A Nei Gong lesson week, on Dan Tian Governance. I didn’t really get that one; feels like something to return to if I start making progress with Scholar / Martial Breathing.

Anyways, the middle of the week was good (as Tuesday had been); I think it’s because sleep was going better? I had a hypothesis there that something I was doing was getting me to breathe more deeply with my diaphragm while sleeping and that was helping things (not fixing things, but maybe if I could work on that, it would); unfortunately, my sleep and energy levels were back to a so-so level after that, so maybe it’s just random variation. I do want to push on that, though, I’m no longer as convinced as I was that obstructive sleep apnea is all that’s going on.

Anyways, on Wednesday I did 1h Wu Ji, 1h Dantian Gong plus Thickening the Qi. Both went well – 1h was totally fine for the Wu Ji, my mind felt back in shape for the first time since I got a little sick after the workshop, and my body is aching in ways that, if I’m optimistic, might mean that things are expanding inside? And my body was doing some interesting “bump bump bump” movements during the DTG instead of letting my hands move smoothly.

On Thursday, I had another good Tai Chi day: I reviewed the Grasping the Sparrow’s Tail lesson(though I should probably go back to review the Ba Men lesson); did Jian form 6 times; 20m each Taiyi Standing and WSSF2; went through 37 form 4 times (once with video, three on my own); and the Lao Jia first form three times. For Nei Gong, I did 1h of Spine / Shoulder Dao Yin and 45m Calm Abiding. In the evening, I reviewed the 48 form, watched the Qi Connects Body lecture in the Foundations set, and skimmed a couple more sections of the Audio Guide.

On Friday we had friends over, so not much time for Nei Gong: 20m Wu Ji, 15m breathing exercises, but that’s all.

On Saturday I lead Silk Reeling in my Chen Tai Chi class, and did the other normal stuff in that class; for Nei Gong I did 10m Pushing the Tides, 20m Dragons, and 30m ADTG.

On Sunday, I rewatched Lotus Dao Yin video and I did 1h Bellows Breathing / Scholar attempt / Calm Abiding. That latter did not go well; what with the workshop there had been a several week gap since the last time I tried it, and that turned out to be enough that I didn’t feel confident that I was doing the exercises correctly. So I might have to review those videos again. (Or, of course, decide to stop pushing on that.) And I did half my Tai Chi forms.

On Monday, I did 1h Wu Ji, 35m breathing exercises. A little disappointing: I was hoping to do 90m of Wu Ji but, for whatever reason, I didn’t. This is actually a theme: the attentive reader will notice that my Nei Gong times have almost never added up to two hours since the workshop, even though that’s my goal. Some of that is fatigue, but also something’s off with the timing of my afternoon maps, which is having the effect of me not leaving enough time for Nei Gong and/or not wanting to do Nei Gong? (I still do do Nei Gong, I just goof off more before starting and give up more easily.) That latter could also be related to fatigue, but I think that I also need to spend less time getting distracted by pointless stuff; it might be a good idea for me to delete all the puzzle apps off of my iPad, for example.

And in my Tai Chi session this morning, I did 20m each of the four energies and WSSF1; my feet ached more than normal towards the end of that, which I’ll take as a good sign. And I finished going through the different Tai Chi forms, and I went through the Jian 3 times. In the afternoon, I did 45m Spinal Dao Yin, 30m Calm Abiding (bad planning there, I was doing it in a central part of the house because I expected my wife to be out longer than she actually was, whoops), 10m Wood Wu Xing.

I was feeling a little sick in the middle of the week, so no lesson last Tuesday evening and no practice on Wednesday and Thursday. Apparently many people got sick after the workshop, don’t know if something was going around or if it was something more esoteric.

On Thursday I was starting to feel better, so I finished my Tai Chi forms for the week, and I did 15m of Side Channel Rolling and 40m of Kidney Hui Chun. Also one thing that I noted that day was that my Yellow Court was feeling more active than normal; it had been doing that since the workshop, clearly the workshop had an effect. (Mostly calmed down as of this writing, though.) And I watched the Shen Up, Qi Down video that was posted to the Foundations course; glad I did, it stuck in a way that previous presentations of that material haven’t, it managed to get me in a mental state that really does feel different inside.

On Friday I hadn’t slept well (I’m trying out an apnea treatment that, honestly, isn’t going great), so all I did was 20m Wu Ji and 25m Spleen Hui Chun.

On Saturday, I started doing Advanced Dantian Gong but it quickly became clear that a nap would be more useful then too, so I stopped after 15 minutes. I went to my regular Chen Tai Chi class, and went through the Dragon Dao Yins.

