Nei Gong Notes: November 19, 2024
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.