Most of the last week was the workshop. Lots of good stuff; and my body was feeling like it had had a pretty good workout by the end of it!

Which meant that I still felt what I thought was pleasantly exhausted (in a kind of unusual, more internal way) on Sunday; unfortunately, on Monday, I crashed hard at my normal nap time, and I’m feeling worse today. Not sure if I came down with something in the airport or if the lack of sleep Saturday night (caused by a flight getting me home at 1am and my dogs waking me up at a normal time) was too much sleep debt, or what; at any rate, I’m taking it easy now, certainly not doing a lesson tonight. (I did at least get a decent amount of Tai Chi in on Sunday, plus a bit of Calm Abiding.)

And I have some thinking to do about how to change my practice mix in light of the workshop. Probably work in a bit more seated gathering / thickening, and some occasional Microcosmic Orbit attempts? And I should spend more time doing active standing work with my mind inside my body, using it in different ways.

This week’s lesson was 37 Form – Full Sequence. A good one for a short week, since it’s just front and back videos of the sequence, so there’s nothing new I need to learn. And I also watched a new interview with Damo on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday, I had a short practice, only 30m Wu Ji and 25m Full Moon: partly that was me getting distracted and partly it was needing time to pack for the workshop. Though actually the Wu Ji started out amazing; but then my brother called and I needed to talk to him, and when I got back to it, the magic was going. I can’t even remember any more exactly how it was amazing, but something really interesting was going on in my body, hopefully that will come back…

Thursday was a travel day; I did 20m of Wu Ji and a bit of Yin Yang breathing on the plane.

And I’ve been at the workshop since then. I’m not going to write about the details of that, though maybe next week I’ll write about what changes to my practice routine I might make in response to the workshop? We’ll see.

A Nei Gong lesson this week, Side Channel Rolling; another Hunyuan practice. Pleasant enough, gets my body moving.

Wednesday: 1h50m Wu Ji. I would have done a full 2 hours (it was getting plenty annoying, but I would have lasted), but people came early to look at work that was going to be done on my deck.

Thursday: Tai Chi in the morning. I reviewed the 37 Form Opening Sequence; went through the Jian form a few times; did 20m Taiyi Standing, 20m WSSF1; went through the 37 Form a few times. I’m starting to feel a little good about it: tons of details wrong, but there are also parts that feel good inside my body, and also I’m at the state in the form where it doesn’t feel so long. In, I did a slightly abbreviated Spinal Dao Yin and 45m Calm Abiding. In the evening I reviewed the Hunyuan 48 and listened to IAA pod number 6. I also watched Chen Qingzhou’s Jian video; I’ve got it largely correct, though I think a few details are wrong. I think we’ll start that soon in the Saturday class, so I don’t necessarily have to worry too much about getting the details from the video?

Friday: 1h Dantian Gong, 20m Thickening the Qi, 20m Golden Orb. Golden Orb was probably more effective than when I did it without the thickening, but still, I don’t think it was as effective as when following along in the Zoom video? So I should follow that along again next time. And 30m breathing practice (Dry Sighing, Yin Yang Breathing). Again, good Dantian Gong, it feels like it’s starting to have an effect around my tailbone, that’ll probably be useful for when I get back to working on the Microcosmic Orbit.

Saturday: I needed extra sleep, so I didn’t do my regular Advanced Dantian Gong or long Silk Reeling. I did 20m Zhan Zhuang, and I went through the Dragons, though; and of course there was the regular Tai Chi class. And I went through half my weapons so I don’t have to do that on Sunday.

Sunday: 25m of Hunyuan stuff (side channels, belt). Sunday Tai Chi class. I did a bit of Bellows Breathing in the afternoon, but I was too sleepy for it to go well; I was planning to go into Scholar Breathing but I cut it short.

Monday: 1h Wu Ji, 15 minutes Side Channel Rolling, 40m Kidney Hui Chun

Tuesday: 20m each WSSF 2/3; and finished almost all my Tai Chi forms. Still not feeling WSSF 2 very strongly… And I went through the Du Stretch video (I should probably do that more regularly), did some full moon practice, and I did the Bellows Breathing / Scholar Breathing / Calm Abiding that I didn’t manage on Sunday.

The big thing this week is that the 9 day Nei Gong retreat starts on Friday. So I might cut my practice short on Wednesday to make sure I can pack, and Thursday will be a travel day, and I won’t be giving detailed reports on the workshop. Fortunately, the lesson for today is just a review of the Yang 37, so it’s not really adding anything particularly new, so I can go through that lesson like normal.

