Nei Gong lesson week, with the topic being Reverse Breathing Upgrade. Seemed pretty straightforward, and I think I could feel what it’s going for to some extent, but I’ll definitely want to practice it a decent amount more. (Cue ongoing refrain that I have too many seated exercises that I want to work on.)

I did Wu Ji for 1h15m on Wednesday, my first time doing it that long at home. It mostly went well; my back started aching a bit 45 minutes in, and around 55 minutes in my legs deflated noticeably, but I managed to re-establish the inflation. Around 65 minutes in, my body started feeling full and connected. I kept my eyes closed the whole time, so while I certainly wasn’t free from mental turmoil, it was manageable.

After thinking about it a bit, I suspected that the back ache meant that I’m not raising my head enough during Wu Ji, so my lower back is getting compressed instead of hanging off; and a more senior (I think?) student on the IAA Discord suggested the same thing. So I focused on that during a (much shorter) Wu Ji session later on in the week; sure enough, there’s a lot more room for me to maintain stretch in my back. Definitely something to work on next time; I’ll keep the 1h15m duration, we’ll see how much more comfortable it is.

And I think the feeling of connection was a sign of more Qi getting into my body? It’s hard to say 100% for sure, because I’d already been feeling a little full because of the really good Calm Abiding in the previous week, but I think the Wu Ji topped me up again.

I also did Shui Gong 2 that night for the first time in a while. At first I thought that it had gone kind of badly, keeping me awake a little bit, but then my sleep was fine, maybe even a little better than normal? So something to keep on experimenting with.

On Thursday I had a pretty good Ji Ben 2, and I did find time to work in Concentration 2; maybe I’ll be able to get in the habit of doing that on Thursday evenings, though I don’t know that doing it once a week will be enough for that to matter. And I’m also a little worried that doing it in the evenings might affect sleep; I did it then because Damo recommended it for that specific exercise, but still. My sleep wasn’t good, at any rate, though it could just have been congestion, hard to say.

On Friday, I had an okay arm stretch, but my Calm Abiding was bad, probably because my sleep was short. On Sunday my Calm Abiding was better, but still not great; I’m also wondering if doing Calm Abiding late in the morning (which is where it often ends up on Wednesdays and Fridays, often not even starting until around noon) is actually just a bad idea for my body’s rhythms, and so I should do it in the afternoon after lunch and after a brief nap if I’m sleepy? Not sure, I might experiment with that this week.

Today I was doing the Spleen Hui Chun, and, inspired by Calm Abiding, I decided to soften my attention more (e.g. during the bit with my hands on my Yellow Court), and it felt like it strengthened that exercise. So I should do that more, in a wider range of exercises.

Not much to say about Chen Tai Ji; I kept on plugging away, nothing particularly special happened. It was my week to lead the silk reeling at the start of class, so I didn’t do a long silk reeling exercise; and that means that my teacher will review my form next week. I’m planning to show him the Xin Jia first form the first time, so I’ll spend extra time reviewing that this week, even if it means that I don’t review all the other forms.

I started rereading Chen Taijiquan: Masters and Methods, which is a series of interviews with famous Chen masters. It’s really good, and there were some bits that connected specifically to stuff I’ve been thinking about recently, e.g. a couple of bits about Song and one bit about using Wu Ji to build Qi. Those topics are both quite relevant to a course I was thinking of giving next year, so it’s really good to get the take of people who know so much more about the subject than I ever will.

Taiji week, covering the third of those 37 static positions, this time on pressing / Ji. If I had more time to spend on Damo’s Taiji class, I would want to put in a decent amount of time on these positions, I think; unfortunately, my time budget lets me work on the form and sometimes go through the Wu Song Shen Fa sets, but not much more, and I think for now I’m right to prioritize the WSSFs over the static postures. Still, something to think about in the future. It was interesting seeing how my body reacted when I tried to push my elbows toward each other; I wouldn’t have expected it to feel like much, but it was a noticeable push, and did lead to some movement elsewhere in my body.

