It was a Nei Gong week, with the lesson being on Stretching for Lotus. Not going to spend much time on that: most of the stretches there are quite easy for me, and while I do definitely need work on my hamstrings, I don’t know that there’s anything super special about this set for that purpose. I did do the set again on Wednesday, and then did my Calm Abiding practice in full lotus; I stopped after about 40 minutes, the knee of my outside leg was hurting in a way that felt a little dangerous? Which relates to one part of the stretch set, where he said to put a foot high up on the opposite leg while doing a certain twist, because it would stress your knee if your foot was too far down; I imagine that’s what was happening to me, because my foot had slipped decently far down my thigh. So that’s something to work on, and maybe the stretching set would be useful for that if full lotus becomes a priority; but I also feel like having it basically be fine for over 30 minutes is good enough for me now.

Also on Wednesday I did 15 minutes of the arm stretch exercise I learned from Rick; still chipping away at that, still thinking I should do it a little more often. And I did a decent amount of Calm Abiding during Wu Ji on other days in the week; went pretty well (not that they were long Wu Ji practices), though I’m a little worried that it might cause sleep problems? Also I saw my allergist, and she said my allergies weren’t getting worse, I just had had a sinus infection for a few months; she started me on a medicine, it’s helping with my sinus cavity, though my sleep hasn’t improved the way I hoped, I’m not quite sure what’s going on there.

On Saturday I did 45 minutes of the Oblique Circles silk reeling form. It wasn’t super interesting in the single hand version: maybe a bit of a feeling of stretching out a sheet in front of my body, but that’s about it. The two hands version was rather more interesting, though: the bottom hand stretched out the sheet and then, once it got to the front of my Kua, the rotation of the bottom hand pulled my top hand over. Spear practice on Saturday was pleasant, too: the weapon is starting to feel good in my hand, I think my body is connecting with it more.

A good Calm Abiding practice on Sunday: 60 minutes without dozing, and while I didn’t get into a super chill state, I did manage to reliably get quickly back into an expansively abiding state with my mind when I got distracted.

Another Foundations class this weekend; I’m looking forward to that, I just hope that my sleep cooperates.

A Tai Chi lesson week, covering Golden Rooster and the kicks that follow that. Seems straightforward enough.

On Wednesday morning I watched the fourth Uluwatu Foundations video; nice to get in an almost three hour session. And on Sunday I watched a theory video about the Dantian that was added to that series even though it wasn’t from the Uluwatu class; I don’t know that there was any individual bit that I hadn’t seen before but it was a useful reminder of the mental state I should try to get into. Probably worth a rewatch in a month or so? Good to be all caught up with Foundations videos before the next course in a week and a half.

At the start of my Saturday Tai Chi class I did 30 minutes of Zhan Zhuang and then continued my series of focusing on one Silk Reeling exercise, this time Waist Turning and Punching. Nothing particularly special that happened this time as I kept on doing it; my Yongquan was buzzing but I think that’s the Zhan Zhuang setting things up. My punching did feel unusually solid, but it felt that way right from the start, it wasn’t from the repetition. Nice feeling of progress, though, I wonder what led to that? One other thing I noticed during the class: I’d recently been paying attention to the expansion in my arms during Reverse with Spiraling Forearms, but there’s also expansion in my Kua, I should pay attention to both expansions simultaneously.

We had Sunday Tai Chi class this week as well. I decided to do some Zhan Zhuang at the start of it as well, and in between my showing up early and the class not getting started until a bit after the official start time, that ended up as a 50 minute session. Which was my longest Zhan Zhuang session, I kind of wish the class hadn’t started for another 10 minutes so I could have put in a full hour; and I was pretty surprised that it had been 50 minutes, I knew it had been a while but it felt more like 40. For both of these sessions, I did a sort of medium height Zhan Zhuang – not the low version that Chen Xiaowang was showing us, but also at the height that my arms were naturally reaching to, so they felt internally supported, instead of having my arms be straight ahead.

