Pretty solid week. On Wednesday, I went through an hour-long Spinal Dao Yin video from Sweden; it was more internal than I expect from Dao Yins, but it seemed pretty effective in opening up my spine, I think I’m going to do that once a week for the next while. On Friday I did a 45 minute Wu Ji session; I’d been planning to do an hour, but for whatever reason I didn’t, in retrospect I think I should have pushed on? Still, the longest session I’ve done for a while. My energy level did start to dim after maybe 30 minutes, and I was getting some unexpected pressure on the inside of my thighs towards the end; nothing bad or anything, though. And on Sunday, since I’d already done long versions of the Kidney and Spleen Hui Chuns that week, I decided to do a long Calm Abiding session, for the first time in I don’t know how long. That one I did manage to keep going for an hour; I was worried that I was going to fall asleep partway through, but I got a second wind maybe halfway through and then kept it up. I did have a weird feeling where I wasn’t sure pretty much the whole time whether my attention was quite on my Dantian, but also my attention was staying surprisingly well fixed in approximately the right area, so that was good.

And yesterday and today were the monthly full moon practice. Though my sleep wasn’t that great last night, so I worked from home instead of going into work, and I decided to use the extra commute time by doing a 40 minute Kidney Hui Chun instead. I am getting worried that I might be backsliding on my sleep, so I did the Liver Wu Xing this afternoon; I might try out the Liver Hui Chun tomorrow morning to see how that feels?

I got an email about the next local Nei Gong workshop, in January; glad that those are happening regularly again. I’m still really getting a lot out of the last one, my Wu Ji is continuing to be much more interesting and, I think, productive. (Also, in terms of random recent changes, I feel like I’m relaxing my stomach more while standing and letting stuff sink in a productive way as a result?)

In terms of Tai Ji: I was thinking about something Damo said about moving via releasing, and I’m thinking about where that might apply in the form that I’m doing. One place I had in mind was Reverse with Spiraling Forearms, where I feel like I can push out my arms via Songing; I asked Tony about that, and he said that you can either do as a Fa Jin, so more of a strike, or you can do it as a push, with the energy going out to your palms. Also he mentioned again on Saturday that, when kicking with one foot, you should use your back arm to balance the kicking foot; I think I’ve been having both arms be behaving similarly instead, doing it as he suggests definitely helps with my balance.

And the Jian continues to be interesting. I was noticing a lot on Saturday how it feels in the curve of my arm, especially the arm that’s not holding the sword. In general, a lot of the moves feel like that; some of them are more Fa Jin (and those are the ones I have the most trouble with), some are moving like they’re creating more of a plane rather than a curved line, and there are a few where you turn your hand that I should probably think of as more of a spiral?

Good week. Not an abnormally large amount of practice or anything, but a decent quantity, and my body is doing well. In terms of stuff that I’m getting TCM treatment, this weekend I slept through the night once for the first time in ages; sleep had been getting better, but still, nice to see that. And I’m also not feeling like I need to pee as often, which can be a problem if your kidneys aren’t doing well. On which note, Damo posted a public video about the Kidney system in TCM, and it’s really interesting, makes me wish I could watch all of his TCM videos. (But it doesn’t make me wish it enough to actually sign up for that course!)

And I like how my body is responding to Nei Gong. It was definitely feeling active over the weekend, and today was interesting too: I was doing the Kidney Hui Chun this morning, and for whatever reason I felt an unusual (but, I think, good?) sensation on the front of my forehead, at about the level of my upper Dantian, so I sat with that for a while longer. And I was doing Wu Ji at the end of the day today, and that felt really good: energetic stuff going on in my body, good connection and relaxation, and my mind is doing better at sinking and paying less attention to the physical details of what’s going on in my body.

