Nei Gong Notes: July 15, 2025
Last Tuesday’s lesson was Taiji Standing 4 – Push. Which is actually good timing – I’d been vaguely wondering if I should spend more time on the Taji Standing exercises, and some of the general discussion in that lesson combined with some discussion in the IAA forum makes me think that it’s worth experimenting with: it seems like those exercises might be a useful complement to exercises that actually move Jin? So I think I’d like to find time on those; the next question is when / how, though, because there aren’t any exercises that I want to dial back on…
On Wednesday, I did 90m of Wu Ji; the last 15 minutes was hard but I made it. And 30m of the Full Moon practice.
Thursday was another good Tai Chi morning, and actually a good practice day in general. I reviewed the Ba Men 2 – Release video, I went through the Chen Jian form 5 times, I did 20 minutes each of Taiji Standing 4 and Wu Song Shen Fa 3, I went through the Yang 37 form 3 times alone and 2 times with the video, and I had one good-feeling round of the Xin Jia first form. And in the afternoon I did an hour of the Yellow Court stretch, since I’d heard that Rick was mentioning that and it had been a while since I’d done it; an hour of Calm Abiding (probably the time doing that where I’ve felt most like I was hanging out in my body; not as strong a Song as I’ve gotten before but the hanging out part is definitely progress); and 20m of Full Moon. And I felt good after practice, not sure what all contributed to that but yay. And I reviewed the Hunyuan 48 in the evening.
On Friday, I decided I should experiment with doing some of the Nei Gong in the morning, to avoid after-nap weirdness. (My naps have gotten sounder recently, so I’m a little logy when I wake up.) And I think I should probably stretch more too – I was doing that more regularly at the start of my maybe-retirement schedule, and it felt good, but I’ve been slacking on that as well. Dogs kept me up for a while in the previous night (though I slept soundly after that) so I wasn’t 100%, but I did 20m stretching and 1h of Wu Ji in the morning, and 1h of Dantian Gong plus thickening in the afternoon. I had good Shen Up during that hour, my attention felt really clear, my body was inflating more than normal at the start of the DTG.
On Saturday, I did 30 minutes of Zhan Zhuang; I felt like I was doing an okay job of turning sinking into expansion, maybe because of the four energies practice? And my Chen teacher reviewed my Jian, I got some useful advice out of that. Unfortunately, that (plus the regular Chen Saturday class stuff) was all I did – one of my dogs was really worked up overnight so my sleep was crap.
Sunday was the once-a-month extra Chen class. I did 20 minutes of Zhan Zhuang before the start; a little sleepy so I chickened out, but actually it was pretty good, and I noticed during class that my lower spine was feeling better than normal, like it wanted to push up some, so maybe my body is starting to learn to keep the Ming Men full? That would be really useful if it is the case. And I did a little bit of breathing practice; some just sitting and watching (and mostly notice that I was surprisingly tense), and some box breathing.
On Monday, I went through the Spine Spa video. I wasn’t really looking forward to that: was spending two hours on that the right thing to do? But past me had thought that I should do that once a month or so, so I gave it another shot. And I’ll chalk that up as a win for past me, glad I did that, I’ve now set up a recurring reminder for that. The rotating the cage bit felt surprisingly strong; maybe that’s because of the Dantian pulsing that we did before that, I’m not sure, I’ll have to try out the Dantian pulsing in other similar contexts. And the bit about pulling with your pinkies was pretty interesting, there’s one bit in the middle of my spine that I kept on coming back to while doing that, hopefully I got that a bit unstuck but who knows.
I’m visiting my parents the rest of the week, so today was a travel day. I did sit on the plane for about 50 minutes and did a decent job of getting my mind in my body again, but I did almost no Song. But I’ll still treat that as a victory, doing anything like that on an economy-class seat in a plane is hard.
I feel good about the week – that’s now a few good Tai Chi days in a row, and there were some good signs over on the Nei Gong side, too. We’l see how much practice I do this week, but visiting my parents is important, so if the answer is “not much”, that’s fine. Not sure what was up with my younger dog’s sleep patterns at the end of the week, hopefully that was a transient thing, I’ve got enough sleep/fatigue issues that I don’t need my dog making it worse. (He was getting better on Sunday and Monday night, though, so I’ll be optimistic.)