Nei Gong Notes, August 18, 2026
Tuesday’s lesson was a Nei Gong one, Song Breath 1. Which works well with my general feeling that I should relax my upper chest more, so I’ve been continuing to work on that ambiently this week, too.
Wednesday: 45m Wu Ji; 30m standing Dantian Gong; and I reviewed the Jing Gong 1 lesson from IAA year 1, since I should try mixing that in sometimes to see if it helps with activating my Dantian. Haven’t gotten around to actually mixing it in yet, though.
Thursday: 20m each Taiji Standing 7 and Zhan Zhuang 3. Went through the Chen sword weapon forms, the 37 form, the Xinjia first form, and the Hunyuan 48 form. For Nei Gong, I did 20m Dragon 3 and went through the sequence from the Being Present / Ming Men zoom. In the evening I reviewed the Hunyuan 48, watched the Qi Deepening video from Assorted Nei Gong Talks, and watched a couple of other random Tai Chi-related videos.
Friday: Prompted by one of those videos, I paid attention to sinking in the insides of my body while walking; that was interesting, I continued to do that for the rest of the week. And I did 35m Song Breath 1; 20m Wu Ji; 25m standing Dantian Gong; 40m Earth Hui Chun.
Saturday: Things came up that led to me skipping Tai Chi today. So just 20m of a Wu Ji / Lotus Dao Yin combo.
Sunday: 25m Wu Ji / Ji Ben 4 combo. 20m Zhan Zhuang 3, 10m Taiji Standing 7, 80m of some push hands while being told about a push hands class that one of the other people in that push hands group was starting. His class actually sounds really useful for me; I think I’m too busy right now to do the fall iteration, but if there’s an iteration of it early next year I’ll seriously consider doing it then. And I wrote about changes in my energy levels on my other blog.
Monday: 35m Song Breath 1. 30m Wu Ji, 30m standing Dantian Gong, 10m Wood Wu Xing. 35m Earth Hui Chun. Decided I should walk more, so I went on a 45 minute pretty brisk walk today, ideally I’d be able to replace naps with that. (I did in fact do a 60 minute walk instead of a nap on Tuesday, but as a result I was pretty sleepy during the first part of that day’s Nei Gong session…)
Tuesday: Read some more of Practical Tai Chi Training. Went through the Chen pole weapon forms. Did 20m each of Zhan Zhuang 3 and Taiji Standing 7. Went through the 37 form and the Lao Jia first and second forms. In the afternoon, I followed along with the recent Fire Wu Xing zoom class; and I added on 10m of Coiling Snake plus some Wu Ji at the end. And then I went to my Chen teacher’s push hands class; continuing to be basic, it’s pleasant enough helping beginners but I’m not actively interested in that enough right now to take away my Tuesday dinner time, so I’m going to stop after this week.
Naps are a mainstay in my household. I try to take mine at 12:30PM, while my wife varies her start time based upon how she slept the night before. My naps typically last 40 minutes.
I have no guilt. If I don’t take a nap, the rest of day is a haze, and anything that gets done gets little in the way of attention.
The major problem with naps is getting restarted on the second half of the day. The strategy that seems to work these days is to do body opening, starting half an hour (or an hour) after waking. Also, Nei Gong in the morning, Taiji in the afternoon.
Yeah, I’m more annoyed at the post-nap restart than the nap itself. It’s gotten better once I deleted some stuff off my iPad, but the restart still takes longer than I’d like. And I agree that body opening is good; if I’m planning to do a Dragon on that day then it’ll be the first thing that I do after the nap.