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.