Last Tuesday’s lesson was Taiji Standing 4 – Push. Which is actually good timing – I’d been vaguely wondering if I should spend more time on the Taji Standing exercises, and some of the general discussion in that lesson combined with some discussion in the IAA forum makes me think that it’s worth experimenting with: it seems like those exercises might be a useful complement to exercises that actually move Jin? So I think I’d like to find time on those; the next question is when / how, though, because there aren’t any exercises that I want to dial back on…

On Wednesday, I did 90m of Wu Ji; the last 15 minutes was hard but I made it. And 30m of the Full Moon practice.

Thursday was another good Tai Chi morning, and actually a good practice day in general. I reviewed the Ba Men 2 – Release video, I went through the Chen Jian form 5 times, I did 20 minutes each of Taiji Standing 4 and Wu Song Shen Fa 3, I went through the Yang 37 form 3 times alone and 2 times with the video, and I had one good-feeling round of the Xin Jia first form. And in the afternoon I did an hour of the Yellow Court stretch, since I’d heard that Rick was mentioning that and it had been a while since I’d done it; an hour of Calm Abiding (probably the time doing that where I’ve felt most like I was hanging out in my body; not as strong a Song as I’ve gotten before but the hanging out part is definitely progress); and 20m of Full Moon. And I felt good after practice, not sure what all contributed to that but yay. And I reviewed the Hunyuan 48 in the evening.

On Friday, I decided I should experiment with doing some of the Nei Gong in the morning, to avoid after-nap weirdness. (My naps have gotten sounder recently, so I’m a little logy when I wake up.) And I think I should probably stretch more too – I was doing that more regularly at the start of my maybe-retirement schedule, and it felt good, but I’ve been slacking on that as well. Dogs kept me up for a while in the previous night (though I slept soundly after that) so I wasn’t 100%, but I did 20m stretching and 1h of Wu Ji in the morning, and 1h of Dantian Gong plus thickening in the afternoon. I had good Shen Up during that hour, my attention felt really clear, my body was inflating more than normal at the start of the DTG.

On Saturday, I did 30 minutes of Zhan Zhuang; I felt like I was doing an okay job of turning sinking into expansion, maybe because of the four energies practice? And my Chen teacher reviewed my Jian, I got some useful advice out of that. Unfortunately, that (plus the regular Chen Saturday class stuff) was all I did – one of my dogs was really worked up overnight so my sleep was crap.

Sunday was the once-a-month extra Chen class. I did 20 minutes of Zhan Zhuang before the start; a little sleepy so I chickened out, but actually it was pretty good, and I noticed during class that my lower spine was feeling better than normal, like it wanted to push up some, so maybe my body is starting to learn to keep the Ming Men full? That would be really useful if it is the case. And I did a little bit of breathing practice; some just sitting and watching (and mostly notice that I was surprisingly tense), and some box breathing.

On Monday, I went through the Spine Spa video. I wasn’t really looking forward to that: was spending two hours on that the right thing to do? But past me had thought that I should do that once a month or so, so I gave it another shot. And I’ll chalk that up as a win for past me, glad I did that, I’ve now set up a recurring reminder for that. The rotating the cage bit felt surprisingly strong; maybe that’s because of the Dantian pulsing that we did before that, I’m not sure, I’ll have to try out the Dantian pulsing in other similar contexts. And the bit about pulling with your pinkies was pretty interesting, there’s one bit in the middle of my spine that I kept on coming back to while doing that, hopefully I got that a bit unstuck but who knows.

I’m visiting my parents the rest of the week, so today was a travel day. I did sit on the plane for about 50 minutes and did a decent job of getting my mind in my body again, but I did almost no Song. But I’ll still treat that as a victory, doing anything like that on an economy-class seat in a plane is hard.

I feel good about the week – that’s now a few good Tai Chi days in a row, and there were some good signs over on the Nei Gong side, too. We’l see how much practice I do this week, but visiting my parents is important, so if the answer is “not much”, that’s fine. Not sure what was up with my younger dog’s sleep patterns at the end of the week, hopefully that was a transient thing, I’ve got enough sleep/fatigue issues that I don’t need my dog making it worse. (He was getting better on Sunday and Monday night, though, so I’ll be optimistic.)

A Nei Gong lesson week, on Dan Tian Governance. I didn’t really get that one; feels like something to return to if I start making progress with Scholar / Martial Breathing.

Anyways, the middle of the week was good (as Tuesday had been); I think it’s because sleep was going better? I had a hypothesis there that something I was doing was getting me to breathe more deeply with my diaphragm while sleeping and that was helping things (not fixing things, but maybe if I could work on that, it would); unfortunately, my sleep and energy levels were back to a so-so level after that, so maybe it’s just random variation. I do want to push on that, though, I’m no longer as convinced as I was that obstructive sleep apnea is all that’s going on.