A couple of times over the last week or two I’ve done other sitting exercises, like Anchoring the Breath. At first I was wondering if I should stop the constant Hui Chun and go back to my prior practice regimen, since things are going better. But I think that what I should do instead is mostly keep up with the push to get better: I don’t want to backslide from the current state, and my energy levels could still use a boost. So I should keep things up, and try to get things to a level where I can stop the TCM treatment: I certainly don’t want to be doing that forever!

Oh, and one other thing I’ve noticed over the last few weeks but I’ve forgotten to write about: when working on reducing my intensity when paying attention to things during my practice, I’ve realized that my default state has my brain feeling like it’s going forward pretty much all the time. When I relax it, my eyes also go back a little bit; I wonder if it’s related to my vision? Something to work on when I’m relaxing, at any rate.

In terms of Tai Chi, Saturday’s class was fine but nothing special. But then on Sunday, I went through the first form; I’d occasionally been noticing that I was leaning forward a bit, but this time I realized that I’m literally doing that in almost every single move. Which is a little embarrassing to only notice this now, given that I’ve been doing this for seven years! But hey, good to be getting more in touch with my body. So I did the form a couple more times trying to fix that. I realized that, if I don’t lean forward, I feel like I’m not going forward enough, so apparently I’m doing that to try to lower myself in a way that avoids my legs, for whatever reason. But once I was aware of that, I started lowering myself with my legs more, and it felt fine, not sure why my body didn’t want to do that? And actually it felt better: I’d been feeling stress on my right knee some while doing Tai Chi, and when I didn’t lean forward, that went away. So hopefully making this change will actively help reduce the strain on my body; that would be nice.

And I think I’m more or less caught up on the Guan Dao form? (At least up to where we were two months ago, but I heard that we didn’t do anything new last month.) I’m getting to the stage where I forget bits but can then make sense of what I’m doing wrong on my own, which is a good sign in terms of actually solidifying my knowledge of the form, it gets it in a better state in my memory than when I do it right but can’t, for example, replay it by memory in my head.

So I expected this week to be a week where I didn’t have anything to report for Nei Gong: I had jury duty and a work special thing, so I was at jury duty when I would normally practice on Wednesday and that meant that, even though I did have Friday off, I had three separate medical things to go to (nothing worrisome or anything, just allergy shots, acupuncture, and new glasses) plus one shopping thing that I needed to get out of the way, so I didn’t do a long practice then either. I did my normal 45-minute-ish practice those days, so it’s not like I didn’t do any Nei Gong, but nothing special.

But I did do a longer than normal practice on Sunday morning, maybe an hour and a half? And it actually felt really good: my body felt alive, stuff was moving around. And it was moving around more when I was standing in Wu Ji, in ways that seemed related to the exercise that I’d been doing before the Wu Ji: that is honestly something that never happened to me for the first couple of years that I was doing Nei Gong even though teachers always talked about it, so it was nice to see that.

And actually practice on Saturday, yesterday, and today was good too. And I even noticed some times today when I was just sitting at my desk but my spine was feeling active. So my body seems to be doing well; I’m starting to get optimistic that I can get back to working on Dantian Gong soon? Not sure, I’m nervous about not doing Hui Chun almost every day, and that does take up my sitting practice time, but it’s something to think about.

Also, in terms of things going well: my energy levels might be getting better? I don’t feel perky, I still feel a little blah, but one thing that I realized this week was that, even on days when my sleep wasn’t as good as I’d like, I didn’t actually feel like I really wanted to take a nap in the middle of the afternoon. Kind of depressing to have that be a potential sign of things potentially improving, but I’ll take it.

So yay for Nei Gong. And Tai Chi was similar: I did almost no Tai Chi practice last week (literally none on Wednesday, and a very minimal amount on Friday), but Tai Chi class on Saturday was interesting in ways that felt good. I’m enjoying the Jian, and I feel like my Jian must be significantly different / better than it was a month and a half ago; but also I’m enjoying feeling how my body is moving during Tai Chi, the shifts of muscles and the opening of my armpits. (I’m noticing my armpits being more open and my arm positioning changing during Wu Ji, too, it’s not just Tai Chi; presumably that’s because of the arm stretching in the workshop a couple of weeks ago.)

