Nei Gong Notes, September 30, 2025
This week’s lesson was a Nei Gong one, on Four Gates Breathing. Good timing for me: over the last month, when I do the basic stretch that has us pushing our hands up and curving so we get pressure from your foot on one side to that side of your body to your hands, I’d been noticing a really strong connection to my Lao Gong. So I think internal connections to my Lao Gong (and to my Yong Quan, though not as strong there) have been building pretty well recently; and linking that up to breathing is helpful.
Wednesday: 75m Wu Ji. I kind of wonder why I’m sweating so much during Wu Ji these days (that happened on Monday too), given that it doesn’t feel like I’m exerting all that much muscular effort? And 40m surprisingly sleepy seated work, mostly DTG but including 10m of Four Gates. Or rather, it was surprising at the time (and I was a little disappointed at the time that I did 75m of Wu Ji instead of 90m), but I came down with a (quite mild) cold the next day, so me stopping Wu Ji earlier was in retrospect a good thing, me paying attention to what my body was saying. Also I decided to go back to one round of neck rotations per day: I think three might be stressing my neck a bit too much, and it certainly wasn’t hurting anything.
Thursday: I reviewed Cloud Hands; I’m going to spend a bit of time on isolated practice for that. I went through the Chen pole weapons forms and the Double Dao form, and I did 20m each of Taiji Standing 2 and Cloud Hands. I started to feel weirdly tired at the end of that, though, that’s when I decided that I might be coming down with a cold. So I just went through the 37 form and the Xin Jia first form once each. And in the afternoon, I just went through the Du Stretch video and did 30m of breathing, and I skipped the Hunyuan 48 review in the evening.
Friday: Just 20m of breathing.
Saturday: 20m of Four Gates Breathing; and I skipped Chen Tai Chi class. (A good week for that, fortunately, since my teacher is out of town.)
Sunday: I just did some Shui Gong 1; I was actually feeling noticeably better, it’s just that spent all day up in San Francisco playing board games with a friend I hadn’t seen for months.
Monday: Starting to ramp up again: the Du Stretch video, 20m Wu Ji, 50m of sitting (mostly Dantian Gong), and a stroll.
Tuesday: 20m each of Reverse Stretch and Cloud Hands; and I went through the 37 form 3 times and the, Lao Jia first and second forms. And in the afternoon I watched Rick’s September 6 Zoom class and did 20m of Four Gates Breathing.