Tuesday lesson was a Taiji one, on Continual Jin. Interesting; I haven’t yet had much time to play with it, but I definitely will.

Wednesday: I attended Rick’s Zoom class, we basically went through the relaxing / internal stretch exercise that we did in the Foundations class. (Not as long, but still a while.) It was good to feel; my body is continuing to feel stretchier inside.

Thursday: I went through the Chen sword weapons, but otherwise I didn’t have time for Tai Chi. In the afternoon I did 25m Dragon 1, I rewatched Wood Wu Xing video, and an extra 10 minutes or so of the exercise after that, and I did 40m of Dantian Gong. And I wached the Taiji Pushing Hands – Opening the Joints / Yao Stretching lesson. (The recent IAA rejigger caused almost all the push hands lesson to be marked as incomplete; all the other ones up through here contained videos that I’d seen, but this one was new.) And I did a bit of Hunyuan 48 review in the evening

Friday: Went through video of Rick’s February 7 Zoom class. This time it was super intense – same stuff as Wednesday, I guess doing it twice in close succession was additive? I felt more pressure in my feet leading to connectivity up my legs and through my body than normal, and I felt more of a stretch in my Huiyin than I basically ever have. So I will certainly want to spend more time doing this; I took some notes on how Rick was guiding us through the process, so hopefully I’ll be able to do a decent job of trying it on my own? (And it would surprise me if he came back to that on future Zoom classes this month; if not, I can always rewatch the first two February videos.)

Saturday: My regular Chen class.

Sunday: An hour and a half of push hands; my main takeaway there was that I should spend more time (both when doing push hands and when going through the form) with my attention in my legs, and then extending up my body). And 25m of Calm Abiding in the afternoon.

Monday: I’m visiting my parents this week, so this was a travel day; I did 30m of attention to breath, but that’s it.

Tuesday: Mostly spending time with my parents (and my brother), though I did do 30m of Anchoring the Breath. It had actually been a while since I’d done that; I noticed that my breathing slowed down and deepened basically as soon as I started this, so I guess the other breath work that I’d been doing has had an effect, even if it’s not retraining my habitual breathing as much as I’d like. And the exercise got decently intense at the end.

No lesson today, since I’m visiting my parents.

No lesson Tuesday, because of my dog’s health problems; fortunately, he’s recovering fine, so it’s been a more normal week this week. (My practice sessions have been a little short, but not awful.)

Wednesday: 45m Wu Ji, 40m Spleen Hui Chun.

Thursday: I switched away from the wedge pillow that I’d been using for a couple of weeks, I think it was causing problems. (I think maybe it was outgassing in a way I’m sensitive to, even after that time? I wonder if I was this sensitive before I started doing Nei Gong.) For Tai Chi, I did 20m of theThree Ring exercise from Practical Tai Chi Training, 20m Rolling Power, and the Chen sword forms. And then in the afternoon I did 20m Wu Ji, 25m Dragon 2, 30m Kidney Hui Chun. And Hunyuan 48 review in the evening.

Friday: 30m Wu Ji, 15m Balancing Upper and Lower, 35m Dantian Gong.

Saturday: My regular Chen class; I got some good pointers on a couple of forms.

Sunday: Monthly Chen class, plus a little bit (10-15 min) of just sitting.

Monday: 55m Spinal Dao Yin; 10m Balancing Upper and Lower; 25m Spleen Hui Chun.

Tuesday: Reviewed Fair Maidens Weave the Shuttle. Chen pole weapons. I did the 37 form twice, once pulsing the Jin and once regular. Xinjia first form, plus the beginning of the Hunyuan 48. In the afternoon I went through the Du Stretch; and for a channge I tried out a video of a non-Nei-Gong class by Corey Hess on Non-Directed Body Movement, but I didn’t get too much out of it.

Though the reason why I didn’t get much out of it might have been that my mind was a little too restless, kind of like a week or two ago, it would be good to get that under control… I’d hoped that changing pillows would fix it, but it didn’t completely solve the issue.

My Tuesday evening lesson was a Nei Gong one, on Balancing Upper and Lower. And I also watched the Attention and Acceptance talk from Bali 2025.

Wednesday: 1h (kind of iffy) Wu Ji; 1h Dantian Gong + thickening.

Thursday: I had a sleep morning, so I didn’t do as much Tai Chi as I would have liked, but I did go through forms: the Chen sword forms, the Lao Jia first and second form, the start of Hunyuan 48, and the 37 form. In the afternoon I did Du Stretch; 25m Dragon 1; and 30m Calm Abiding. In the evening, I did a Hunyuan 48 review.

Friday: 30m Wu Ji, and 50m super iffy Microcosmic Orbit attempt. My back was actually feeling unusually good then, but when it came to moving Qi through my back, I just didn’t have enough Qi to do anything significant. (Even though I’d been at a Foundations workshop the previous weekend!) So that’s three days in a row when my practice was bad; and I was in a sleepy and/or scattered mental state all three days. Maybe it’s just being tired, maybe there was liver rising, maybe I’d just been letting other stuff distract me more?

Saturday: Regular Chen class. 10m Wood Wu Xing, to see if that helped with the problems I’d been having. Though I was tired again, because one of my dogs (Ulli) had been throwing up a lot that night.

Then, unfortunately, Ulli started throwing up again, so I took him to the vet; after doing x-rays, it turned out that he’d swallowed a stone, and it had made it into his small intestine. So I was shuttling him from one vet to another vet. He had surgery, it was fine, but I wasn’t going to be doing any Nei Gong or Tai Chi that day! And on Monday I was also distracted and I actually had a couple of (routine) medical appointments myself that day too, so I wouldn’t have had time to do much anyways.

Today I picked up Ulli from the vet, so that was nice. (And he seems like he’s doing fine: lethargic, but no more than you’d expect.) And I did get back to a bit of practice: Chen long weapons, the Xinjia first form, the 37 form, and 20m of the Rolling Power exercise for Tai Chi, and Du Stretch and 10m Balancing Upper and Lower for Nei Gong.

So we’ll see how things go this coming week! Hopefully I won’t have any crises to deal with, hopefully my sleep will be better, and hopefully I’ll get my mind less scattered. I’m not doing a lesson tonight, I could definitely use a redo on this past week’s practice.