We were going over a bit of the Lao Jia first form and some interesting connections came up between my shoulder and hip during the section from Dantian Change to White Goose Displays the Wings; I should pay attention to that. (In that section, but probably in the whole form.) Also I did a bit of push hands practice with somebody who was having me always be on his center, pointing out whenever I slipped of, I should try that more.

Good week. My energy levels are doing better than they have been over the last few months; not sure if it’s that I’m managing my sleep better or if it’s because of the new herbs from my TCM doctor or what, but it doesn’t feel like a random improvement. There’s definitely room for further improvement, and who knows how sustained this will be, but still, yay for good signs.

On Tuesday night I did Shui Gong 2 for the first time in probably over a year; it actually went fine, it didn’t mess up my sleep, and it might even have helped my sleep? I haven’t done it since then, but I’ll definitely want to give that another try.

I did the third Uluwatu session on Wednesday; nice to have a session where I’m not doing my regular stuff and that’s a bit longer than my historical norm. I noticed that my stomach really wanted to move when I was doing Dantian Gong during tat session; another sign that my development is going well. There was a lecture in part of it, and one thing that he said was that, in the internal arts, the body moves in response to the hands, and he noted that this isn’t just a Qi Gong / Nei Gong thing, it applies in Tai Chi too. Which made me think I should try it in Tai Chi, maybe even Chen Tai Chi despite the Chen claim that everything comes from the Dantian: in the Xin Jia form in particular, moves frequently start out with some sort of hand movement, so maybe this is related to that?

I did try that out later in the work. And it does feel like this is relevant, especially in Xin Jia but also in some places in Lao Jia. (It’s less clear to me in Hunyuan.) Basically, I’d move my hand, it would set up tension inside my body somewhere, and responding to that tension would cause my body to move appropriately. I’m honestly not sure if, by doing things that way, I’m doing Chen Tai Chi wrong, or if the sequence is that the hand gives direction to the Dantian and then the Dantian still kicks off the movement or if different people feel differently about whether the Dantian is the source of everything or just has an important guiding force; though Chen Xiaowang is the foremost Xin Jia practitioner in the world and he was pretty clear that movement should come from the Dantian…

At any rate, an interesting exercise. And in general Tai Chi was interesting this week; e.g. when I was doing Jian practice, I was starting to get a feeling along the blade of the Jian, so hopefully I’m making progress there too. I did try out Damo’s Returning Force push hands exercise with my push hands partner on Saturday, and that didn’t work at all; not sure how much that’s because I haven’t been doing his push hands exercises in general and how much is those exercises potentially being at a higher level than it’s reasonable to have attained at that point in the program: they look to me like they’re pretty advanced but maybe if I’d found somebody to do them regularly with then they’d work out fine?

On Sunday, I did an hour of Wu Ji; I got a really strong stretch along my spine, and there was other stuff going on inside too, it might have been the best Wu Ji session I’ve ever had? (At least at a physical level; mentally I was a little more distracted than I would like.) And then I did an hour of Calm Abiding; it honestly didn’t go great, I wasn’t too sleepy but I also didn’t do a great job of relaxing my mind. And my back hurt more than it normally does when I’m doing that; nothing awful but enough to be a distraction, presumably it’s a side effect of how the Wu Ji session was tugging at my spine.

I figured that the right way to work on my mental distractions during Wu Ji was to try to get my mind in a Calm Abiding mode. So I tried that during a (much shorter) Wu Ji session on Monday evening, and honestly it went great: during the session, there was a lot more expansion inside and my mind was noticeably relaxed (I actually went a little longer than I intended because I lost track of my meditation timer going off), and my back and torso felt actively good during the evening. And I did that again today; not quite as dramatic, but it still felt good. So I’m definitely going to stick with that.

And I also felt like I’d done a good job of mixing things up during Nei Gong. I forgot to mention above this week’s lesson, which was another Channel Opening one; not dramatic, but probably a little bit of opening? Though also my sleep was a little iffy in ways that might have been related to that; a Wood Wu Xing session fixed that, though. And I did one or two sessions of stretching my arms from the insides.