Nei Gong Notes, June 23, 2026
Wednesday and Thursday were the last two days of the workshop. My most concrete takeaways are that I should spend more time opening the body (especially opening my torso laterally), that the next milestone should be to get my Dantian activated, and that I should do more Wu Ji and more standing Dantian Gong to that end. (Wu Ji is good for body opening, too; I think I’ll try to spend the first 10 minutes of each Wu Ji session actively opening more and then try to more ambiently maintain a more open shape during the rest of the session.) And Damo also showed us a breathing exercise that I’m going to try to do for 15 minutes a day: I’d been thinking for a while that my breathing could use improvement, and that seems like something tractable to do that might help with my fatigue. (Though Damo said that I wasn’t actually doing too bad with regard to either of the symptoms that the exercise is designed to target, so who knows; he also encouraged me to do the Spleen Hui Chun more often.) So you can just pretend that each of these notes has an extra 15 minutes of breathing exercise added to it every day.
Also on a health note: I’m going to pause seeing my current TCM doctor. He’s tried out a bunch of things, and none of them have solved my fatigue issues (or gotten them significantly past my baseline of last summer). I actually wasn’t too tired during the workshop; maybe the last thing my doctor tried (some herbs) helped, but if I had to guess, it’s a combination of the energized environment and the body opening. And I’ve been a little less tired than I expected since the workshop, too? So I’ll try taking Nei Gong in general and some of the stuff from the workshop more seriously; Nei Gong is supposed to help with your health, maybe I’m close to getting to a stage where that can happen. And, even if I don’t, I will appreciate not having both the financial cost and the time cost of my current TCM doctor. (The time cost really is starting to eat at me: I’m getting more enthusastic about doing various things, I want to lean into that, not spending time driving to doctor’s appointments!)
Anyways, here are the notes since the workshop:
Friday: Mostly a travel day, but I did also do 25m of Hou Tian Qi 2.
Saturday: I skipped my regular Chen class because of a doctor’s appointment. 25m Dragon 3; it felt like my hands were driving my spine movement, that experience was actually reminiscent of some of the Silk Reeling exercises I do. And 25m Hou Tian Qi 2.
Sunday: 25m Hou Tian Qi 2, 20m Zhan Zhuang 1, 90m Push Hands.
Monday: 40m Wu Ji, 30m Standing Dantian Gong, 40m Spleen Hui Chun; a pleasantly solid session overall.
Tuesday: 25m Hou Tian Qi 2, 25m Wu Ji / Coiling Snake. (A little less Nei Gong than normal, but actually more than I normally get done on days where I’m getting allergy shots, this is a sign that my fatigue is doing a little better since the workshop.) I went through the Chen sword forms; Double Dao continues to need review. And 20m Zhan Zhuang 1, 37 form x1, Chen Laojia first form x2 (it felt good), Laojia second form x1.