On Wednesday, I did an hour of Wu Ji; it went well, I was more comfortable than the previous week, and while I was kind of hoping it would be over soon during the last 15 minutes, I also was surprised when the bell rang after that. And I didn’t open my eyes the whole time. I did an hour of Calm Abiding after that, and that was a mistake: I was a little sleepy going in (which actually made me a little surprised that the Wu Ji went well), and also my back ached a bit after the Wu Ji, so between those two I didn’t ever really get into any useful state. So, going forward, I’ll avoid that combo; if I feel like doing a decent length sitting session after the longer Wu Ji, I’ll do something moving (maybe the hour-long MCO prep set?), but also maybe I’ll just do something shorter or have lunch and then sit in the afternoon. At any rate, I’m glad the Wu Ji went well, I’ll bump it up to 1:15 next time.

On Wednesday afternoon, I did an hour of Wu Song Shen Fa 4. Nothing particularly special happened then, these hour-long WSSF sessions continue to mostly be a bust for me. (Don’t get me wrong, I still think the WSSF are valuable for me, it’s just not at all clear that doing an hour buys me much compared to doing them for 20 minutes, except maybe for WSSF 3.)

On Friday morning, I had a bad Nei Gong session in the morning, enough so that I stopped during my preparatory Wu Ji (I was planning to do a shoulder stretching session). I was even a little worried that I was feeling sick, but I also thought that maybe I was just too tired, so I ate lunch and took a nap. (I did do a stretching session on Sunday to make up for that.) And I was feeling good enough after that that I decided I’d try out a Calm Abiding session, and it might have been my best one yet? I won’t say that I felt as chill coming out of it as after some of my ones in the summer, but I wasn’t sleepy at all (which is surprising, given the circumstances!), but even though I was, in some sense, alert, it didn’t actually feel like an hour had passed, and I could definitely feel the Qi was building in my body. And my body continued to feel subtly energized over the upcoming days, and sometimes not so subtly: right now as I’m typing this, I feel a tingling in my stomach at the front of the Ming Line, and when I was doing Compressing the Pearl earlier today (which went very well), I was actually feeling a kind of weird Qi-ish tingling in my neck.

As to Chen Tai Chi, I haven’t been talking so much about the regular part of my practice, but it’s been going well. I’ve gone through all the forms every week for the last several weeks, and I’m doing a good job of trying to do more and more of the forms well instead of just trying to keep the basic moves in mind. I’m not actually going through bits of them over and over again (other than the specific new forms that I’m learning), but still, there’s a difference between going through forms seriously versus just going through the motions. I’m particularly focused on the Xin Jia first form now, I’m going to show that form to my teacher the next time he gives me solo advice (which should be in two or three weeks).

My long Silk Reeling exercise this week was Dantian to Wrist Circling In; there was more going on in my hips than normal, and about 35 minutes in, the end of the spiral out on one hand turned in a stretch all the way through to the other hand that helped me maintain a feel of connection there; that’s good, that was the one part in that exercise that had felt like a gap to me.

Also, at some point during the weekend, I was working on the Lao Jia punch, and my body was really spiraling well during that, with a lot more of my body working together to generate the punch.

This week’s lesson was a Nei Gong one, showing a Du Stretch. I was a little worried because, towards the end of year two, there had been an Opening the Du lesson that I couldn’t do because it messed with my sleep, but fortunately this one didn’t come with that warning. And, even more fortunately, it’s an awesome stretch: I honestly think that I could bend further down after doing that once than I ever could before. So it’s helping open up my spine; and, a few days later, I realized my leg muscles were aching in ways that made me think it’s helping with my hamstrings, too. Both of which are parts of my body that I definitely could use help with, so I’m going to work this one into my regular routine.