On Sunday I did half of my Tai Chi forms, 20m Wu Ji, 10m Coiling Snake, and an hour of Calm Abiding.

On Monday, I did a 25m stretching session (I should do that more often, but certainly right now I’m feeling that my body has regressed in a bunch of ways since the workshop, so stretching seemed called for), 1h of Wu Ji, and 25m on Kidney Hui Chun.

And today was a rather good day. I reviewed the Ward off Left video in the 37 form, I went through the rest of my Tai Chi forms (and I actually decided to go through the Jian form six times, because I’ve decided that it’ll be the form that I show to my teacher later this month), and I also did 20m each of the four energies exercise, Wu Song Shen Fa 1, and Wu Song Shen Fa 3. So lots of Tai Chi in the morning; and, in the afternoon, a solid Nei Gong session, with an hour of a mix of Wu Ji, Spine Waves, and Ji Ben 4, followed by an hour of Calm Abiding. I did need a decent nap in the middle of it, so it’s not like my energy problems had disappeared, but also my sleep was better than average last night, I think. (Possibly due to Shui Gong 2, I did that last night and I think it made a difference.)

Most of the last week was the workshop. Lots of good stuff; and my body was feeling like it had had a pretty good workout by the end of it!

Which meant that I still felt what I thought was pleasantly exhausted (in a kind of unusual, more internal way) on Sunday; unfortunately, on Monday, I crashed hard at my normal nap time, and I’m feeling worse today. Not sure if I came down with something in the airport or if the lack of sleep Saturday night (caused by a flight getting me home at 1am and my dogs waking me up at a normal time) was too much sleep debt, or what; at any rate, I’m taking it easy now, certainly not doing a lesson tonight. (I did at least get a decent amount of Tai Chi in on Sunday, plus a bit of Calm Abiding.)

And I have some thinking to do about how to change my practice mix in light of the workshop. Probably work in a bit more seated gathering / thickening, and some occasional Microcosmic Orbit attempts? And I should spend more time doing active standing work with my mind inside my body, using it in different ways.

This week’s lesson was 37 Form – Full Sequence. A good one for a short week, since it’s just front and back videos of the sequence, so there’s nothing new I need to learn. And I also watched a new interview with Damo on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday, I had a short practice, only 30m Wu Ji and 25m Full Moon: partly that was me getting distracted and partly it was needing time to pack for the workshop. Though actually the Wu Ji started out amazing; but then my brother called and I needed to talk to him, and when I got back to it, the magic was going. I can’t even remember any more exactly how it was amazing, but something really interesting was going on in my body, hopefully that will come back…

Thursday was a travel day; I did 20m of Wu Ji and a bit of Yin Yang breathing on the plane.

And I’ve been at the workshop since then. I’m not going to write about the details of that, though maybe next week I’ll write about what changes to my practice routine I might make in response to the workshop? We’ll see.

A Nei Gong lesson this week, Side Channel Rolling; another Hunyuan practice. Pleasant enough, gets my body moving.

Wednesday: 1h50m Wu Ji. I would have done a full 2 hours (it was getting plenty annoying, but I would have lasted), but people came early to look at work that was going to be done on my deck.

Thursday: Tai Chi in the morning. I reviewed the 37 Form Opening Sequence; went through the Jian form a few times; did 20m Taiyi Standing, 20m WSSF1; went through the 37 Form a few times. I’m starting to feel a little good about it: tons of details wrong, but there are also parts that feel good inside my body, and also I’m at the state in the form where it doesn’t feel so long. In, I did a slightly abbreviated Spinal Dao Yin and 45m Calm Abiding. In the evening I reviewed the Hunyuan 48 and listened to IAA pod number 6. I also watched Chen Qingzhou’s Jian video; I’ve got it largely correct, though I think a few details are wrong. I think we’ll start that soon in the Saturday class, so I don’t necessarily have to worry too much about getting the details from the video?

Friday: 1h Dantian Gong, 20m Thickening the Qi, 20m Golden Orb. Golden Orb was probably more effective than when I did it without the thickening, but still, I don’t think it was as effective as when following along in the Zoom video? So I should follow that along again next time. And 30m breathing practice (Dry Sighing, Yin Yang Breathing). Again, good Dantian Gong, it feels like it’s starting to have an effect around my tailbone, that’ll probably be useful for when I get back to working on the Microcosmic Orbit.

