I didn’t do a lesson last Tuesday, as I mentioned last week

Wednesday: I was still feeling the vaccines a bit, so I just did 40m attention to the breath. And my breathing is getting deeper and slower outside of that now; honestly, it feels a bit much, I wonder how much I’m subconsciously forcing it? Still, progress; and it actually carried into my sleep. Which then interacted weirdly with the CPAP machine, another piece of evidence that I should stop using that.

Thursday: 20m WSSF1 and 20m Foot Pump; the former didn’t feel as strong as it had before I’d switched to focusing more on Taiji Standing on sessions where I didn’t have time for both (which is most of them). And, presumably related, the latter didn’t feel like much either. And I went through the 37 form twice and the Xin Jia form once. In the afternoon I did 25m attention to breath, I watched the video for Rick’s October 22 Zoom class, and in the evening I went through Hunyuan 48 once.

Friday: I did 55m Spinal Dao Yin and 40m Dantian Gong.

Saturday: My regular Chen class, plus 20m of Yin Field and all four Dragons.

Sunday: I did 2h push hands; the second hour was with the same guy that I’d pushed with a few weeks back, again very helpful. And I did 40m of misc seated Nei Gong stuff in the afternoon. In the evening I published a post on my other blog talking about my Nei Gong and Tai Chi goals (among other things).

Monday: 75m Wu Ji, 40m DTG. It’s been three weeks since I’ve done that much Wu Ji, which is pretty embarrassing; though the good news is that I wasn’t sure I was going to make it that far this time but my brain kept on saying “sure, go another 5 minutes”; I’m used to the opposite problem recently.

Tuesday: I did 20m of WSSF3 (maybe felt a little better than the WSSF1 on Thursday?), 10m of Foot Pump, and I went through the 37 form and the Lao Jia first/second forms once each, as well as all the Chen weapons forms. In the afternoon I went through the Du Stretch video, spent 30m doing Dragon 1, 30m attention on the breath, and 15m Song Breathing.

This week’s Lesson was a Tai Chi one, on The Foot Pump. Which I’d heard about before so I was looking forward to it, but unfortunately my first take during the lesson was that I’m having a really hard time putting it into practice. I think I’ve actually regressed in terms of releasing Jin from my feet; I was never great at it, but recently I’ve been spending time on Taiji Standing and that’s been taking away from my time on the Wu Song Shen Fa exercises, and I think that’s probably hurt. So it would be good to find more WSSF time, but it’s not entirely clear to me where to find it…

On Wednesday through Friday, I was at a seminar that Chen Bing was giving. And it was amazing, honestly potentially transformative. He was really focusing on Song during the whole workshop: constantly doing Song exercises between sections of the form, and even stopping bits of the form to Song in the middle.

It was a different version of Song than I’m used to: I think of Song as a vehicle for expansion, and of course the IAA talks about Bones Up Flesh Down in both the Nei Gong and Tai Chi coures. Whereas Chen Bing was perfectly happy to have us relax by, say, letting our head and torso sink forward; pretty different from Bones Up Flesh Down, but also we weren’t exactly collapsing either: we were opening up our joints, just in a way that had us bending more. And there was also advice about how to pay attention to our body to increase the Song.

So my body felt really different even by the second day. And also I don’t think that I’ve ever had such strong punches in the form, I really was clearing out tension that was getting in the way of that. We’ll see if I can keep that feeling up; I hope so.

No Nei Gong those days (and I skipped my Thursday Hunyuan 48 review too), I figured five hours a day on Tai Chi was enough, and maybe not the best idea to mix and match either.

On Saturday, I had to drop my wife off at the airport in the morning, so I skipped my Chen Tai Chi class. I did do some Nei Gong: 40m of a combination of Wu Ji and Ji Ben 1/4, and 40 minutes of Dantian Gong. My Ming Men was heating up more than normal during Wu Ji, and there was stuff going on in my torso while I was walking downtown for dinner.

On Sunday I did Chen pole weapons and the Double Dao; I think my Double Dao is solid enough that I can dial back to doing it once a week. And I did a quite slow version of the Lao Jia first form taking about 20 minutes to do it and trying to focus on relaxing, along with a more normal second form; my back was tingling in a good way. For Nei Gong I did 20m of the first Dragon, and 55m of seated work. When trying out Scholar Breathing, nothing happened at all, that kind of surprised me, my body felt relaxed and open? I had a pretty good Calm Abiding at the end of that, at least.