Pretty solid Nei Gong week in general. A good Calm Abiding on Thursday; an hour of Wu Ji on Friday (still getting antsy towards the end, but a little better this time than last time); an okay Calm Abiding on Sunday and a good 15 minute arm stretch; and a good Compressing the Pearl on Monday, I’m doing a much better job of maintaining contact on the way down. A good mixture; I’ll want to stick with the hour-long Wu Ji session every week.

On Saturday, I did 40 minutes of Dantian to Wrist Circling Out. Pretty interesting, I had a surprisingly strong correction between my hand and Kua. (Oddly, it was stronger with my left hand than with my right.) And I did high Zhan Zhuang on my pre-Tai Chi-class standing, I’ll probably stick with that through December.

A Tai Chi lesson this week; continuing through the form, Needles to Sea Bottom and Fan Through Back; seemed fine. If I’m remembering correctly, my energy was a little low on Wednesday, but I did my once-a-month Spinal Dao Yin exercise anyways; went fine, even though that takes an hour it honestly just isn’t that draining once I sit down and do it. And I think I’m probably getting a little better at just doing longer exercises instead of being distracted constantly during them? Still work to go there, to be sure, but it’s something.

And this weekend was the second Foundations in-person session. I was a little worried at the start, because I thought I might be coming down with something, but I was feeling fine when I woke up on Saturday, so I went anyways and fully participated, and even Saturday was totally fine. (Much better than the Saturday of the first session!) Nothing super deep during the weekend, but a good solid practice; some interesting Dantian Gong variants on Saturday morning (and actually at least one of them set up connections between hands and other parts of the body), I feel like my hands are getting better and better synced up with various parts of my inside. Among other things, we did Ji Ben 1 on Saturday afternoon, and there my hands really were lifting basically entirely on their own as I stood up. (So it’s a two-way connection; actually it feels like the connections from Silk Reeling are helping here too.) Going down wasn’t as good, there continues to be this bit at the beginning where the correct level drops suddenly at the start of the descent, and my hands don’t come along with that.

Sunday morning was some sitting; Sunday afternoon was standing (for about an hour and a half), some Ji Ben 1, and some Ji Ben 2. Less good hand connection that day compared to the previous day, and going down continued to be rough; Rick said at the time that I should move my pelvis back more, that I was sinking into my knees too much, but I wasn’t able to get that to really help me on Sunday. I practiced Ji Ben 1 at home yesterday, though, and I worked on what Rick said, and that did actually nicely solve my problem, I’m managing to get an internal pull basically the whole way down now.

The main changes in my practice coming out of that are that I should work Ji Ben 1/2 into my practice pretty regularly (once a week, maybe?) for the next while, and also I should bump up the length of my Wu Ji practice; we said that, for the third session in February, we wanted to target 2 hours of Wu Ji, so I should clearly start doing 1 hour sessions pretty regularly but I should also probably try 1.5 and 2 hour sessions at home. I’m pretty sure I can do that physically: won’t be the most comfortable thing, but my legs can hold themselves up for a while these days, so while I expect my legs, feet, and back to hurt some after a couple of hours, it’ll be manageable. I expect the mental side of it to be more of a problem: between boredom, pain (manageable but still it exists) and a feeling that my mind has that it should be feeling bothered by this even though the physical symptoms aren’t that bad objectively, two hours will be a problem. But if I can make 1 hour of Wu Ji be a routine thing and work on Calm Abiding (while standing, but probably doing it sitting will help too), hopefully I’ll get to where 2 hours isn’t a massive struggle by February? And even if it is still really hard to do at home, hopefully I’ll manage to do it in a group…

It was a Nei Gong week, with the lesson being on Stretching for Lotus. Not going to spend much time on that: most of the stretches there are quite easy for me, and while I do definitely need work on my hamstrings, I don’t know that there’s anything super special about this set for that purpose. I did do the set again on Wednesday, and then did my Calm Abiding practice in full lotus; I stopped after about 40 minutes, the knee of my outside leg was hurting in a way that felt a little dangerous? Which relates to one part of the stretch set, where he said to put a foot high up on the opposite leg while doing a certain twist, because it would stress your knee if your foot was too far down; I imagine that’s what was happening to me, because my foot had slipped decently far down my thigh. So that’s something to work on, and maybe the stretching set would be useful for that if full lotus becomes a priority; but I also feel like having it basically be fine for over 30 minutes is good enough for me now.

