course this week; this one will be on moving using the Kua. I think my notes are good, so I’m optimistic that it will go well, but we’ll see; talking to my students on Saturday, they reported that they’re continuing to appreciate the course, so that’s good.