Nei Gong Notes: January 28, 2025
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.