The Tuesday lesson was Enquiry 2 (Nei Gong). Typing that reminds me that I haven’t actually done any of that over the last week, I should fix that…

Wednesday: 50m of relaxing and connecting to sink, i.e. trying to do the exercise from Rick’s February Zoom classes by following my notes instead of the video. I rewatched the video for The Subtle Body; hope I’m getting the Yang Qi part right, I’m less sure about the Yin Qi part.

Thursday: I went through the Chen sword forms, and did a decently slow 37 form in a Continual Jin direction. 25m Dragon 1, 1h Dantian Gong + thickening. And I reviewed the Hunyuan 48 in the evening.

Friday: 20m Wu Ji, 50m Microcomic Orbit attempt. Not enough juice, but good to be trying again. (Hmm, I should ramp my Wu Ji back up…)

Saturday: 30m Advanced Dantian Gong (yay for not having acupuncture in the weekends). My regular Saturday Chen class. And I went through all four Dragons.

Sunday: 90m push hands. 40m Water Hui Chun.

Monday: Du Stretch; 40m Earth Hui Chun.

Tuesday: I tried doing the spear but it was a bad idea; I should get some padding on the finger that’s messed up. I did a decently slow 37 form, and I went through the Xin Jia first form trying (but only spottily succeeding) to pay attention to my feet. I did 45m Wu Ji; was thinking of going an hour but that seemed like it might be a bit too much stress on my system. (Which worries me a bit, hopefully once I get back to doing it more then that’ll get better?) And 40m Dantian Gong.

A random thought: I should stretch more before doing Nei Gong, I’ve been slacking off on that.

And I’m going to skip doing a lesson tonight: I’ve done an unusually small amount of Tai Chi over the last couple of weeks, so I don’t think I should move on there yet.

The Tuesday lesson was a Tai Chi one, on Strengthening the Jin Line. Seems pretty interesting, though I need to put more time on Continual Jin first.

Wednesday: My feet were a bit achy today, as were my knees; maybe related to the walking yesterday? Not so worried about the feet, though having knees that hurt isn’t great. Still, things weren’t bad enough to make me want to really avoid standing work, so I did 30m of Wu Ji as well as 40m DTG.

Thursday: Acupuncture ended up giving me a leg cramp today, so I didn’t do any Tai Chi or standing work; I just did 20m sleepy Enquiry 1, 30m DTG. And, looking ahead, the acupuncture made my big toe feel bruised on Friday and Saturday, though not in a way that really stopped me from doing anything.

Friday: 25m Wu Ji + Coiling Snake; 40m Kidney Hui Chun. It felt good, I might have done more stuff if I hadn’t mismanaged my time this afternoon.

Saturday: I had my regular Chen class. And this was my last scheduled weekend acupuncture (I’m dialing back from three times a week to twice a week), so hopefully I’ll be able to get my Saturdays back to normal.

Sunday: Monthly Chen class. One finger of my left hand was hurting (I think because of Acupunture on Monday), so I mostly sat out the Guan Dao. And I did 10m of Enquiry 1.

Monday: I did the Du Stretch, and I went through the Ming Men zoom exercise again; I took notes, I’ll try doing this once a week for a while.

Tuesday: A bruised toe again (again caused by acupuncture), so I skipped Tai Chi. But solid Nei Gong: 25m Dragon 2, 1h DTG + thickening.

(Since I’ve mentioned acupuncture a few times above: my current TCM doctor also does something called “tension release” where he actively works to loosen up various spots in my body. Which usually doesn’t cause any more problems than any other form of acupuncture, but it turns out that both my left hand and right foot have unusual amounts of hard material inside, which took a lot of work (and will still require more work, especially on my right foot). So that required quite a lot of poking around in those part of my body, and also probably stuff shifted around more, and those body parts can feel it. But I’m pretty sure the problems are temporary.)

Tuesday lesson was a Nei Gong one, Qi Emission 1. Which is something that I have no interest in trying (and I would be quite surprised if I could get it to work); fortunately, with the IAA rework, I didn’t have to wait a week for the next lesson to unlock, so on Thursday evening I watched Enquiry 1.

Wednesday: I watched the video of Rick’s February 21 Zoom class, and I did 10m of Balancing Upper and Lower.

Thursday: 15m Balancing Upper and Lower; 30m Wu Ji; 30m Dragon 2; 10m Wood Wu Xing. As mentioned above, I watched the Enquiry 1 lesson in the evening. And I also noticed an unusual feeling of heat in my armpits while I was sitting in preparation for that; maybe a side effect of the Balancing Upper and Lower? Or maybe a side effect of the weirdly warm torso stuff that I mentioned in last week’s post.

Friday: 40m Dantian Gong. My Nei Gong time has lessened noticeably recently, and in particular I haven’t been doing Dantian Gong at all frequently; I should get back to that. (But also it would be good if I more often had enough energy that I wanted to practice more; hopefully moving out of Winter and into Spring will help…)

Saturday: My regular Chen Tai Chi class.

Sunday: 1.5h push hands. One thing that came out of that is that the person I learn the most from there (Jason) was talking again about your legs as the source of energy, your waist / Dantian as something that decides how to use the energy and how to direct it, and your arms / hands as something that senses your opponent and where stuff comes out. And he says that I’m too stiff; when I try it his way with his help, it does feel better / more effective. But also I’m working on connecting things up inside, and when I do that, energy goes into my torso and arms in ways that make things feel more full but also less flexible. So I’m genuinely not entirely sure what to do here – how much is me doing things wrong, how much is a difference in styles between how Jason does things and how Lotus Nei Gong does things?

Monday: Du Stretch; 30m Full Moon.

Tuesday: I reviewed Step Back to Ride the Tiger, and did the 37 form and the Chen pole weapon forms. For Nei Gnog, I did 20m Dragon 1, a bit of Balancing Upper and Lower, and 20m of Enquiry 1. And I read an article on Zhan Zhuang, which is I think relevant to what I was thinking about on Sunday; note the bit about the lower body being full / naturally pulled down and the upper body floating. So at first I thought it was saying the same thing as Jason, but thinking about it a bit more, I’m not sure: the upper body floating isn’t clearly related to the upper body being more flexible / directing traffic more. But at any rate both agree that the lower body should be quite full, and I’ve known for a while that I’ve got too much tension in my legs in a way that interferes with that, so for now I should focus on that, I think. In the afternoon, I walked quite a bit, going to and from lunch and a doctor’s appointment, so I practiced trying to soak into my legs a bit more and relax / fill them up; hopefully that helped? And I paid attention to how that was affecting my torso and arms (and my shoulders, too, I was actually feeling stuff there a decent amount); if I relaxed in the right way they did feel more light, but maybe more in a way that was like the Zhan Zhuang article than the discussion from Sunday?

Anyways, interesting week, stuff to work on.