And I had a good Tai Chi practice on Sunday, too. Not super long, I’ll try to do a longer practice tomorrow, but I enjoyed playing around with the Jian form and going through the Lao Jia first form.

We’ll see how this continues, but it would be great if things stay at this level. And it would be extra great if my energy level can improve and I can get back to longer practices.

Wednesday was, I think, my best Nei Gong practice day in a couple of months. (Other than the workshop last weekend, of course.) I tried doing some arm stretches from the workshop, then I did the new Dantian Gong exercise from the workshop; it was doing interesting things to my torso. (So maybe I shouldn’t think of it as Dantian Gong, or maybe I should think of it as Dantian Gong for all three of my Dantians?) And then I spent maybe an hour and a half going through a seated video from the Maryland workshop, on Qi thickening. So, a lot of practice, and it felt good. Though I also felt noticeably wiped out later; I’m honestly not completely sure if it’s a good idea for me to continue that level of practice or if I should wait until my TCM treatment has gotten farther? And then on Friday I did arm stretching and a couple of standing Dantian Gong exercises from the workshop, and then a 40-minute Hui Chun; a solid session, albeit not quite as long as on Wednesday.

And other practice sessions went well, too. I’m finally starting to feel that Wu Ji is actively energizing, which feels like significant progress. And when I practiced the Dragon Dao Yins, I was feeling more forceful (i.e. actually treating it like a Dao Yin) and more connected than I had been. So hopefully I’m doing better at that.

In terms of Tai Chi, I did kind of minimal practice this week – enough to keep stuff in my head, and I did work through the Jian a bit, but not enough to make progress on the Guan Dao. (Fortunately, it sounds like they didn’t do any new Guan Dao moves last Sunday.) But Tai Chi class on Saturday went well: I picked up on more details on the Jian that I’d gotten wrong / forgotten, and my Jian is feeling more connected.

Unfortunately, this Wednesday I have to be at jury duty and then work, and on Friday I have four things I need to do out of the house, so I don’t expect much practice this week! Still, nice to have a good week under my belt.

Not much to say about the normal stuff this week: normal Nei Gong practice during the week, noticeably less Tai Chi practice than normal because of having busy afternoons and being more tired than I would like, and I had to miss Saturday and Sunday Tai Chi classes.

But the reason why I had to skip those classes was a good one: we had our first local Nei Gong workshop since covid happened, so I spend Friday through Sunday at a workshop. It was labeled as a foundations workshop, which was kind of vague, and I expected it to be going over the basics (which wouldn’t have been bad, I’ve probably been neglecting those a bit), but it was actually rather more advanced than that.

The main theme of the workshop was tissue work. Every morning, we spent a significant amount of time stretching out our arms: different variants of holding your arms in some position, stretching them out, twisting them, and stretching them more. Except that it frequently wasn’t active stretching: sometimes it was relaxing your arms and moving your attention to different locations, and my arm would stretch on its own. And also sometimes Rick would come over and help us stretch our arms: it felt to me like he was actually tugging on them, but he said that he was mostly touching my arms in ways that let me relax? At any rate, it was really interesting when he did that: after a couple of seconds, my arm would extend noticeably, in a way that didn’t feel painful at all but that did feel like my arms were taffy that was getting pulled.

