Nei Gong Notes, August 13, 2024

It was a Tai Chi week for me in the Internal Arts Academy; continuing with the form, Punch Under Elbow this time. The most interesting bit for me there was hearing Damo explain what Silk Reeling Energy means in that context, and how it’s different from other kinds of energy; good to hear, though I’m not sure how similar it is to the use of the same term in a Chen Tai Chi context. At any rate, it took me a few practice sessions to get that part of the form into my body (and I’m actually still working on the previous section, though I’m getting better at it), but I do rather like it now that I’m used to it. And I’m also getting noticeably more used to the Eight Energies drill, I like how that affects my body too.

Good practice on Wednesday; okay morning, 40 minutes of Wu Ji plus 20 minutes of Concentration 2. (In general I found more time to do Concentration 2 this week than I had been, though I definitely need to keep on working on that, no real progress there yet.) And then in the afternoon I decided to do a single hour of Wu Song Shen Fa 1, instead of doing three different WSSF exercises for 20 minutes each; I was actually a little disappointed with that, it didn’t feel particularly different, but I did some silk reeling after that and it felt noticeably more interesting than normal, so that might have been related? I’m honestly not sure; I’ll probably keep up the experiment over the next month or so.

And then this weekend Chen Xiaowang was in town giving a workshop. And that turned out to be really good, much better than I expected. On Friday morning the main event was having us all stand while he methodically went over to each of us and adjusted our posture. Which took quite a while, but that was okay, it just meant that I got extra standing practice. Some people got a huge amount out of that, it felt like it had been really transformative to them; he didn’t adjust me so much, though he had me lower / relax my arms quite a bit compared to the position I’m used to doing Zhan Zhuang in; some other little tweaks, especially on my Kua, and there was also a bit where he just kind of held onto my hand and, after a few seconds, my lower back and other parts of my body started wanting to relax, that was interesting.

I talked to my regular Tai Chi teacher about the difference between that and the way I’d been doing Zhan Zhuang; his take was that, because it was a more introductory workshop with a range of students, Xiaowang was having us do an easier version. Which has its virtues: people were really interested in it, they got him to do it some on Saturday morning too, and some people who are in my regular Saturday class asked me if I’d be up for doing Zhan Zhuang with them regularly at the start of class.

That got me in a mindset to do more work, and we had a two and a half hour long lunch break; I was walking past a church on my way back, and it had a labyrinth, so I slowly walked that, and also had a good Tai Chi practice session after that. (Yang instead of Chen, hopefully I left enough break between the two.) And then in the afternoon Xiaowang was talking about Silk Reeling; I was unfortunately kind of sleepy so I didn’t really pay attention during the first half of the afternoon, but during the second half of the afternoon, it was pretty noticeable how my hands were rotating together, kind of like they’re on gears.

And then somebody asked him a question about pushing off from your foot, and he gave a really interesting answer. He pushed off from his foot in a clumsy way and said that doing so is contrary to all Tai Chi principles; and then he talked about a car, where you move from your engine instead of from the tires, with the engine being your Dantian and the tires being your feet.

So that’s pretty clear: I’ve heard Chen folks (including my teacher) talk repeatedly about moving from your Dantian, but that was a very clear statement that yes, that’s the way you should move. And the car analogy is kind of suggestive: the engine doesn’t move the car on its own, power has to go from it through the drive train. So, in the body, the drive train is connections along the inside of your body; I’m already feeling those (I think the coordinated hand rotation is an example of that), I should keep on working on that, and also try to make sure that the direction of force goes in the appropriate direction.

That makes me feel like I understand Chen Tai Chi better, and in particular how it differs from Yang Tai Chi as Damo explains it, because that method of energy generation is completely different than what Damo’s videos talk about. Thinking about it more, though, I guess there’s still one important part I don’t understand in Chen Tai Chi: I still don’t understand what Qi is and how it works in that context? Xiaowang brought up Qi several times in the workshop, it’s definitely a thing in Chen Tai Chi too, but he didn’t talk about it in enough detail for me to really understand it.

Anyways, that was Friday; on Saturday and Sunday we went over the first half or so of the Xinjia first form. I got more reinforcements on the coordinated hand movements; and there were some details that either I hadn’t noticed or that were a little different from how my teacher has been teaching it. Xiaowang did a good job of teaching us that; he clearly has a lot of experience running large workshops!

I had another good practice over lunch on Saturday, but I was again a little tired in the afternoon; on Sunday I rested some and had a pretty good Calm Abiding session, and that felt better. In general, I felt like I was stressing my body, but in productive ways.

Unfortunately, on Monday it seemed like my body might have been going through some less productive stress: I woke up and was clearly sick. I assume I picked something up at the workshop: several people were sneezing and COVID is going around in general, and while I put on a mask halfway through, that still left a day and a half when I wasn’t protected. Or maybe I picked up something before then, or was just a little weak from overexerting myself; who knows. Nothing horrible yet; and I was expecting it to be worse today but actually I felt about the same, maybe even a little better? I’m not even sure what I have; it’s a little unusual, I would normally expect to be a lot more congested by now, whether from COVID or from a regular cold or flu or what. Anyways, hopefully it won’t be too bad, I’ll be annoyed if it means that I have to miss the first Foundations workshop next week.

No new lesson this week, given that, I’m mostly going to be taking things easy.