This week was a Tai Chi lesson; finished the 37 form, yay! Though honestly I am not confident of a whole bunch of stuff in the entire second half of the form, and I’m sure there are details in the first half that I’m getting wrong, too. I don’t want to pause my progress in the course while I go through the whole thing again (though, honestly, that might actually not be the worst idea?); I think I’ll probably try to do what I’m doing with the Hunyuan 48, which is to go back to the beginning and review a section a week, and, if I feel iffy about previous sections that I’ve reviewed, go over those again as well; the question then is when I’ll find time for that. Maybe I can add it into my Thursday evening study? Or maybe I can add it into Tuesday / Thursday mornings? On weeks when I’ve made it through all my forms on Sunday / Tuesday, adding it into Thursday morning makes sense, I think; would be nice if that happened in a higher percentage of weeks, though…

Anyways:

Wednesday: I did 1h Wu Ji; it felt like I had weird line running around my waist, at first I was worried something was inappropriately compressing vertically but when I tried stretching my torso out more, I don’t think that was the case? And I did 15 min Coiling Snake + Wu Ji; I felt a much stronger connection to my Lao Gong when doing that than normal, not sure what’s going on there. And 35m of breathing exercises; I’ve been slacking on those but I still think they’re an area where I need to build my foundations up more, not sure what to do about that…

Thursday: 20m Taiyi standing; it didn’t feel like much at the start but by the end I was getting a noticeable Peng going down that led into a release that was at least somewhat useful, I think? And 20m of WSSF1; it felt significantly stronger than normal from the start, there wasn’t necessarily a strong release from my foot but at least more stuff moving through the body / interacting with the body than I’m used to. (So maybe that combination of exercises is good?) And I finished going through my forms for the week. As to Nei Gong, I did 20m Wu Ji, I rewatched the Coiling Snake video (one thing I forgot was to push from the spine into the arms, don’t pull from the arms) and the Golden Orb video, and I had 1h10m of good Calm Abiding. In the evening, I reviewed a section of the Hunyuan 48, and I listened to the first four sections of the new Audio Guide to Nei Gong; nothing super surprising there, I’d probably get more out of rereading the Complete Guide. (But I don’t know that that’s a high priority, either.)

Friday: 1h Dantian Gong, 20m Golden Orb, 30m Anchoring the Breath. The Dantian Gong was super powerful, lots of stuff building up; the Golden Orb didn’t feel like it was having a significant effect on my body, though. (Much less than when I watched the Foundations workshop on that.) I think what I was missing was a step to thicken the Qi, so I’ll look for an exercise to work in there. Also, I’ve been noticing recently that I’m getting more stretchy connectivity in my lower back, that was certainly clear today.

Saturday: 40m Advanced Dantian Gong; it was good, I felt some swallowing of Qi by my abdomen towards the end. I did 20m of the Qingzhou standing exercise; I did feel my Baihui being a little more active, but still, not enough of an effect for me to want to keep on doing that, so I’ll switch to something else for my Saturday pre-Tai-Chi-class standing exercise. (Probably traditional Zhan Zhuang.) For my long silk reeling exercise, I did a long version of Chest and Abdomen Folding; there wasn’t anything interesting going on there, which wasn’t a big surprise. In the class, we finished the Lao Jia spear, yay; there were a bunch of details that I’d been getting wrong over the last quarter, good to have that firmed up. And I went through the Dragon Dao Yins after class.

Sunday: 20m Wu Ji, 1h of Bellows Breathing / Scholar Breathing / Calm Abiding. Nothing much to report there, no hints of Martial Breathing arising. And I went through a decent number of my Tai Chi forms.

Monday: 1h Wu Ji, and I reviewed the Thickening the Qi lesson and the Bellows Breathing lesson. The Thickening the Qi lesson was a good fit for what I’d been seeing in that Foundations lecture, so hopefully doing Dantian Gong + Thickening the Qi + Golden Orb will make the Golden Orb much more useful.

Tuesday: 20m of the Four Energies drill, and 20m of WSSF3; it’s interesting in the latter how the energy splits and goes both to the leg and to the arm, it’s like the way, when you do the Peng in the Four Energies drill, the sinking leads to expansion. (Not 100% sure if it’s all that mechanism or not.) And I finished going through my forms for the week, yay, nice to have that done on Tuesday. In the afternoon I did 20m Wu Ji, and I watched the Drawing Down Heaven Dao Yin video; not necessarily planning to spend more time on that Dao Yin, if I’m going to work on that then there’s a Year 2 set of lessons that seem like an evolution of it, I think it’s the Taiyi Hundun ones, so if I want to work on opening that channel then I should probably do it that way. And I had a good 1h10m Calm Abiding session; I should really start setting my timer for a longer time instead of saying “I’ll set it for an hour and if it goes well I’ll keep on going”, because I don’t end up going all that much longer than an hour.