This week’s lesson was a Taiji one, on Joint Opening. I’ve only tried it once, but it seemed pretty useful, probably worth occasionally doing 5-10 minutes sessions of it once I’m past the initial trying it out.

Wednesday: I cleared out space in my bedroom so I can use a mirror there. And it turns out I stand in a zig-zag pattern: I’m not sure if my hips are off (historically they’ve been too far to the right but they might be better now?), but my torso definitely leans right and my head/neck definitely leans left to compensate. Now that I’m aware of that, I can feel that my torso is relaxing too much (sagging, really) in a way that causes it to lean left; if I move right, first things feel a little compressed but then I get an internal lift in my spine. And I can feel something similar (but a little harder to detect) in my neck. So that gives me something to try to feel for when I’m not looking at a mirror; but it’s so far very difficult for me to keep a proper posture for any length of time, it reverts back quite quickly. I won’t talk about it on the rest of the days, but I continue working on this; today I was noticing that I often turn my head too far to the right when trying to adjust, and also my head is too far forward. (I mean, I knew it was somewhat too far forward, but today it was quite bad!) So lots of stuff to work on; still, being aware of this is progress, and I can improve my posture to some extent. In terms of practice on Wednesday, I did 75m of Wu Ji (frequently distracted by looking at my posture) and 40m of seated Dantian Gong.

Thursday: I watched Cloud Hands video again, because I felt like I still had some basic stuff to work on even after watching it a week or two ago; honestly, I could probably stand to spend a month or so on that one. (I don’t think I will, but maybe I’ll come right back to it once I’ve finished reviewing all the form videos?) I did 15m Taiji Standing 2, I went through the 37 form twice, all the Chen pole forms and Double Dao, and the Xinjia first form. 40m sitting, paying attention to breathing plus some Song breathing. (A couple of other things going on today, so not as much internal work as I’d like.) And I reviewed the Hunyuan 48 in the evening.

Friday: 45m Wu Ji; I did a decent job of keeping my torso aligned correctly, though my head tilted a lot. A 1h MCO attempt; felt unusual, sensations moving up were in a larger part of my back, at first I thought it was really going high but then the main part got stuck in the usual place.

Saturday: 30m Advanced Dantian Gong; a long version of the Knee Rotations Silk Reeling exercise, which (unsurprisingly) wasn’t particularly useful; and the regular Chen class. I tried the Roll Back isolated Push Hands exercise, it didn’t work at all. And I went through the Dragons.

Sunday: I’d been feeling more and more that push hands is the place where I most need work in my Tai Chi, so I’m planning to start going to a local push hands group on most Sundays; today was the first time. Most people were away at an event, and it’s a small group, so it was just me and one other guy, but it was extraordinarily useful: we spent about 2h alternating between doing push hands, having him suggest some principles to me, and having him look at me. I have basically three big ideas to work on, we’ll see how much progress I make. And in the afternoon, I did 40m of Full Moon practice.

Monday: 30m Wu Ji, 10m Ji Ben 1, 40m Kidney Hui Chun; that latter one felt a little stronger than normal, not sure why.

Tuesday: I reviewed White Snake Creeps Down; I went through the Chen Sword forms; I did 20 minutes each of Joint Opening and Taiji Standing 2; I went through the 37 form 3 times and the Xin Jia form twice. 37×3, Xin Jia x2, they were both noticeably improved by the push hands on Sunday. I made a surprising number of mistakes during Xin Jia, though, I should get that in order if I’m going to show it to my teacher. And in the afternoon I did 65 minutes of Wu Ji; and then I started a Dantian Gong session but there was something going on in my stomach (I felt a little off after lunch and took an antacid after that, and I think in retrospect that was the wrong move) so I stopped it after a little more than 15 minutes.

Interesting week. I’ve got some big things to work on, from watching myself in the mirror and from the Push Hands practice, so that’s great. But also there were more days than I was happy with where I didn’t do quite as much practice as I’d like, and where I was more distracted than I like. I think it’s because of an iPhone game I’m playing; I’d rather not give it up, I actually think it’s designed pretty well, but I should work harder at compartmentalizing it.