This week was a Tai Chi lesson week; Step Back to Ride the Tiger, a short one.

Now I’ve finished a full week of my no work schedule; a little unusual because my wife was out of town this week, but I don’t think that significantly affected the amount of Nei Gong and Tai Chi that I did. It’s gone well: I was hoping to spend significant amounts of time on Nei Gong, Tai Chi, and programming, and I’ve figured out a rhythm that’s allowed all of that to happen. And my goal was to spend at least two hours a day doing Nei Gong (except for Saturdays); that’s actually been surprisingly easy, I’ve probably gone beyond that more often than not?

One thing I wanted to do was set up a better stretching routine at the start. After trying a few videos, I decided I liked the Preparatory Stretching set from the Stretching Videos class in the IAA library. It’s about 20 minutes long, which is a little longer than I was hoping for, and I have tried paring it down a bit on some days when timing has been tight, but actually I really like the way my body feels after doing that, so I might just stick with it for the time being?

Anyways, here’s what I’ve been doing the various days; I didn’t write down the stretching details, you can assume that I did some form of that every day, and the above video most of the days:

Wednesday: I reviewed the multi-step Spine Waves sequence, and I did someSan Dan Tian 3, a bit of bellows breathing, and an hour of somewhat sleepy Calm Abiding. I’m starting to feel in Calm Abiding that I’m more tuned into the Qi part of my body than the standard physical part of my body, so that’s interesting. (I mean, I still think whatever I’m tuned into is physical, it’s just a different layer of my body than I’m used to tuning into.)

Thursday: 1h15m Wu Ji; it would have been nice to have gone longer. And some box breathing, and Anchoring the Breath. I’ve been trying to work in a bit of box breathing most days, including some times when I’m just sitting around and watching a movie or something. In my Tai Chi session, I did WSSF 3, the four energy drill, and the rest of my forms for that week. My Xin Jia feels good; in WSSF 3, I was noticing that my downward hand was generating an upward pull; I’m honestly not sure if that’s a good thing given the goal of that exercise, it might be effects from my Silk Reeling having an inappropriate affect on that particular exercise? I’ll play around with it some next time and probably ask on Discord.

Friday: long spine waves, San Dantian Gong 3, 1h Calm Abiding. That latter was super interesting; unfortunately interrupted twice by dogs, and also I had a hard stop, but there was lots of stuff going on inside. I wasn’t even actively Songing my mind all that much, but my body kept on physically Songing on its own and popping bits of energy out in various places; if I’d had more time / fewer interruptions it would have been my strongest Calm Abiding session, I’m fairly sure, and even so it was up there. Another random fact that’s potentially relevant: beside the dog walk, I ended up walking a little over three miles dropping off my car and picking it up again, maybe that affected things?

Saturday: mostly my standard Chen Tai Chi class, though I didn’t do standing or a long Silk Reeling at the beginning like normal, because I showed up late so my dogs weren’t alone as long. And my Saturday standard of Advanced Dantian Gong and some Dragon Dao Yins.

Sunday: 1h Wu Ji; I made it fine but 2h would have been quite tough – is it random chance, stance width, time of day, how much sleep I’d gotten? (Today’s nap was interrupted, and today I did the Wu Ji at around noon, FWIW.) San Dantian Gong 3 with 10 minute intervals; Anchoring the Breath, which I feel like hasn’t gone great the last couple of times I’ve done it. And I did half of my Tai Chi forms.

Monday: I went through another spine video (the physical/spine version of Ji Ben 4), did SDTG3, and 1h Calm Abiding. (Awake but not super strong; I forgot to tune into the Qi layer of my body, maybe that would have made a difference.)

Tuesday: I finished the rest of my Tai Chi forms, and did WSSF 1 and 2. My feet were noticeably more tingly than normal during the WSSF; not sure what that means, but hopefully something’s opening up in a useful way? And the form work is pointing out that I’m kind of on the edge of my three new forms (the Yang 37, the Hunyuan 48, and the Chen Double Dao); I should work on the details of those. Hopefully on weeks when I’m getting in three decent Tai Chi sessions, I’ll go through everything once in the first two and in the third one I can focus more on details; but still, finding time for the details of three is going to be a bit of a challenge. (Though I have been making special time for the Hunyuan 48 on Thursday evenings.) As to Nei Gong, I did 1h30m of Wu Ji; if we’re keeping track of variables, it was in the middle of the afternoon, after a not-great nap, honestly I was surprised it started out well. It did start out well, but also my back ached enough in the second hour that I decided not to push it to the full two hours. I think my back positioning was okay; maybe a wider stance would have helped, maybe I just need to build up more strength in my back / normalize that, maybe I’m wrong about my back positioning being okay? And I did a bit of box breathing and the Water Hui Chun.

