Nei Gong Notes, December 10, 2024
Taiji week, covering the third of those 37 static positions, this time on pressing / Ji. If I had more time to spend on Damo’s Taiji class, I would want to put in a decent amount of time on these positions, I think; unfortunately, my time budget lets me work on the form and sometimes go through the Wu Song Shen Fa sets, but not much more, and I think for now I’m right to prioritize the WSSFs over the static postures. Still, something to think about in the future. It was interesting seeing how my body reacted when I tried to push my elbows toward each other; I wouldn’t have expected it to feel like much, but it was a noticeable push, and did lead to some movement elsewhere in my body.
On Wednesday, I did an hour of Wu Ji; it went well, I was more comfortable than the previous week, and while I was kind of hoping it would be over soon during the last 15 minutes, I also was surprised when the bell rang after that. And I didn’t open my eyes the whole time. I did an hour of Calm Abiding after that, and that was a mistake: I was a little sleepy going in (which actually made me a little surprised that the Wu Ji went well), and also my back ached a bit after the Wu Ji, so between those two I didn’t ever really get into any useful state. So, going forward, I’ll avoid that combo; if I feel like doing a decent length sitting session after the longer Wu Ji, I’ll do something moving (maybe the hour-long MCO prep set?), but also maybe I’ll just do something shorter or have lunch and then sit in the afternoon. At any rate, I’m glad the Wu Ji went well, I’ll bump it up to 1:15 next time.
On Wednesday afternoon, I did an hour of Wu Song Shen Fa 4. Nothing particularly special happened then, these hour-long WSSF sessions continue to mostly be a bust for me. (Don’t get me wrong, I still think the WSSF are valuable for me, it’s just not at all clear that doing an hour buys me much compared to doing them for 20 minutes, except maybe for WSSF 3.)
On Friday morning, I had a bad Nei Gong session in the morning, enough so that I stopped during my preparatory Wu Ji (I was planning to do a shoulder stretching session). I was even a little worried that I was feeling sick, but I also thought that maybe I was just too tired, so I ate lunch and took a nap. (I did do a stretching session on Sunday to make up for that.) And I was feeling good enough after that that I decided I’d try out a Calm Abiding session, and it might have been my best one yet? I won’t say that I felt as chill coming out of it as after some of my ones in the summer, but I wasn’t sleepy at all (which is surprising, given the circumstances!), but even though I was, in some sense, alert, it didn’t actually feel like an hour had passed, and I could definitely feel the Qi was building in my body. And my body continued to feel subtly energized over the upcoming days, and sometimes not so subtly: right now as I’m typing this, I feel a tingling in my stomach at the front of the Ming Line, and when I was doing Compressing the Pearl earlier today (which went very well), I was actually feeling a kind of weird Qi-ish tingling in my neck.
As to Chen Tai Chi, I haven’t been talking so much about the regular part of my practice, but it’s been going well. I’ve gone through all the forms every week for the last several weeks, and I’m doing a good job of trying to do more and more of the forms well instead of just trying to keep the basic moves in mind. I’m not actually going through bits of them over and over again (other than the specific new forms that I’m learning), but still, there’s a difference between going through forms seriously versus just going through the motions. I’m particularly focused on the Xin Jia first form now, I’m going to show that form to my teacher the next time he gives me solo advice (which should be in two or three weeks).
My long Silk Reeling exercise this week was Dantian to Wrist Circling In; there was more going on in my hips than normal, and about 35 minutes in, the end of the spiral out on one hand turned in a stretch all the way through to the other hand that helped me maintain a feel of connection there; that’s good, that was the one part in that exercise that had felt like a gap to me.
Also, at some point during the weekend, I was working on the Lao Jia punch, and my body was really spiraling well during that, with a lot more of my body working together to generate the punch.