I didn’t do a new lesson on Tuesday, I was too tired and I hadn’t done enough Tai Chi over the last few weeks to want to progress.

Wednesday: 25m surprisingly strong full moon practice. Then I went through the recording of Rick’s March 21 zoom, and took notes on the Dao Palms. Also, at the start of the recording when settling in, I felt like I was doing a better job of feeling what it means to sink flesh off the bones and to get my mind in that space, hopefully I can get better at that.

Thursday: I went through one of the sections of Practical Tai Chi Training. I did the Chen sword forms, 20m Wu Song Shen Fa 3, the 37 form, and the Chen Laojia first and second forms. For Nei Gong, I did a 20m stretching set, 30m Dragon 3, and 40m Water Hui Chun.

Friday: 25m Wu Ji + Ji Ben 1; 70m Dantian Gong + Qi Thickening + Dao Palms.

Saturday: Regular Chen class. And, unfortunately my left foot is hurting enough that I’m going to dial down standing Nei Gong stuff a bit, I think. (Update from a few days later: my foot is starting to get better, but it’s still not great; hopefully my TCM doctor can help but he’s out of town until Saturday. So, in the meantime, no long Wu Ji sessions.)

Sunday: A couple of hours of push hands. Working with Jason, the inside of my body is working a lot more than it had been – doing more, reacting more instinctively, being more effective. (Or maybe I’m noticing it more? But Jason found it surprising.) So that was very interesting, I hope I can build on that. And I did 35m of Calm Abiding in the afternoon.

Saturday: 1h Spinal Dao Yin, and 80m of my first successful Microcosmic Orbit attempt in months, yay. Things were stuck at the top of my lower back for ages, but my Dantian had felt quite full during the prep part of the attempt, and it felt like things had gone up the spine in a plausible location, so I decided to just sit and wait it out. And after 5-10 minutes (probably closer to 10, but who knows), it finally started moving past that clipping pass; it was still moving very slowly, so it took it ages for it to actually make it up the rest of my back and then to the top of my head (and down the middle of my body), but it did manage it eventually. So that was good, glad to be back at succeeding at that, hopefully I can build on that.

Tuesday: I went through the section in Practical Tai Chi Training on “Drawing Up Perineum on Inhale, Relaxing on Exhale”; surprisingly interesting / useful, it’ll help me in postures with one leg raised, I’d never really felt effects from my perineum before but now it’s starting to connect up in productive ways. I did Chen pole weapons for the first time in several weeks, and they went pretty well, yay; no left hand pain at all when doing the Guan Dao, the staff led to a couple of small jolts and the spear maybe one so things aren’t completely healed but they’re much better. And I went through the Chen Xinjia first form, paying attention to my perineum. For Nei Gong, I did the Du Stretch, 25m of Dragon 1, and I rewatched the Enquiry 3 video.