Good week; sleepier than I would like, Ulli is still having an effect, but manageable. I did the next Tai Chi class in Damo’s course: the straight line section of the form, plus a push hands exercise involving spreading your lower back. I can actually feel my back rearrange in a way that goes out my arms when I do that, so it seemed like something that I might be able to work; I tried it out on Saturday, though, and my push hands partner didn’t feel anything. So that reinforces my feeling that, if I’m going to ever get those to work, then I need to spend significantly more time on that course…

Anyways, on Wednesday I was a little sleepy so I just did some Wu Ji and 40 minutes of breathing exercises from the December workshop. I did a good amount of Tai Chi in the afternoon, though. And similarly on Friday (different Nei Gong but still not all that much for a day off); I finished going through my list of forms, and I’m starting to feel like the Hunyuan 48 and Yang 37 sequences are familiar, at least, even though I’m also getting a lot of the details wrong.

That feeling tired meant that I hadn’t done a long Wu Ji yet this week; so on Sunday I took a little bit of a nap and then tried to get back to doing a 1h15min Wu Ji. And it went quite well, possibly my best Wu Ji session ever? I had a good back stretch starting from the beginning, and I had a decent amount of internal inflation as well. I still need to try to get longer stretches of Calm Abiding during Wu Ji, but even short bits have an effect. (No long sitting Calm Abiding this week, alas.) I’ll try to do a 1h30min session of Wu Ji this week.

In terms of Chen Tai Chi, on Saturday I continued my long silk reeling, this time trying out Shoulder Rotations. I was planning to do it in 5 minute sections (adding to 50 minutes, because there are 10 parts to that one), but my shoulder was feeling a little funny so I dialed it down to 3. And at least I didn’t overstress myself, but also I got very little actual feeling of reeling the silk during that one. Which didn’t shock me too much, that one feels more about loosening up the joints than connecting the body.

Getting back to normal. I had a good sleep on Tuesday night, so I did a 1 hour Wu Ji session on Wednesday, it went fine. And I did some Tai Chi in the afternoon, too. On Friday I hadn’t slept as well; I did a sort of half-assed Spinal Dao Yin, a sleepy Calm Abiding, and no Tai Chi; still, something, better than the previous weeks.

On Saturday I continued to work on long versions of my teacher’s Silk Reeling Exercises. I’ve run out of the ones that clearly seem like good ideas, so I’m just doing the ones I haven’t done before starting in order. Which meant Neck Rotations today; I was thinking I might just do it for 20 minutes instead of 40, I was worried that it might overstress my joints. But then actually the first half of it, where I’m moving my chin from one shoulder to the other, really did feel like it was reeling the silk. So I did that for a full 20 minutes; and then I did 20 minutes of the second half, rotating my head (10 minutes in each direction). My TCM doctor has me do that (though not nearly as long), so I figured either doing it for a while would be extra helpful or a quite bad idea, and I hoped I could tell if it was the latter. And it seemed fine at the time, but then, later on in the class, my lower back started spasming a little; maybe it’s unrelated, but I assume it was caused by one part or the other of the silk reeling, with the head movements affecting my lower back? Nothing too bad, fortunately; annoying at the time but not a big deal, and I’m pretty much better now.

I had a pretty good Calm Abiding on Sunday; not one of my very best but entirely reasonable. I didn’t feel like doing Tai Chi on Sunday but I did some on Monday, we’ll see if I go through all the forms this week.

And I reviewed the last Nei Gong lesson this weekend and the last lesson from Damo’s Tai Chi course earlier in the week, so I’ll start doing new lessons again; today is a Tai Chi day. Though I will say that I’m not doing great at Damo’s form; ideally, I’d spend more time on that. And also ideally I’d get back to doing more of those various standing practices and the Wu Song Shen Fa, I’ve definitely been slacking there.

I was exhausted through Tuesday last week because of the (excellent) new puppy, but starting from Tuesday night my sleep started to get a little better. Yesterday I actually felt pretty awake even compared to pre-puppy days; that was an outlier, but being just manageably tired seems reasonable to expect now. I’m still not going to get back to lessons this week, but I think I might review my last Nei Gong and Tai Chi lessons this week with a goal of restarting lessons next week.

And similarly I didn’t do any long standing this week; I did a 30 minute session and some 20 minute sessions, but that’s it. Though actually those sessions felt surprisingly active inside, so hopefully I’m still in decent shape? My goal this week is to do a 1-hour session; I won’t sweat it if I’m not up for that, though.

In my Saturday Tai Chi class, I started doing the version of Wu Ji that my Chen Tai Chi teacher teaches; not too dissimilar from the Tai Chi Wu Ji in Damo’s class, though some details are different. Nothing too much to report there, though I’m glad I’m doing it. And I got back to doing my long silk reeling, this time spending 40 minutes on Diagonal Circles and Lie Splitting. Decently interesting, definitely worth spending the time on; though I feel like I’m approaching the end of the exercises in that set that will work well in a longer format. We’ll see; I’m planning to go through them all, though if some of them feel like they’re not a good idea then I won’t press them. There’s one in particular that’s a lower back opening exercise that I feel like wasn’t actually great for my back when I tried doing extra of it in the past; we’ll see how that one goes this time, but even if it doesn’t cause problems, I don’t know that it will actually help with developing the silk inside my body.

It was a Sunday Tai Chi week; went pretty well, and one of my fellow students was commenting that my Xin Jia was looking good, glad too see that my effort there is paying off visibly.

Basically nothing to report this week. I was taking it easy on Wednesday and Friday because of aftermath of the cold, and we got a new puppy on Saturday; he’s excellent, but also that meant no Tai Chi on Saturday and it’s basically wrecked my sleep. (And depleted my Jing, based on the way the back of my knees feel.) I haven’t been completely skipping my Nei Gong, but I’ve also only been doing the minimum.

No lesson last week because of the cold, and I won’t do one this week either: I’m going to hunker down and be in maintenance mode until sleep is better. We’ll see whether things get better before the February Foundation course; but if they don’t, they don’t, they will eventually.