Anyways, on Wednesday I did 1h Wu Ji, 1h Dantian Gong plus Thickening the Qi. Both went well – 1h was totally fine for the Wu Ji, my mind felt back in shape for the first time since I got a little sick after the workshop, and my body is aching in ways that, if I’m optimistic, might mean that things are expanding inside? And my body was doing some interesting “bump bump bump” movements during the DTG instead of letting my hands move smoothly.

On Thursday, I had another good Tai Chi day: I reviewed the Grasping the Sparrow’s Tail lesson(though I should probably go back to review the Ba Men lesson); did Jian form 6 times; 20m each Taiyi Standing and WSSF2; went through 37 form 4 times (once with video, three on my own); and the Lao Jia first form three times. For Nei Gong, I did 1h of Spine / Shoulder Dao Yin and 45m Calm Abiding. In the evening, I reviewed the 48 form, watched the Qi Connects Body lecture in the Foundations set, and skimmed a couple more sections of the Audio Guide.

On Friday we had friends over, so not much time for Nei Gong: 20m Wu Ji, 15m breathing exercises, but that’s all.

On Saturday I lead Silk Reeling in my Chen Tai Chi class, and did the other normal stuff in that class; for Nei Gong I did 10m Pushing the Tides, 20m Dragons, and 30m ADTG.

On Sunday, I rewatched Lotus Dao Yin video and I did 1h Bellows Breathing / Scholar attempt / Calm Abiding. That latter did not go well; what with the workshop there had been a several week gap since the last time I tried it, and that turned out to be enough that I didn’t feel confident that I was doing the exercises correctly. So I might have to review those videos again. (Or, of course, decide to stop pushing on that.) And I did half my Tai Chi forms.

On Monday, I did 1h Wu Ji, 35m breathing exercises. A little disappointing: I was hoping to do 90m of Wu Ji but, for whatever reason, I didn’t. This is actually a theme: the attentive reader will notice that my Nei Gong times have almost never added up to two hours since the workshop, even though that’s my goal. Some of that is fatigue, but also something’s off with the timing of my afternoon maps, which is having the effect of me not leaving enough time for Nei Gong and/or not wanting to do Nei Gong? (I still do do Nei Gong, I just goof off more before starting and give up more easily.) That latter could also be related to fatigue, but I think that I also need to spend less time getting distracted by pointless stuff; it might be a good idea for me to delete all the puzzle apps off of my iPad, for example.

And in my Tai Chi session this morning, I did 20m each of the four energies and WSSF1; my feet ached more than normal towards the end of that, which I’ll take as a good sign. And I finished going through the different Tai Chi forms, and I went through the Jian 3 times. In the afternoon, I did 45m Spinal Dao Yin, 30m Calm Abiding (bad planning there, I was doing it in a central part of the house because I expected my wife to be out longer than she actually was, whoops), 10m Wood Wu Xing.

I was feeling a little sick in the middle of the week, so no lesson last Tuesday evening and no practice on Wednesday and Thursday. Apparently many people got sick after the workshop, don’t know if something was going around or if it was something more esoteric.

On Thursday I was starting to feel better, so I finished my Tai Chi forms for the week, and I did 15m of Side Channel Rolling and 40m of Kidney Hui Chun. Also one thing that I noted that day was that my Yellow Court was feeling more active than normal; it had been doing that since the workshop, clearly the workshop had an effect. (Mostly calmed down as of this writing, though.) And I watched the Shen Up, Qi Down video that was posted to the Foundations course; glad I did, it stuck in a way that previous presentations of that material haven’t, it managed to get me in a mental state that really does feel different inside.

On Friday I hadn’t slept well (I’m trying out an apnea treatment that, honestly, isn’t going great), so all I did was 20m Wu Ji and 25m Spleen Hui Chun.

On Saturday, I started doing Advanced Dantian Gong but it quickly became clear that a nap would be more useful then too, so I stopped after 15 minutes. I went to my regular Chen Tai Chi class, and went through the Dragon Dao Yins.

On Sunday I did half of my Tai Chi forms, 20m Wu Ji, 10m Coiling Snake, and an hour of Calm Abiding.

On Monday, I did a 25m stretching session (I should do that more often, but certainly right now I’m feeling that my body has regressed in a bunch of ways since the workshop, so stretching seemed called for), 1h of Wu Ji, and 25m on Kidney Hui Chun.

And today was a rather good day. I reviewed the Ward off Left video in the 37 form, I went through the rest of my Tai Chi forms (and I actually decided to go through the Jian form six times, because I’ve decided that it’ll be the form that I show to my teacher later this month), and I also did 20m each of the four energies exercise, Wu Song Shen Fa 1, and Wu Song Shen Fa 3. So lots of Tai Chi in the morning; and, in the afternoon, a solid Nei Gong session, with an hour of a mix of Wu Ji, Spine Waves, and Ji Ben 4, followed by an hour of Calm Abiding. I did need a decent nap in the middle of it, so it’s not like my energy problems had disappeared, but also my sleep was better than average last night, I think. (Possibly due to Shui Gong 2, I did that last night and I think it made a difference.)