Nei Gong lesson this week, San Dantian Gong 3. I actually haven’t practiced it outside of the lesson, I should do that. I was thinking that I might take today off from new lessons, because I hadn’t done a ton of practice of the latest Tai Chi lesson, but that lesson was really short so just doing it a little is okay? And hopefully with my new schedule I should be able to go through San Dantian Gong 3 enough times over the course of the week that I won’t feel like I’m too far behind…

On Wednesday, I did the Spinal Dao Yin, and a 1h15m Calm Abiding. Not as much Tai Chi as normal on a Wednesday, though, because of unusual work stuff. And on Friday, I finally did a 2h Wu Ji; I went in not expecting that at all, because it had been like pulling teeth even doing an hour of Wu Ji, but I was nice and rested, and my base felt really solid right from the beginning, so it was going really well; I definitely wasn’t stopping after an hour, and actually two hours was totally fine. Though because of that and a bit of work stuff, not much Tai Chi then either; I don’t think I did my weapons at all during the week?

On Saturday I got back to my long Silk Reeling exercises, with the Peng / Cai energy drill. And that turned out to be pretty interesting: during the Peng part, I could feel the Peng moving up my body as I sunk (I think maybe the four energy drill has been making that stronger), and during the Cai part, I could feel the rotating pull continuing down my arms after the initial quick change of direction.

It was a Sunday Tai Chi week; I definitely have some catching up to do with the Double Dao. And that ate into my Nei Gong time some, too (well, that plus I wanted to watch some of the Warriors/Clippers game; super exciting, as it turned out), so I didn’t do as long a Calm Abiding as I would have liked.

And now I’m retired, so longer Nei Gong every day except for Saturday (I mean, I won’t be dogmatic, exceptions will happen, but that’s the default), and I’ll do my (non-class) Tai Chi practice on Sunday / Tuesday / Thursday instead of Sunday / Wednesday / Friday. On Monday, I went through a Sinew Work Principles zoom class; theory that I’d heard before but the initial set of exercises made it more concrete, and then it taught the Golden Orb in a way that felt pretty different than I’d seen it before; I’d been thinking of the Dao Yins as exercises to stretch out and purge stagnant Qi, but I guess I should tihnk of them as ways to get good Qi into my huang / sinews / muscles.

And today I did an hour of Wu Ji; went great, I could have gone longer, but the timing for the day worked out better with only an hour. Also, I followed along with a stretching video at the start, looking for a better stretching routine; this one won’t be it, though. And I did two things after the Wu Ji, instead of just one: some Compressing the Pearl and some breathing exercises. First time in a while that I’d done the latter, but I still think they’re a good idea; I should probably throw in 5 minutes of Yin Yang breathing during random free moments in my day, if I’m serious about improving my breathing.

And solid Tai Chi practice today, too: I did my long weapons, 20 minutes each of WSSF1/2, and a decent amount of empty hand form practice.

A Taiji lesson this week, going a little farther in the form, adding in Up to Seven Stars. Unfortunately, on Tuesday night my sleep was really bad (maybe worrying about a doctor’s appointment, maybe worrying about quitting my job, I can’t remember); on Wednesday I was surprised that I wasn’t actually feeling too bad so I did an hour of arm stretch, but by the afternoon, I was clearly going downhill. So I took it easy the rest of the week; I did go to my Chen Tai Chi class on Saturday but I only did the minimum there (but we did finish the Hunyuan 48, so that’s neat). I got back to practice at the start of the week, hopefully this week will go better, though actually my sleep has been a little off all week, for reasons that aren’t clear to me.

And unfortunately the nose doctor wasn’t convinced that surgery would fix things, so he said I should make an appointment with a sleep doctor first, and get tested and see how a CPAP goes. Which I honestly can’t argue with: I’ve been putting it off for a while but I don’t have a good reason to do that, there’s a reasonable chance it could make a big difference.

