Tuesday lesson was a Tai Chi one, on Pulsing the Jin and Pushing Hands – Rolling Power. Both parts seemed pretty interesting, I’ll definitely give both of them a try. And nice to see another exercise where I really can feel the Jin moving through my body: I still don’t think I’m good at building up Qi in my feet and releasing it, but it does show up and move somehow.

Wednesday: Du Stretch; I’m doing a better job with the bit where you’re simultaneously raising your torso up while rocking your pelvis, I’m paying more attention to feeling the stretch from rocking at the correct height in my spine. 40m Kidney Hui Chun. 25m Wu Ji / Ji Ben 3 combo.

Thursday: Chen sword forms. Lao Jia first form twice, once slow and focusing on my right Kua and once at normal speed. Lao Jia second form. Pulsing version of 37 form. 45m Wu Ji. I wanted to rewatch the Subtle Body video but I was too sleepy. 🙁

Friday: a travel day; I did 20m of Wu Ji, but too sleepy during the flight to do any seated stuff then. Though in the early evening I was noticing that my torso felt surprisingly energized, and my head went surprisingly far back when I relax my neck, so those are good signs.

Saturday, Sunday: Foundations workshop, year 2 number 3. A good session on Songing throughout the body, and some useful Dragon 2 reviews

Monday: 30m Dragon 2; felt abnormally stretchy inside, I think because of the aforementioned session from the workshop. 40m Spleen Hui Chun, that felt strong.

Tuesday: 20m Pushing Hands Rolling Power exercise. I tried out the Figure Eight Energy Circulation exercise from the book Practical Tai Chi Training that I’m reading (one of the people from the Sunday push hands group recommended the book to me). Chen pole weapons; Xin Jia first form; 37 form. And I went through the Sinew Work Principles video; I might take that out of the rotation soon, maybe I’ll replace it with going through a random new Zoom class, I’ve liked every one I’ve watched so far.

This week’s lesson was a Nei Gong one on Extending the Qi. Not one that I’m planning to spend much time on; I suppose I should go through it it one or two more times, but the other ones in the Subtle Body series are much more important for me now, I think.

Wednesday: 1h Wu Ji, for the first time in a while, yay. I was thinking I might do a bit longer, but I started to feel bad in a way that made me think I might be overstressing my body, so I stopped then. Good that I did, too – I was also planning to do 1h of seated work, but I decided it was wise to cut that off after half an hour of DTG, given how I was feeling. (And I wasn’t 100% the next couple of days, but good enough that I didn’t really mess anything up.) Still, it’s good to be building up my Wu Ji again; also, around 40 minutes into that, something interesting happened, with (faint) pulses coming out of my abdomen. And, observing them, it seemed like the pulse was actually going in for a bit before bouncing out – I think this might be an early form of the swallowing feeling that people say happens in your Dantian?

Thursday: 20m Pillar Pushing; 20m of the guard variant of Hook Punch. And I went through the Chen sword forms, the 37 form, and the Lao Jia first and second forms. In the afternoon, I did 1h Spinal Dao Yin and 25m Kidney Hui Chun. In the evening, I did my Hunyuan 48 review, and I watched the Dao De Jing verses 1/3 video from the 2025 talks, interesting pointers as to how to do an esoteric reading, though I don’t think I’ll be able to generalize that to other versus.

Friday: 20m Wu Ji and 25m Dragon 2; I’d been wanting to get back to the Dragons to open up my back more, so I’ll try to fit them in regularly now that I’m not as drained as I was for a while. (And of course the upcoming Foundations weekend is more motivation, too.) And 60m of Dantian Gong / thickening.

Saturday: My regular Chen class, with a particularly good Hunyuan 48 section. (We started going through the Hunyuan 48 a week or two ago, I’m looking forward to going through it now that I know the basic shape of the form pretty well.) And I spent 20m going through all four Dragons.

Sunday: A couple of hours of push hands; the main thing I got out of that was that, to try to control my partner, I first need to understand when I’m at my the edges of my comfort zone (my “box”), so I can learn what that edge feels like. And I did 35m of Subtle Mindset and Posture.

