Nei Gong Notes, September 10, 2024

Good week; nothing individually as good as the Calm Abiding the previous week, and I’ve been a little tired many days, but not super tired, and things feel like they’re going well inside my body? E.g. when doing Wu Ji I’m getting a nice tingly feeling much more quickly than I used to; it feels like my body is making space and getting some Qi inside
Anyways, a Tai Chi week this week; another part of the 37 form, Repulse Monkey into Diagonal Flying. Went fine, and I think I have things okay in my memory.

On Wednesday morning I did Concentration 2, Channel Opening 1 and 2, and a noticeably sleepy Calm Abiding in the morning. In the afternoon I did an hour of Wu Song Shen Fa 2; I’m still not convinced that the hour-long WSSF sessions are pulling their weight, though I’ll probably stick with them until I’ve given all of them an hour? And of course I practiced the parts of the 37 form that I’m up to. I can’t remember what I did on Friday, nothing particularly distinctive. It was still pretty hot last week, so no Chen weapons form practice (because there isn’t shade in front of our house where I practice those), though I did at least go through the Xin Jia first form. So I need to get back to weapons forms, and also to really go through the Hunyuan 48, because I definitely don’t have the last several movements there properly memorized.

On Saturday I had the regular Tai Chi class. I continued to do the Chen Xiaowang version of Zhan Zhuang before it, and I continue to like it. Paying attention to it, it sets up a bit of a stretch in my Yellow Court, presumably because of the hand position? And it gets me a decent feeling of stuff opening up inside; nothing super strong or anything, but it’s noticeable, and I feel like Tai Chi after that is more productive. I led Silk Reeling, which went decently well; one thing I’m noticing while doing Silk Reeling these days is that I’m feeling more in my shoulder than I used to, presumably because of the shoulder opening work. Also on the Silk Reeling note I started writing up notes for the fifth and final class that I’ll be giving on that in a few weeks, with that topic being on connecting the body; I’m pleased how the writeup is going, I think I can give good examples of exercises that connect the hand to the arm to the shoulder to the Dantian, and also ones that show the effects of twisting the hands and what that connects to.

The monthly Tai Chi class was on Sunday; it went really well, I felt like, both during the Pao Chui part and the Xin Jia part, my body was feeling really connected and coherent inside. And we started the Double Dao; once I’ve learned that, I’ll know all the weapons forms that my teacher teaches. I also decided to start following along with the Xin Jia Pao Chui, since we’re starting from the beginning; I’m not going to try to learn it this time, since two new Chen forms (the Hunyuan 48 and the Double Dao) is enough, but hopefully following along will give me a leg up when I do try to actually learn it the next time we restart it. And when I got home it was cool enough that I went through half of my weapons forms, so hopefully I’ll be able to go through them all this week. And fortunately none of them were disastrous.

This morning my Concentration 2 practice was better than normal, about halfway through my mind started feeling a bit quieter? There was still a bunch of chatter going on, it wasn’t like my concentration was actually good or anything, but at least the chatter wasn’t as loud?