Saturday: I needed extra sleep, so I didn’t do my regular Advanced Dantian Gong or long Silk Reeling. I did 20m Zhan Zhuang, and I went through the Dragons, though; and of course there was the regular Tai Chi class. And I went through half my weapons so I don’t have to do that on Sunday.

Sunday: 25m of Hunyuan stuff (side channels, belt). Sunday Tai Chi class. I did a bit of Bellows Breathing in the afternoon, but I was too sleepy for it to go well; I was planning to go into Scholar Breathing but I cut it short.

Monday: 1h Wu Ji, 15 minutes Side Channel Rolling, 40m Kidney Hui Chun

Tuesday: 20m each WSSF 2/3; and finished almost all my Tai Chi forms. Still not feeling WSSF 2 very strongly… And I went through the Du Stretch video (I should probably do that more regularly), did some full moon practice, and I did the Bellows Breathing / Scholar Breathing / Calm Abiding that I didn’t manage on Sunday.

The big thing this week is that the 9 day Nei Gong retreat starts on Friday. So I might cut my practice short on Wednesday to make sure I can pack, and Thursday will be a travel day, and I won’t be giving detailed reports on the workshop. Fortunately, the lesson for today is just a review of the Yang 37, so it’s not really adding anything particularly new, so I can go through that lesson like normal.

This week was a Tai Chi lesson; finished the 37 form, yay! Though honestly I am not confident of a whole bunch of stuff in the entire second half of the form, and I’m sure there are details in the first half that I’m getting wrong, too. I don’t want to pause my progress in the course while I go through the whole thing again (though, honestly, that might actually not be the worst idea?); I think I’ll probably try to do what I’m doing with the Hunyuan 48, which is to go back to the beginning and review a section a week, and, if I feel iffy about previous sections that I’ve reviewed, go over those again as well; the question then is when I’ll find time for that. Maybe I can add it into my Thursday evening study? Or maybe I can add it into Tuesday / Thursday mornings? On weeks when I’ve made it through all my forms on Sunday / Tuesday, adding it into Thursday morning makes sense, I think; would be nice if that happened in a higher percentage of weeks, though…

Anyways:

Wednesday: I did 1h Wu Ji; it felt like I had weird line running around my waist, at first I was worried something was inappropriately compressing vertically but when I tried stretching my torso out more, I don’t think that was the case? And I did 15 min Coiling Snake + Wu Ji; I felt a much stronger connection to my Lao Gong when doing that than normal, not sure what’s going on there. And 35m of breathing exercises; I’ve been slacking on those but I still think they’re an area where I need to build my foundations up more, not sure what to do about that…

Thursday: 20m Taiyi standing; it didn’t feel like much at the start but by the end I was getting a noticeable Peng going down that led into a release that was at least somewhat useful, I think? And 20m of WSSF1; it felt significantly stronger than normal from the start, there wasn’t necessarily a strong release from my foot but at least more stuff moving through the body / interacting with the body than I’m used to. (So maybe that combination of exercises is good?) And I finished going through my forms for the week. As to Nei Gong, I did 20m Wu Ji, I rewatched the Coiling Snake video (one thing I forgot was to push from the spine into the arms, don’t pull from the arms) and the Golden Orb video, and I had 1h10m of good Calm Abiding. In the evening, I reviewed a section of the Hunyuan 48, and I listened to the first four sections of the new Audio Guide to Nei Gong; nothing super surprising there, I’d probably get more out of rereading the Complete Guide. (But I don’t know that that’s a high priority, either.)

Friday: 1h Dantian Gong, 20m Golden Orb, 30m Anchoring the Breath. The Dantian Gong was super powerful, lots of stuff building up; the Golden Orb didn’t feel like it was having a significant effect on my body, though. (Much less than when I watched the Foundations workshop on that.) I think what I was missing was a step to thicken the Qi, so I’ll look for an exercise to work in there. Also, I’ve been noticing recently that I’m getting more stretchy connectivity in my lower back, that was certainly clear today.

Saturday: 40m Advanced Dantian Gong; it was good, I felt some swallowing of Qi by my abdomen towards the end. I did 20m of the Qingzhou standing exercise; I did feel my Baihui being a little more active, but still, not enough of an effect for me to want to keep on doing that, so I’ll switch to something else for my Saturday pre-Tai-Chi-class standing exercise. (Probably traditional Zhan Zhuang.) For my long silk reeling exercise, I did a long version of Chest and Abdomen Folding; there wasn’t anything interesting going on there, which wasn’t a big surprise. In the class, we finished the Lao Jia spear, yay; there were a bunch of details that I’d been getting wrong over the last quarter, good to have that firmed up. And I went through the Dragon Dao Yins after class.