Also on Wednesday I did 15 minutes of the arm stretch exercise I learned from Rick; still chipping away at that, still thinking I should do it a little more often. And I did a decent amount of Calm Abiding during Wu Ji on other days in the week; went pretty well (not that they were long Wu Ji practices), though I’m a little worried that it might cause sleep problems? Also I saw my allergist, and she said my allergies weren’t getting worse, I just had had a sinus infection for a few months; she started me on a medicine, it’s helping with my sinus cavity, though my sleep hasn’t improved the way I hoped, I’m not quite sure what’s going on there.

On Saturday I did 45 minutes of the Oblique Circles silk reeling form. It wasn’t super interesting in the single hand version: maybe a bit of a feeling of stretching out a sheet in front of my body, but that’s about it. The two hands version was rather more interesting, though: the bottom hand stretched out the sheet and then, once it got to the front of my Kua, the rotation of the bottom hand pulled my top hand over. Spear practice on Saturday was pleasant, too: the weapon is starting to feel good in my hand, I think my body is connecting with it more.

A good Calm Abiding practice on Sunday: 60 minutes without dozing, and while I didn’t get into a super chill state, I did manage to reliably get quickly back into an expansively abiding state with my mind when I got distracted.

Another Foundations class this weekend; I’m looking forward to that, I just hope that my sleep cooperates.

A Tai Chi lesson week, covering Golden Rooster and the kicks that follow that. Seems straightforward enough.

On Wednesday morning I watched the fourth Uluwatu Foundations video; nice to get in an almost three hour session. And on Sunday I watched a theory video about the Dantian that was added to that series even though it wasn’t from the Uluwatu class; I don’t know that there was any individual bit that I hadn’t seen before but it was a useful reminder of the mental state I should try to get into. Probably worth a rewatch in a month or so? Good to be all caught up with Foundations videos before the next course in a week and a half.

At the start of my Saturday Tai Chi class I did 30 minutes of Zhan Zhuang and then continued my series of focusing on one Silk Reeling exercise, this time Waist Turning and Punching. Nothing particularly special that happened this time as I kept on doing it; my Yongquan was buzzing but I think that’s the Zhan Zhuang setting things up. My punching did feel unusually solid, but it felt that way right from the start, it wasn’t from the repetition. Nice feeling of progress, though, I wonder what led to that? One other thing I noticed during the class: I’d recently been paying attention to the expansion in my arms during Reverse with Spiraling Forearms, but there’s also expansion in my Kua, I should pay attention to both expansions simultaneously.

We had Sunday Tai Chi class this week as well. I decided to do some Zhan Zhuang at the start of it as well, and in between my showing up early and the class not getting started until a bit after the official start time, that ended up as a 50 minute session. Which was my longest Zhan Zhuang session, I kind of wish the class hadn’t started for another 10 minutes so I could have put in a full hour; and I was pretty surprised that it had been 50 minutes, I knew it had been a while but it felt more like 40. For both of these sessions, I did a sort of medium height Zhan Zhuang – not the low version that Chen Xiaowang was showing us, but also at the height that my arms were naturally reaching to, so they felt internally supported, instead of having my arms be straight ahead.

We were going over a bit of the Lao Jia first form and some interesting connections came up between my shoulder and hip during the section from Dantian Change to White Goose Displays the Wings; I should pay attention to that. (In that section, but probably in the whole form.) Also I did a bit of push hands practice with somebody who was having me always be on his center, pointing out whenever I slipped of, I should try that more.

