Nei Gong Notes, April 15, 2025
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.