Nei Gong Notes, April 8, 2025

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.