Good week. My energy levels are doing better than they have been over the last few months; not sure if it’s that I’m managing my sleep better or if it’s because of the new herbs from my TCM doctor or what, but it doesn’t feel like a random improvement. There’s definitely room for further improvement, and who knows how sustained this will be, but still, yay for good signs.

On Tuesday night I did Shui Gong 2 for the first time in probably over a year; it actually went fine, it didn’t mess up my sleep, and it might even have helped my sleep? I haven’t done it since then, but I’ll definitely want to give that another try.

I did the third Uluwatu session on Wednesday; nice to have a session where I’m not doing my regular stuff and that’s a bit longer than my historical norm. I noticed that my stomach really wanted to move when I was doing Dantian Gong during tat session; another sign that my development is going well. There was a lecture in part of it, and one thing that he said was that, in the internal arts, the body moves in response to the hands, and he noted that this isn’t just a Qi Gong / Nei Gong thing, it applies in Tai Chi too. Which made me think I should try it in Tai Chi, maybe even Chen Tai Chi despite the Chen claim that everything comes from the Dantian: in the Xin Jia form in particular, moves frequently start out with some sort of hand movement, so maybe this is related to that?

I did try that out later in the work. And it does feel like this is relevant, especially in Xin Jia but also in some places in Lao Jia. (It’s less clear to me in Hunyuan.) Basically, I’d move my hand, it would set up tension inside my body somewhere, and responding to that tension would cause my body to move appropriately. I’m honestly not sure if, by doing things that way, I’m doing Chen Tai Chi wrong, or if the sequence is that the hand gives direction to the Dantian and then the Dantian still kicks off the movement or if different people feel differently about whether the Dantian is the source of everything or just has an important guiding force; though Chen Xiaowang is the foremost Xin Jia practitioner in the world and he was pretty clear that movement should come from the Dantian…

At any rate, an interesting exercise. And in general Tai Chi was interesting this week; e.g. when I was doing Jian practice, I was starting to get a feeling along the blade of the Jian, so hopefully I’m making progress there too. I did try out Damo’s Returning Force push hands exercise with my push hands partner on Saturday, and that didn’t work at all; not sure how much that’s because I haven’t been doing his push hands exercises in general and how much is those exercises potentially being at a higher level than it’s reasonable to have attained at that point in the program: they look to me like they’re pretty advanced but maybe if I’d found somebody to do them regularly with then they’d work out fine?

On Sunday, I did an hour of Wu Ji; I got a really strong stretch along my spine, and there was other stuff going on inside too, it might have been the best Wu Ji session I’ve ever had? (At least at a physical level; mentally I was a little more distracted than I would like.) And then I did an hour of Calm Abiding; it honestly didn’t go great, I wasn’t too sleepy but I also didn’t do a great job of relaxing my mind. And my back hurt more than it normally does when I’m doing that; nothing awful but enough to be a distraction, presumably it’s a side effect of how the Wu Ji session was tugging at my spine.

I figured that the right way to work on my mental distractions during Wu Ji was to try to get my mind in a Calm Abiding mode. So I tried that during a (much shorter) Wu Ji session on Monday evening, and honestly it went great: during the session, there was a lot more expansion inside and my mind was noticeably relaxed (I actually went a little longer than I intended because I lost track of my meditation timer going off), and my back and torso felt actively good during the evening. And I did that again today; not quite as dramatic, but it still felt good. So I’m definitely going to stick with that.

And I also felt like I’d done a good job of mixing things up during Nei Gong. I forgot to mention above this week’s lesson, which was another Channel Opening one; not dramatic, but probably a little bit of opening? Though also my sleep was a little iffy in ways that might have been related to that; a Wood Wu Xing session fixed that, though. And I did one or two sessions of stretching my arms from the insides.