I’ll be done with work after this week; I’ve been thinking about what to spend my expanded Nei Gong time on. I’m planning to keep Saturday as is, because I’m doing so much Chen Tai Chi then, so the only Nei Gong then will be Advanced Dantian Gong and the Dragon Dao Yins. But I’m hoping to do two hours a day, maybe a little more, on the other days. I’ll look for a somewhat longer stretching set (10-15 minutes, as opposed to the 5-10 minutes I do now on my longer days); my current idea other than that is that, on three days a week, I’ll do an hour (or more) of Calm Abiding and on the other three days, I’ll do an hour (or more, I’ll try to do two hours once a week) of Wu Ji. And in terms of foundational stuff, I want to work on my spine and I want to work on my breathing, so I’ll do each of those three days a week, maybe for half hour sessions. (Probably defaulting to breathing on the long Wu Ji days and spine work on the Calm Abiding days; I’ll certainly do some Wu Ji as part of the spine work, just not long enough to really count.) And then (assuming I don’t count the stretching time) that gives me another half hour a day; I’ll leave that unplanned, so I can use it for whatever is in the latest Nei Gong lesson I’ve gone through or stuff from the Foundations course (Ji Bens, for example) or whatever suits my fancy.

The main thing that that leaves out is the Hui Chuns, and I actually think that’s bad, I’d like to do Water once (or even twice) a week and Earth once a week. For now, I’ll leave that open as to how to fit that in: maybe I’ll have days when I feel like doing something extra, maybe it’ll take up two of the open slots, maybe I’ll replace one of the long Wu Ji sessions and one of the long Calm Abiding sessions?

I’ll ask Rick for advice at the workshop in a couple of weeks. There’s definitely other stuff that I want to work on, but I can’t work on everything. Part of me thinks I should do an hour of Wu Ji every day, but it’s not clear where to take the time for that from; maybe trade one of the hours of Calm Abiding for an hour of Wu Ji, maybe don’t work on both breathing and my spine? For that matter, maybe I should pick one of breathing and my spine and work on it every day until I’ve made significant progress there; who knows.

And of course who knows what my energy levels will let me do. I certainly haven’t been thrilled with the number of bad weeks I’ve had over the last month and a half; though at least when I get back to Nei Gong, my insides still feel decently active.

A Nei Gong lesson week, San Dantian Gong 2. I don’t have much to say about it, I still don’t really have much of a feeling for what I’m supposed to be getting out of that one. I’ll keep on doing it occasionally (and fortunately I think I was wrong about that messing with my sleep), but right now I feel like it’ll drop out of the rotation pretty soon.

On Wednesday I had pretty good Tai Chi practice: I finished my Chen forms, and I spent time on the Taiji Mingmen exercise, WSSF 1, and the four energies exercise. Nei Gong wasn’t so great: I fully intended to do 2 hours of Wu Ji but I only lasted an hour. I’m honestly not sure what was going on there, and how much was physical versus mental; certainly more was mental than I’d like. I’ll keep on plugging away at that, hopefully I’ll get back to 2 hours pretty soon, it was right within reach a month ago. And I did the Nei Gong Mingmen exercise for my seated exercise that day; a little iffy, I think both of those are evidence that I need to work on mental Song. So, more evidence that spending more time on Calm Abiding would be good; some notes on finding time for that below.

On Friday I worked on the other challenge that I’ve been setting myself, the 1 hour arm stretch; didn’t feel great at the start but then it stopped getting worse and kind of normalized, and ended up just fine. (And yeah, it’s a little weird that, at least this week, I actually found 1 hour of Wu Ji harder than 1 hour of holding my arms out to the side.)

My Chen Tai Chi teacher reviewed my Xinjia form on Saturday; the main takeaway there is that I should find even more spiraling connections in the form. Which makes me continue to think that that’s a good form for me to work on! And in my push hands practice, I tried doing it slower, to see if I could get more of the Peng-via-sinking feeling from the four energies exercise; some success, but I definitely have more to work on there.

Sunday’s practice was fine; went through half the Chen weapons and reviewed Xin Jia, and for Nei Gong I did San Dantian Gong with 10 minute intervals and a sleepy Calm Abiding.

I don’t normally mention the details of what I do for Nei Gong on M/W/F/Sat because my practice is shorter those days, but I will say: even though I only did 20 minutes of Wu Ji on Monday, it was surprisingly powerful. Not sure what was going on there but I’ll take it.

Also on Monday I gave notice at my job. So I’ll have more time to do Nei Gong and Tai Chi starting in a couple of weeks! And I really am planning to spend more time on Nei Gong, hopefully I’ll manage at least two hours a day every day other than Saturdays. I’m looking forward to have more time to spend on foundational stuff; I should spend some time making a list of what to focus on first (and I should ask Rick for advice at the workshop later this month), but certainly spending more time on Calm Abiding will be one of those things. Hopefully I’ll have some more time to spend on Tai Chi too, but I’m less sure of that, the amount of time on that might stay the same. I put up some more notes about my thinking about all that on my main blog.