Sunday: 20m Wu Ji, 1h of Bellows Breathing / Scholar Breathing / Calm Abiding. Nothing much to report there, no hints of Martial Breathing arising. And I went through a decent number of my Tai Chi forms.

Monday: 1h Wu Ji, and I reviewed the Thickening the Qi lesson and the Bellows Breathing lesson. The Thickening the Qi lesson was a good fit for what I’d been seeing in that Foundations lecture, so hopefully doing Dantian Gong + Thickening the Qi + Golden Orb will make the Golden Orb much more useful.

Tuesday: 20m of the Four Energies drill, and 20m of WSSF3; it’s interesting in the latter how the energy splits and goes both to the leg and to the arm, it’s like the way, when you do the Peng in the Four Energies drill, the sinking leads to expansion. (Not 100% sure if it’s all that mechanism or not.) And I finished going through my forms for the week, yay, nice to have that done on Tuesday. In the afternoon I did 20m Wu Ji, and I watched the Drawing Down Heaven Dao Yin video; not necessarily planning to spend more time on that Dao Yin, if I’m going to work on that then there’s a Year 2 set of lessons that seem like an evolution of it, I think it’s the Taiyi Hundun ones, so if I want to work on opening that channel then I should probably do it that way. And I had a good 1h10m Calm Abiding session; I should really start setting my timer for a longer time instead of saying “I’ll set it for an hour and if it goes well I’ll keep on going”, because I don’t end up going all that much longer than an hour.

No more offspring visiting, so I’ve been back to a normal schedule this week. And it’s been going well; actually, I feel like my body has been getting better even before this week? My spine is feeling both a little more flexible and a little more solid in ways that make me think that Qi is moving through it; also, how it feels when I sink into my Kua is changing (especially during Tai Chi), I feel like there’s an extra step at the end which has my pelvis sink further in ways that adds an extra stretch and extra stability. Which in turn creates a new goal, which is to get to that extra stretch more quickly, I think that will make a difference in my stability.

Anyways, on to the stuff from this week: last Tuesday’s lesson was a Nei Gong one, Scholar Breathing Revisited. Which started off with an assumption that you’ve been doing Scholar Breathing a lot; I hadn’t, and I’d actually forgotten exactly what it was, so I spent a decent amount of time rewatching some earlier videos. It turns out that it’s something that I was considering working on after last summer’s workshop but had decided I wanted to spend my time in other areas; having it come up again makes me wonder if I should reconsider that. I’d already been thinking I should spend more time on building Qi in my Dantian specifically, and this feels like it will dovetail well with that; so maybe instead of doing a 1h Calm Abiding three days a week, I should switch one of them to Scholar Breathing? Or, actually, to a combination of the two – I need to go through my notes from last summer, but my memory is that, on several days, we did a sequence where we started with Calm Abiding to build up Qi and then transitioned into Scholar Breathing (which in turn may or may not have transitioned into Martial Breathing, of course). So I’ll look through those notes and give that a try.

As to the other days:

On Wednesday I did 1h30m Wu Ji and I reviewed the year 2 Alchemical Breathing lesson. (Which turned out to be a different thing from Scholar Breathing, I couldn’t quite remember which year 2 videos were relevant. And I won’t say that that one is irrelevant, using Alchemical Breathing as prep for Scholar Breathing is maybe not a bad idea?)

On Thursday I did 10m Stringing the Arms, and I did all my Tai Chi weapons forms and almost all the empty hand forms. I went through the Sinew Work Principles Zoom class again, glad I did, I should do it every so often. (I think it was probably even more intense this time than when I first went through it?) I did my regular Thursday evening review of parts of the Hunyuan 48 for, and I rewatched a foundations video on the Dantian. Which, among other things, convinced me that I need to work on my Dantian more: building up Qi in general across my body is good, but I just don’t have nearly enough Qi in my Dantian specifically to get some of the behaviors that I’m working towards.

On Friday I did 1h Wu Ji (with my mind mostly in my Dantian), 20m Ji Ben 1, and I reviewed the year 2 scholar/martial breathing video; that last one was useful.