Pretty solid week. At least modulo sleep issues – definitely caused by allergies (I’m getting telltale sleep apnea signs), hopefully getting the air ducts cleaned will help with that, that’s scheduled for a week and a half from now. And I’ve bumped up my allergy medicine mix a bit.

Tai Chi week, covering the next move in the form, White Snake Creeps Down. Seemed pretty straightforward, and I was glad that my body is flexible enough for it not to be a problem. I also watched the next Year Three one, Practicing with Incense: my wife is allergic to all sorts of things so I’m not about to burn incense in the house, so I figured I’d just watch it but not worry about it otherwise. Interesting enough, but not so interesting that I’m sad to not be able to easily practice it; honestly, even if my wife weren’t allergic, I don’t know that I’d spend the money on getting incense and an appropriate pot now?

On Wednesday I watched the second Uluwatu video; feels good to sometimes do sessions of that length. (Admittedly, it’s not that much longer than my solo sessions on good days.) And some different stuff than I’m in the habit of doing in my weekly practice, e.g. a shoulder blade loosening exercise. Other than that, pretty normal stuff on Wednesday and Friday; and I did get back on track going through all my forms over the course of the week. And on Sunday I spent some time with the beginning of a video on the Double Dao form, so I think I more or less understand the basics of what I’m supposed to do there; I’ll definitely want to review that but it should be in acceptable shape by the time of the November Sunday class.

On Saturday, I continued focusing on a single Silk Reeling exercise; this time I did Wrist Rotations and Arm Circles. I was surprised how strongly the sensation went from my arm to my hip on the same side: I was expecting it to go to my Dantian but really it kind of touched the Dantian and then moved down to my hip. And when I did it with both hands, it got even stronger, especially on the direction where I was rotating inward; eventually I got to where it was going down my leg and then bouncing off my foot, which is pretty cool. (And vaguely reminiscent of what happens with the Wu Song Shen Fa, but I think the mechanism of force transmission is different.)

I was feeling like I should do more shoulder opening, so I went back to the arm stretching exercise that Rick taught in a workshop that involves stretching via how you put attention in and then above your body. I did that a couple of times; still works, wasn’t as strong as it was during / after that workshop, so I think I’ll keep at it more.

I read an interesting Tai Chi book, The Heart Treasure of Taijiquan by Ren Gang. Honestly kind of inspiring, I liked the view of high level Tai Chi that it provides, and it was nice to see enough in there that was familiar that I felt like I’ve at least taken a couple of steps along that path. But also kind of frustrating, because his guidance as to how to actually progress along that path isn’t nearly as concrete as I’d like: way too much advice to have your teacher show you stuff in picture. And I do like and respect my local Tai Chi teacher, but also I think the route that my Tai Chi Teacher shows for advancing isn’t particularly closely aligned with the details of what Ren Gang is showing, so I don’t think asking my teacher about something specific that Ren Gang mentions will be too helpful? Still, hopefully between my local teacher and the online stuff and that book, I’ll make progress; I certainly feel like I am.

Also on the Tai Chi not, I’d been a little unsure as to whether I would teach the same Silk Reeling Principles course next summer as I taught this summer. But I got another idea today: I’ve been thinking a fair amount about Song recently, and maybe I understand enough about that to help beginners step up their game a bit? So I’ll think about that more, and see if I can flesh that out into a sketch of a course; if it seems plausible, I’ll ask other local students what they think and if they’re more interested in that than in the Silk Reeling Principles course then I’ll give that a try.

It was a Nei Gong week this week, the lesson was on Prostration. I did the sequence there a few times, it was interesting how the changed hand position felt inside my body, but I didn’t actually feel any desire to prostrate. I don’t think I’ll keep this one up at all regularly, I’ve got enough other stuff to work on. (Though admittedly most of the things I really want to work on now are seated work! But I can always stand to do more Wu Ji, and I should continue to work on my shoulders.)

