Nei Gong Notes, September 16, 2025
Last week’s lesson was a Nei Gong one, on Sun and Moon Turning. It didn’t really fit into my schedule last week so I only did it once, I should find more time for it this week.
Wednesday: I did 40m of Dantian Gong, and took Rick’s Zoom class, covering some bits of Awakening Dragon. (I still need to watch the full video of the previous Saturday’s class, hopefully I can do that this week.)
Thursday: I did 20 minutes each of Taiji Standing 1, Torso Movement, and WSSF1, and I went through the 37 form 3 times and the Xin Jia form once. And in the afternoon I went through the Spine Spa video; I continue to like it quite a bit but I think I don’t want to have it take up all of my Nei Gong practice time one day every four weeks, given that I’m getting what seems to be an effective amount of spine stretching in other ways. So I’m going to swap it in the rotation with the Sinew Work Principles class; I think I’ll try to do the Du Stretch once a week, though, I could use that level of work on my spine and hamstrings. And I did my regular Hunyuan 48 review in the evening.
Friday: I got way too distracted goofing off in the middle of the afternoon, so all I did was about 30m of Awakening Dragon-related stuff. It felt really strong, though, at least…
Saturday: For Nei Gong, I did 30m of Advanced Dantian Gong and I went through all four Dragons; glad I did the latter, I’m on the edge of forgetting some bits of those. And I did my regular Chen Tai Chi class; I got back to doing long versions of the Silk Reeling exercises, this time was Kua Circling In With a Kick. (Which, unsurprisingly, didn’t benefit from being done for longer.)
Sunday: I did 20m of Hunyuan Qigong exercises, and went to the regular Sunday Tai Chi class. I got info there about a local Push Hands group, maybe I’ll start doing that most Sundays. And I spent 10m paying attention to breathing; and then I planned to do Scholar breathing in the afternoon, and since I slept well I was optimistic that I didn’t need a nap, but that turned out to be false, so I gave up on that sit after 30m and me repeatedly dozing off briefly during it.
Monday: 1h of very good Wu Ji; wish I could have gone longer but I wanted to leave time for an MCO attempt. Just as a note for myself during my next session: I started by relaxing near my pelvic bone like Rick’s been telling us, and made sure that that led to a stretch behind my butt into my lower Kua as I sank down. And then once I got my feet weight in the proper position, I tuned in there, and the stretch coming up the Yong Quan linked in well, so I felt pretty strongly supported in my lower body in a way that made it easier to create a stretch by sinking. And that stayed surprisingly strong the whole time. Though I noticed it was weaker on my left side, which isn’t too surprising since I’ve always been asymmetric there, but I found that it was easier to try to reduce the asymmetry by sinking more into the stretch on the left than to try to figure out the asymmetry by sensing my body positionally; hopefully that can build up my left side more if I stick with that? (Though of course I also should spend more time doing Wu Ji in front of a mirror…) So that was good; and I was optimistic about the MCO attempt, since the last one had gone well and my spine had been feeling good all day. And the prep seemed fine, but the attempt itself was kind of a dud; basically, I got stuck at the same spot as I had frequently gotten stuck at in the past, and while maybe a little bit of Qi made it past there and even up to my head, it was only a tiny amount and even that tiny amount didn’t really complete a cycle. So that’s too bad, I guess I still have more work to do. (Random thought – I feel like, in the previous successful attempt, I didn’t spend as much time thickening first as I’ve been in the habit of doing? So maybe I should dial that down some: Damo always does some thickening when teaching MCO, in my experience, but also last summer he did say that your Qi kind of craps out after doing a certain amount of it.)
Tuesday: I had both an acupuncture appointment and a dentist appointment in the afternoon, so the only Nei Gong I did was 25m of Sun and Moon Turning. And my Tai Chi practice was a bit shorter than normal; I went through the Chen sword forms (and I think I have the basic shapes of the Double Dao more or less in place now?), Taiji Standing 1, Torso Rotation, and two repetitions of the 37 form and one of the Lao Jia 1st/2nd forms. Taiji Standing 1 is making less of a dramatic difference than it was a few weeks back when I started doing it, so probably I should move on to Taiji Standing 2 on Thursday, I should have time to go through that several times before I hit Taiji Standing 5 in the regular sequence of lessons.