On Saturday I did 40m Scholar breathing (well, 20 minutes of prep stuff plus 20 minutes of Scholar breathing). Before my Chen Tai Chi class I did 20m of Qingzhou’s Zhan Zhuang (still not really getting anything out of it, I’ll declare an end to that experiment at the end of the month), and during Silk Reeling I did both long Horizontal Circles (during which the stretch / connection moved down to my legs in an interesting way about halfway through the time I spent on that) and long Body Stretch (in the going up direction, things gathered in an interesting way, though going down was less interesting). And I did some Dragon Dao Yins after that.

On Sunday I did 45m Calm Abiding with my mind in Dantian (went pretty well); and 30m Wu Ji combined with Ji Ben 4. I like how my body feels as it’s making a ball shape while doing that. And I did 10m of Stringing the Arms and went through half of my Tai Chi forms.

On Monday I did 90m Wu Ji, 40m Water Hui Chun.

And today I went through the Spine Spa video a second time; maybe I’ll try to do that once every month or so? And I reviewed the old and new Scholar Breathing lessons. And I finished going through the Tai Chi weapon forms for the week, though I still have empty-hand ones to do.

This week’s lesson was the Taiji one on Stringing the Arms. As you’ll see below, I’ve done very little Tai Chi this week, so I haven’t actually practiced this one, but I honestly suspect I’m probably already in okay shape with this quality? Could be wrong, though, certainly I should give it a try.

Anyways, an unusual week, mostly because my kid is in town so I’ve been doing extra activities on a bunch of days, but also I was on the edge of getting sick on Wednesday and Thursday so I took it easy those days. Anyways:

Wednesday: Feeling on the edge of getting sick, so I didn’t do anything.

Thursday: Spent the day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium (and I still wasn’t feeling 100%). I did the Hunyuan 48 review in the evening, at least.

Friday: 45m Wu Ji; was going to take it easy and only do 30m but I liked the internal stretch. And 30m Anchoring the Breath.

Saturday: The belt channel exercise and a short advanced Dantian Gong session..

Sunday: 20m Ji Ben 5, a bit of Wu Ji, 45m okayish Calm Abiding.

Monday: 1h Wu Ji, 30m Anchoring the Breath.

Tuesday: 1h Calm Abiding, 20m Wu Ji, rewatched the Pushing the Tides video, 10m Wood Wu Xing (plus some Wu Ji before / after).

The other thing I’ve noticed is that I’m getting more distracted than normal during the longer sessions, and also that it’s been a while since I’ve felt the mental Song really kick in during Calm Abiding. I was hoping it would kick in today because I got a decent nap before then, but it didn’t – the session wasn’t bad but it wasn’t unusually good, either. Maybe those are both related (and also maybe they’re related to the fact that it’s taken a little while longer to fall asleep than normal recently); at any rate, that’s why I threw in the Wood Wu Xing today, because it might fix some of that?

A Nei Gong lesson week: the Belt Channel, another one of the Hunyuan exercises. A lot of these are somewhat familiar to me from my Tai Chi teacher, but they way he teaches them has some details that are different in how you move and, I think, has a different purpose; I wonder if it’s something like the Wu Song Shen Fa where you teach the same basic movement for multiple different purposes?

On Wednesday, I had a 2h Wu Ji session, yay; I was maybe standing a bit high (though I wouldn’t have thought that if not for the mirror), but still, a good session.

On Thursday I had a 1h15m good Calm Abiding session; I should get back to tuning into the Qi during that, though, I keep on forgetting that. 1h Spinal Dao Yin; when doing the Water Wu Xing part of it, stuff was going up my back in a much wider channel than I’m used to (and hence getting blocked less), maybe that’s a sign that my spine work is having an effect? I did all my Tai Chi weapons, so at least I got somewhat caught up from the days when I skipped that. And I did my Hunyuan 48 review in the evening; I’m starting over from the beginning (well, near the beginning, I feel like I’m okay on the first 20% or so), and I did pick up some bits that I’d missed, so that was a good choice.

On Friday, I did 45m Wu Ji and 30m Anchoring the Breath. Which sounds bad, but the day was unusual because of some people visiting, so I’m fine with only getting that amount done.

On Saturday: 20m Advanced DTG, some Dragons, and my regular Tai Chi class. Again, not a ton, but I’m okay with that, I was sleepier than normal.

On Sunday I had my monthly special Tai Chi class, and I also went through the Belt Channel exercise and the full moon exercise.

On Monday I again went through the Belt Channel exercise and the full moon exercise, and I had a 1h30m Wu Ji session. That last one was surprisingly interesting, a pretty strong internal stretch.