I went through the first Uluwatu video on Friday; nothing super dramatic, just going through Wu Ji, and the video didn’t have us do a long stand or anything. I didn’t feel up for a single long Wu Song Shen Fa session in the afternoon but I did do 20 minutes each of both WSSF 4 and WSSF 5.

On Saturday, instead of doing Silk Reeling along with the class, I did another long Hand Maneuvers session, 10 minutes with each single hand and then 15-20 minutes of both hands. The distinctive thing about the single hand ones was how the four energies showed up; with two hands, it was again how strongly the hand turns after the vertical part translated into a torso turn, and how the back foot’s energy eventually translated into the Peng on the other side. Also I noticed my back getting quite warm, I guess it’s pretty good for my back.

Also on the Chen Tai Chi note, I’m no longer feeling completely at see with the Hunyuan 48. Doesn’t mean that I’ve got it (or the parts of it that we’ve done in class) down particularly solidly, though, so I’m going to stick with reviewing it on Thursday evenings. I did make it through all of my forms this week, so that’s good. Also I’m experimenting with doing the first form without any Fa Jin, to see if I can understand where the power comes from when I’m trying to minimize the use of my muscles; some from coordinated turning and some from expansion. (Maybe just expansion related to Song, maybe some related to what Damo talks about in his Tai Chi course, I’m not sure.) Seems like an experiment worth continuing.

I’m having ups and downs with tiredness (and with sleep, I definitely had some sleep apnea one night, I think caused by the heat kicked in, I’ve made an appointment to get the air ducts cleaned in a couple of weeks), but I’m also having several days when I’m feeling like doing noticeably more than the minimum. I already talked about what I did on Friday; on Sunday, I did 30 minutes of prostration, 30 minutes of Anchoring the Breath, 1 hour of Calm Abiding (nothing dramatic but a decent amount of tingling; also, in retrospect, I’m not sure where all the time went, I wasn’t sleepy enough to account for that, so maybe I’m starting to get at where time disappears from the exercise itself??), 40 minutes of Spleen Hui Chun. And today I did an hour of Nei Gong and 20 minutes of WSSF 5, which is more than I normally manage on a week day.

Also on the sleep note, I’m thinking that it probably doesn’t help that my breathing is a little shallow, so I should either work on the exercise where you pay attention to your breath or else work on Anchoring the Breath. So for now I’m trying to work the latter into my routine, not necessarily as a priority (I don’t know that it will fit more than once a week in my regular schedule) but hopefully I can do it on days when I feel like doing extra stuff.

Good week; my sleep is definitely getting better, and my energy is sometimes better too. I think, in my next acupuncture appointment in a week and a half, I’m going to ask my doctor if he can switch my herbs from a Liver/Kidney mixture to something that only focuses on my Kidneys: I haven’t been taking any herbs this month and my sleep is being under control now that it’s not so hot, so I don’t think the Liver part is particularly important these days. I’m actually thinking I should get back to Shui Gong and in particular give Shui Gong 2 a try again (it’s led to bad sleep when I’ve tried it in the past); I reviewed the videos for those but the timing hasn’t worked out right for trying them yet.

Also I feel like my ribcage is opening up. Not sure if that’s related to the Heart medicine that I’ve been taking, or if it’s just that the stretching that I’ve been doing in that area is having an effect; seems healthy either way. And I’m Songing more in daily life; mostly physically but also maybe mentally a bit? I like the way it feels on my spine and neck; I’m also noticing one kind of achy bit in my back, hopefully it’ll start working itself open? I’m trying to be somewhat aware of it but not worrying about it.

Anyways, in terms of specific practice stuff: this week’s lesson was a Tai Chi lesson, on Wu Song Shen Fa 5. Interesting exercise; I feel like the first half of it is going pretty well, but I don’t feel like I’m doing the part right where you rock your foot. I’ll keep up with that, and also hopefully find time to do a long WSSF 4 practice; didn’t happen last week and it won’t happen this week, I had unusual stuff going on both weeks.

