Nei Gong Notes, August 12, 2025
Good week. I’m spending more time stretching my back, calves, and hamstrings (mostly through isolated stretches during the day, but also Wu Ji is helping with my back) and also going on brisk walks more often, and I feel like it’s making a difference – my back in particular seems happier in ways that helps with Nei Gong. So hopefully if I keep at that it will make a difference. Still need to get my sleep in order, but I’ll see a sleep doctor soon and probably get a CPAP soon after, hopefully that will help. (And hopefully it will help with my energy levels, not just with my quantity of sleep.)
Anyways: a Nei Gong lesson this week, on Listening Inside. Pleasant enough, and I imagine that I’ll keep on doing it if for no other reason that it’s easy to spend five minutes on in the middle of a long Wu Ji session.
Wednesday: 50m Dantian Gong / Thickening; and I took Rick’s Zoom class (live, I’d been catching up on recorded ones but hadn’t done any live ones yet), mostly spent on the snowman / gourd exercise. Which was interesting, I’ve seen that before but I’d forgotten what he does to set up your body before doing the hand movements. Glad to be doing that, going forward I’ll try to participate in the Wednesday ones live, though I think I’ll watch the Saturday ones after the fact.
Thursday: I rewatched the Brush Knee and Press video; did Taiji Standing 4 (Push), some Taiyi Standing, and Wu Song Shen Fa 2; went through the 37 form 5 times (twice with video, 3 on my own); and went through the Xin Jia first form twice. And I took a walk after that. IN the afternoon, I did 25m Wu Ji / Coiling Snake, 35m of breathing practice, 5m listening inside, and 30m Calm Abiding. Not sure why I wasn’t feeling it on Calm Abiding; my back ached some but I’m not convinced that was the only reason why I didn’t last longer. In the evening, I did some Hunyuan 48 review and watched the second Texas 2025 talk.
Friday: 1h Wu Ji, my lower back got noticeably warm, which is unusual. Glad to see it, because in one of the videos I watched over the last few weeks, that was called out as being more or less necessary for something, I think maybe Microcosmic Orbit work? 1h10m of listening inside / Dantian Gong / thickening / MCO attempt; when I first tried kicking off the MCO, Qi went too far to the front of my spine, I didn’t send it into the sacrum at the right place I think. In the second time it went in the right place, went maybe halfway up my spine? Farther than the previous week, at any rate, and it had a different texture. Took a walk.
Saturday: 30m Full Moon practice (plus some listening inside) and 30m Zhan Zhuang. And I continued my long Silk Reeling with Hip Rotations; unsurprisingly, that didn’t do anything special, honestly I was just glad that it didn’t strain my back because doing it for longer than the standard (minimal) amount has had that effect in the past. And of course my regular Chen Tai Chi class.
Sunday: 30m Zhan Zhuang, 10m Side Channel Rolling, the once a month Sunday Tai Chi class, and a sleepy 30m Kidney Hui Chun.
Monday: 90m Wu Ji (with a little bit of listening inside); 50m seated stuff, more heavily weighted towards Dantian Gong than normal.
Tuesday: 25m Wu Ji, 10m Coiling Snake, 1h Calm Abiding. Chen pole weapon forms, Hunyuan 48.