And today I reviewed Tai Yi standing from the Taiji course; glad I did, I guess I should add that into the rotation? (Though also I need to get back to my regular Tuesday / Thursday Tai Chi sessions, and maybe add in a third 20m isolated exercise section into them…) And I did half of my weapons and some forms. For Nei Gong, I did the Roni Warm Up video from the Sweden 2022 set (I’d been rewatching the videos so I figured I might as well go through that as well); not my favorite warmup, I’m not so into strength stuff, but even that was presented in an interesting way, and I liked the bit from the end that was the Swimming Dragon hand movement. And I did Ji Ben 4 and the Kidney Hui Chun; should have been a Calm Abiding day, but I messed up my napping so I knew I would just fall asleep if I tried that.

A Tai Chi lesson, Swing and Kick. Very close to the end of the form, I think only one lesson left before I’m done with that form?

On Wednesday, I did 1h of Wu Ji and 40m of Kidney Hui Chun.

On Thursday, I went over all of my Tai Chi forms; I’m getting better at the Double Dao, my Yang 37 is still iffy towards the end. (And I did my Hunyuan 48 review in the evening, that one’s quite iffy too.) In terms of Nei Gong, I did the Qi Building Principles Zoom class; good stuff, but also I’ve seen a bunch of lessons about Calm Abiding recently, so not a ton that was new to me in there. Certainly made me want to keep Calm Abiding in my rotation at a high priority, at any rate.

On Friday I did 1h30m of Wu Ji, and 35m of breathing exercises. Still having a hard time getting back to 2 hours: another one of those where my form felt really good, I feel like I should be able to just go on forever, but then somewhere around 45 minutes or an hour in, my back gets a little iffy, and after an hour and a half I end up stopping. Not sure if there’s something wrong with my form or if I need to get my back stronger or if I’ve been stressing it as part of getting it stronger and it’s a temporary problem or if that’s just an excuse and I need to push through?

On Saturday, I did some Advanced Dantian Gong, and my standard Chen Tai Chi class. I did some of Chen Qingzhou’s version of Zhan Zhuang before that; I’m still not sure what that’s good for, I’ll probably keep it up through this month but stop after that. And my long Silk Reeling for this week was Spine Stretch; I thought that doing that for 40 minutes might be a bit much for my back so I did 10 minutes in each direction instead of 20 minutes, and actually it felt funny rather sooner than that. (Apparently that exercise is more strenuous than Spine Waves, I can do that for 20 minutes with no problems.) But it was fine, it didn’t end up overly inflaming my back or anything. Not much to report from that; one direction is good for feeling my vertebrae. (And I’m not surprised that I don’t have much to report: it’s honestly only barely a Silk Reeling exercise, I would say.)

Not much on Sunday: 20m of Wu Ji and 40m of sleepy Calm Abiding, no Tai Chi at all. Partly because I was sleepy, but also I think I might want to lower my expectations on Sunday? On Mondays through Fridays I’m putting in solid enough days that it kind of feels like regular work, and Saturday I’m very busy with a long dog walk and three hours (sometimes more) of Tai Chi and grocery shopping; so treating Sunday as a rest day at least to some extent feels like it’s pretty defensible? Don’t get me wrong, I want to do some Nei Gong and some Tai Chi normally, but also I want to have time to just play some video games in the afternoons. It also doesn’t help that, these days, I’m looking after Ulli during the first part of the morning while Liesl gives Velvet a longer walk, which means that I can’t sleep in late and I also can’t do Nei Gong during the walk.

Monday was Dantian day: 20m of Wu Ji (with my mind in my Dantian instead of in all of my body as I normally have it), 60m of Dantian Gong, 20m of Ji Ben 1, and 40m of Spleen Hui Chun. Glad I spent so much time on my Dantian: I’m happy enough with not having it by a primary area of focus right now but still, it’s important, so I should work in occasional Dantian days.

And today was Spine day: after doing 1h of decent Calm Abiding, I went through the Du Stretch video again, and I did 20m of Wu Ji and 20m of Spine Waves. So pretty good Nei Gong, but unfortunately almost no Tai Chi: I reviewed the WSSF3 video (and I’m glad I did, I picked up something useful with my hand positioning), but I didn’t do any forms. So I won’t do all of my Tai Chi forms this week, unless I do everything on Thursday. (And who knows, maybe that will happen! But I won’t count on it.) I don’t feel too horrible about that, because my sleep was bad on both Saturday night and Monday night, but still, not what I would have liked.

We’ll see how this week and the next go: my offspring is in town for both of those weeks, so I imagine there will days when I’m doing stuff with them and that eats into my Nei Gong / Tai Chi time.