Nei Gong Notes, March 24, 2026
No lesson on Tuesday: I hadn’t done nearly as much Tai Chi as normal over the previous two weeks, so I figured I should just punt on that for another couple of weeks.
Wednesday: 15m Enquiry 2 and 30m Calm Abiding; I should do that latter one more, it really is a good practice. (Hopefully I actually will, I’ve added it to my list in an app that I’m writing to, among other things, remind me of stuff like that!) And I attended Rick’s Zoom class; mostly pretty familiar stuff, but there was one exercise I hadn’t seen before.
Thursday: I eviewed Sweep and Kick from the 37 Form. I went through the 37 form once, the Chen sword weapon forms, and the Chen Lao Jia 1/2 first and second form. I think I need to work more on bones up, flesh down (I think doing that wrong is hurting my Spleen Qi and leading to fatigue); I did 35 minutes of Wu Ji / Coiling Snake today with that in mind, and 65 minutes of Dantian Gong + Qi Thickening (with the extra five minutes being trying to do the extra bit that Rick showed us yesterday), and that all went quite well.
Friday: I followed along with the waterfall stretch video, and did 10m Enquiry 2, 15m Balancing Upper and Lower, and 20m Wu Ji. And then I spent 50m going through the Being Present / Ming Men exercise from a recent Zoom class, but from my notes instead of following the video.
Saturday: 30m Advanced Dantian Gong. I attended my regular Chen class; I led Silk Reeling at the start, that was pleasant enough, though I really do do things more slowly than my classmates. And I did 30m of Dragon 2.
Sunday: I did 15m Dragon 1, and 75m push hands; I didn’t get to push with my favorite person, but I learned some stuff from the other two people I pushed with, so that’s okay. And I did 40m of Water Hui Chun (again with trying to stretch out a bit more), it felt good.
Monday: Talking with my TCM doctor; he’s convincing me that I should sink less to my feet, that right now I should focus on lifting my head and having everything fall off of that in a relaxed way, to avoid too much internal compression / stress. (Which relates to what I talked about in the Thursday section.) I did the Du Stretch, and then 45m Wu Ji, focusing on having everything fall off of my head. Which took some playing around at first, but I think I ended up some place plausible; interestingly, I simultaneously felt like I was floating on my feet but also, as the stand went on, that there was a pretty strong downward pressure on my feet anyways! (Not sure what my doctor would think about that.) And then, 30 minutes in, my body started expanding internally; I don’t normally get Qi building that way so early, so that seemed like a good sign too. But, once the expansion happened and I started feeling puffy, I honestly couldn’t tell if I was hanging off of my head or not, my body wasn’t loose in the right way. Anyways, I think that was a good experiment; and then I did 40m of Dantian Gong after that.
Tuesday: I went through the Chen sword forms (I’m still holding off on the pole while my left middle finger heals); the 37 form, with some Strengthening the Jin Line mixed in; and the Chen Xinjia first form. And I followed along with the recording of Rick’s March 14 Zoom class. And then I did 25m Wu Ji / Coiling Snake and 10m Enquiry 2.