On Monday I went through the Du Stretch video, did 45m of Wu Ji, and 40m DTG. And then I got both the COVID and flu vaccinations; I am definitely feeling that today, so no Nei Gong or Tai Chi today. Actually not a bad idea to not do a new lesson: because of the workshop I didn’t work on the most recent Nei Gong or Tai Chi lessons at all this week, so having an extra week to spend on those will help.

Also on Monday I decided to try doing a Yi Jing reading for the first time. The question I asked was related to my breathing, and I got fire over water, the final hexagram in the sequence, with no changing lines; kind of an intense reading? It does feel consistent with my idea that I should spend time just paying attention to my breath, trying to get out of my body’s way, so I’ll keep on doing that. (And it’s also consistent with the idea that a CPAP isn’t the right approach, which I also believe.) Not that I actually believe in the Yi Jing, but still, if it reinforces my hypotheses, I can work with that.

This week’s lesson was a Nei Gong one, on Yin Field Opening. Another Hunyuan one; seems pleasant enough, though I doubt I’ll particularly focus on it after the initial period.

Wednesday: I went through Sinew Work Principles video again; it’s still good, I’m glad I added a reminder to do it once a month or so. One random throwaway comment from the video that I liked was something along the lines of that the Qi in your Dantian should be like a hammock that your mind is resting in.

Thursday: My torso is still feeling a little bit of the effects of the Sinew Work Principles session yesterday, so all the more reason to keep on doing it! I went through the Chen pole weapons and Double Dao; I did 20 minutes each of Taiji Standing 4 and Joint Opening; I went through the 37 form 3 times and the Xin Jia form 2 times. In the afternoon I went through the Du Stretch video, I did 25 minutes of Awakening Dragon, 30 minutes of Yin Field Opening, and 30 minutes paying attention to the breath. And I reviewed the Hunyuan 48 in the evening.

Friday: I did 1h Wu Ji, followed by a quite unsuccessful MCO attempt. Which, on the one hand, wasn’t surprising: I hadn’t done as much Dantian Gong as normal this week, so I was thinking that I should put it off to Monday until I realized I had an allergy shot on Monday. When I started, though, by body was feeling good though, or at least interesting; I think that was more of the aftereffects of the Sinew Work Principles video, though it’s also not completely clear to me that that helps with MCO attempts, because that video is more about affecting my body via Qi than strictly about building Qi. At any rate, the attempt really didn’t work, though it’s not clear that the volume of Qi was the cause: the Qi went into the base of my spine too far forward, so it was wanting to do a circle around my abdomen instead of going up, and I was kind of denial about that for long enough that I didn’t get a good second try.

Saturday: I did 30m Advanced Dantian Gong, 20m Zhan Zhuang, had my regular Chen Tai Chi class, and went through the four Dragons.

Sunday: I did 25m Zhan Zhuang, and had my monthly Sunday Chen class; we’re starting the Guan Dao as our weapon for the next year or so in that class, it’ll be good to have a review of that since I’ve only done it once. And in the afternoon I spent 45m on a Scholar Breathing attempt; I got a little bit of light pulsing, and one bit of persistent light pull, but nothing super clear, certainly nothing that I would actually call Scholar Breathing.

Monday: It was an allergy shots day, so I just did the Du Stretch video, 20m Wu Ji, and 30m attention to the breath.

Tuesday: I’m going to a Chen Lao Jia workshop run by Chen Bing the rest of the week, so I went through Fang Song video of his today; pretty interesting, a quite different thing from, say, the Wu Song Shen Fa stuff from the IAA. (A little more like some of the Silk Reeling that my teacher teaches, but with a more explicit focus on relaxation.) I don’t think I’ll make a habit of doing those exercises, but honestly it wouldn’t be the worst idea? And then I watched a Lao Jia demonstration video of his, and attended a live Q+A that he gave. And I also did my Chen sword forms, but no Yang Tai Chi today. In the afternoon, I went through the 10min Stretch by Waterfall video; pretty good, I might do it again if I want that length of stretch? And I went through Rick’s October 4 Zoom course recording, and did 30m of Yin Field Opening.

It’ll be a pretty unusual week: because of the Chen Bing workshop, I’m honestly not sure I’ll be able to do any Nei Gong this Wednesday through Friday, and I certainly won’t do any IAA Tai Chi. (Hmmm, though I am supposed to watch an IAA Tai Chi lesson tonight; I don’t know what’s in that one, if it’s an isolated exercise then maybe I’ll be able to find time to practice it.) And I need to drop my wife off at the airport on Saturday morning, so we’ll see if I make it to my usual Tai Chi course then, too.

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.