Monday: 20m Wu Ji; 30m Dragon 1; and a 1h MCO attempt. It didn’t succeed, but it made it most of the way up my back, not bad given that it was my first try in a while. At first I was worried that it was going to be too far forward, but it eventually shifted to the middle of my spine instead of the front (and it felt like it was going up a cylinder, I’m not used to that), so that was good.

Tuesday: I reviewed the Straight Line Section lesson of the 37 form. I did 20m each of Pillar Pushing and Wu Song Shen Fa 1, and went through the Chen pole weapons. And then I did the 37 form, the Xin Jia first form, and the start of the Hunyuan 48, going very slowly through all of them and paying attention to when I’m within my box of comfort; really rarely, it turns out! But if I stopped and adjusted I could get back under control, so that’s good. And then I did a short walk, also paying attention to how it felt; I’m using my right Kua much less than my left Kua. (Which surprised me, if I’d been asked I would have guessed the other way!) And I sat in a church for a bit. And in the afternoon, I went through the new Kua Work Basics videos; that turned out to be surprisingly relevant to all of this, it was certainly relevant to my feeling when I was walking but also to my comfort level more broadly.

Last Tuesday’s lesson was a Taiji one on Pillar Pushing. That was an interesting one, another look at moving / strengthening jin.

Wednesday: My monthly trip through the Sinew Work Principles video.

Thursday: 20m Pillar Pushing. Chen pole forms, Lao Jia first form, 37 form. 30m Wu Ji. Reviewed Hunyuan 48.

Friday: 20m Wu Ji; 40m Kidney Hui Chun.

Saturday: My regular Chen class.

Sunday: 25m Zhan Zhuang. My monthly Sunday Chen class.

Monday: Du Stretch; 20m Wu Ji; 1h Dantian Gong and thickening.

Tuesday: 15m Pillar Pushing. Rick’s December 20 Zoom class.

Certainly more days than I would like where I didn’t do much, but there were reasonable reasons for that. And there were some decently solid days, too, though I do need to work on getting back to longer Wu Ji. My acupuncturist today was working on releasing tension in my spine (after working on tension in my arms the previous two weeks), it’ll be interesting to see if that helps with Du channel stuff. (Hopefully I’ll be able to find time to do a Microcosmic Orbit attempt this Friday, and hopefully I’ll have done enough Dantian Gong to make that attempt at least plausible…)

I didn’t do a lesson on Tuesday evening, because the “tension release” that my current TCM doctor sometimes does really did a number on me, but I did do it on Wednesday evening instead. It was a Nei Gong Lesson, Subtle Mindset and Posture; rather interesting, both having the idea of actively stretching out your shoulder and elbow more to strengthen the power coming from spreading your Lao Gong and the idea of putting your mind at a more subtle level, the Yang Qi or (ideally, but I can’t really get there yet) the Yin Qi level. And while listening to the lesson, it did feel like I could sense more going on and it was building more strongly? It was harder for me to get that while doing it outside of the video, but still, definitely something to work on.

Still didn’t do much his week: partly because my kid was still here on Wednesday and Thursday, partly recovery from the tension release, and also it was raining a ton which meant less Tai Chi. But I was pretty close to being back to normal yesterday; and while I only did a little bit of Nei Gong today, that was totally on me for being distracted rather than because I wasn’t up for it. (Which was a pleasant surprise, honestly – I had tension release again today, but I held up much better.)

And the tension release is pretty interesting, and I think well aligned with what Damo says – my doctor talked about how he’s having the fascia and muscles (and, in some cases, nerves) not be so bound up with each other, which is I think related to what Damo talks about different layers of your body becoming more independent as you get better at Nei Gong. And of course my doctor also talks about the connections across the body that you see in any of the internal arts.

Anyways, on to the day by day notes:

Wednesday: New Nei Gong Lesson, as mentioned above, and 40m Spleen Hui Chun.

Thursday: 25m of a Wu Ji / Ji Ben 1 combo; 30m Subtle Mindset and Posture.

Friday: 20m Wu Ji; 25m Full Moon.

Saturday: Regular Chen class.

Sunday: 2h good push hands – I felt more connected, and I learned something about using different sizes of spheres in my body. 40m Subtle Mindset and Posture.

Monday: Du Stretch; 30m Wu Ji; 1h DTG + thickening.

Tuesday: 20m Taiji Hook Push variant with guarding; 37 form x2. 25m Spleen Hui Chun.