That unusual stuff also meant that I didn’t go through all of my Chen Tai Chi forms last week, but this week I’ve already gone through all of the weapons forms I know and the longest of the empty hand forms that I know, so hopefully we won’t have a repeat. I was a little worried that the handle of my new Jian was feeling funny, but it turned out that I just needed to tighten the nut more than I had been; glad the outcome was that simple, I prefer the heavier weight of that Jian in general.

The timing of the Foundations Zoom sessions is horrible for me to participate in them live, but they released the videos of the first of them, so I spent 5 hours on Friday going through them. They covered the Hui Chun exercises; nothing super new, though there were a few details I didn’t do quite right. Maybe I should spend a little more time on those; right now I do the Kidney one once a week and the Spleen one most weeks but I don’t do the others, so conceivably I could try to rotate between the other three, doing one of them a week? But I’m not convinced that that’s the best use of my time right now; honestly I feel like I’d pretty much always prefer to do either Calm Abiding or Concentration 2 instead of those. Still, good to have an excuse to have an extra long Nei Gong day. And now there are some (five? four?, average time around two and a half hours) videos from the first in-person classes that Damo led; presumably there’s significant overlap between what he presented and what Rick presented in person (though who knows), but it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for me to go through one of those a week.

Good Chen Tai Chi class on Saturday. Push hands in particular went well: I felt like I wasn’t getting jammed as much as I sometimes do when doing two handed fixed step push hands, and it felt like circles were going between our bodies. And we had the monthly Sunday Tai Chi class; people showed up earlier to do some standing practice, and I decided to do some regular Zhan Zhuang (instead of the lower / gentler variant that I’ve been doing on Saturdays), that went well, I got a good stretch out of that, I’ll probably switch back to doing that variant on Saturdays for a while. And then I randomly decided to do 15 minutes of Hand Maneuvers after that, and that turned out to be a good choice, too: about 5 minutes in, the way my body was doing it changed significantly, with the hand going down actively propelling the turn of my body, so I ended up turned a good amount by the time that hand reached the bottom, before the hand was moving horizontally. Not sure how much of that was from the extra time doing it and how much of it was a side effect of the Zhan Zhuang affecting my internal connections, but it seemed like a good thing either way.

We did the first couple of moves of the Double Dao; we’d done a preparatory practice the last month, and I thought I’d been doing that right, but I think in retrospect I wasn’t, because the same bit showed up in those moves and I was clearly doing that wrong. So I’ll have to figure out exactly what I should be doing there; I ripped the relevant DVD from Chen Qingzhou’s set yesterday, presumably watching that will help.

And that afternoon I had a decent Calm Abiding practice; I think I’m doing better at getting into a Shen Up state, or at least in a “Shen not being so far down as to put me asleep immediately”: I’m trying to not let the source of my attention wander to the lower back of my skull, keeping it more in the middle, and also when I relax my attention, I’m trying to let it expand out (as I do when Songing physically) instead of having my attention sink in a way that collapses.

And then on Monday I had a very good Calm Abiding practice: I was planning to do it for 45 minutes, but it was going well so it ended up more like 65 or 70 minutes. In the last third or half, I was getting this feeling that my mind was everywhere in the upper half of my body (basically everything above my waist), almost like my body was wanting to glow and/or become a pyramid. And there was a very strong tingling sensation and expansion sensation. That definitely felt like progress; on a mental level I maybe didn’t come out of it quite as chill as in my prior best Calm Abiding sessions, but I’m pretty sure that whatever was going on with my body was something useful. The only thing I’m not so sure about was that my sleep last night was weirdly interrupted, in a way that didn’t feel like any of my normal patterns for sleep being interrupted; not sure what’s going on there, maybe it’s just a coincidence or maybe a subtler version of one of the normal problems, but it feels like it’s not completely out of the question for it to be related to the Calm Abiding session? Though if that were the case I would expect it to feel more like Liver Qi rising problems.