Not the most pleasant experience (holding your arm up for a while isn’t comfortable), but manageable; it would be nice to think that it’s because I’m getting better at this stuff, but also Rick has mellowed a bit in his teaching. (Though I have gotten better since earlier local workshops; it was nice to feel like I was one of the people in the middle of the range of skill / experience there instead of being right at the bottom. And it was nice to never feel like I’d reached my limit and have to stop for a while while other people kept on going.) And I feel like it really is having an effect in terms of creating more space in my arm and letting the fascia start to do its own thing instead of being stuck too closely to my muscles (and I assume the taffy feeling is related to that): it was definitely the case today that, if I paused and relaxed my body, I would feel various parts of my body expand. I hope I can keep up that looseness in my body: I don’t know for sure how frequently I’ll stick with that exercise, but I should probably at least do it some. (I will miss having somebody there to tug on my arms, though, but I can get some of the effect doing it myself.)

And we also did some other exercises that were working on expanding the body in different ways, and also setting up connectivity across your body. The most important one of those for me was a different way of setting up Wu Ji; not radically different or anything, but slightly different fine points to focus on while arranging your body at the beginning, mostly around generating more space in your body. And doing Wu Ji felt significantly better than normal after I set things up that way: in particular, it took quite a bit less effort to stay up when I do this. (And I think doing that combined with the relaxing and letting my fascia have room to expand will work help me build Spleen Qi instead of messing up my Spleen Qi.) So I am definitely going to work that approach into my Wu Ji from now on, that will be a big help.

And there were a few other things. There was a standing Dantian Gong-ish exercise that I’ll probably try to do once every week or two? And we did some sitting exercises that are related to the firing process; not sure if I’ll do those regularly or not, I’m honestly not sure how well I remember them and also I feel like, once I get back to thinking about that sort of thing, what I should really do is work on the Microcosmic Orbit preparation stuff from the middle of year two and from the Maryland workshop.

Anyways, yay for in-person workshops, I am definitely looking forward to being able to do those a few times a year.

I switched back to Nei Gong standing stuff instead of that one Tai Chi exercise this week. Which frequently just meant doing Wu Ji, but I did do Dantian Gong for the first time in a while. Fortunately, it seemed to be going well, I certainly didn’t get a feeling that my Yin field in my Dantian had degraded or anything. My standing stamina might have, but I think actually I might have been standing a little low, because of the practice I’d been doing the previous weeks? The next time I did Wu Ji I experimented with height control, I think I’m doing a better job of feeling tingling in the right place when I’m at the correct height? And I think it is plausible that I had been standing a little low that time.

In terms of sitting, I mostly was doing the Hui Chun, including sitting along with an hour-long video of the Water Hui Chun. Though I also did something else sitting for the first time in a while, I felt like doing Anchoring the Breath one day. Which was a little surprising: when my attention was in places that were close to my spine, that part of my spine would start stretching on its own. One of the clearest signs that I’ve seen of attention giving rise to Qi.

The main interesting thing from Tai Chi was watching my teacher do bits of the Jian form: it’s a lot more flowing than I’m used to. So I’m starting to get a sense for what he means that you should imitate a dragon in that form; definitely something for me to work on.

I’ll be at an in-person Nei Gong workshop this Friday through Sunday, I’m definitely looking forward to that! Too bad I’ll have to miss Tai Chi on both Saturday and Sunday, but there’s not much I can do about that.

My sleep was better this week; I did quite a lot more shutting down after exercising (especially the standing exercise that I’ve been doing), and my hypothesis was that it helped? My doctor didn’t think that that standing exercise was relevant to my problems, though, so I’m probably wrong about that.

At any rate, I’m going to switch back to some of the basic standing exercises for a while now, Dantian Gong and Wu Ji and Ji Ben Gong or something like that. The Chen Qingzhou version of Zhan Zhuang actually was starting to get slightly interesting, probably helping my legs more than some other exercises that I do, but I think right now I’d rather avoid doing an exercise that sends energy straight to my head like that. And hopefully if I get better at relaxing my legs during Wu Ji then I’ll be able to get more benefits on my legs that way as well.

Not a ton to report on Tai Chi, though I’m glad to be going through the Jian again, I definitely have fine ponts to work on there. When practicing push hands, I asked my partner to try out the exercise where one of us pushes harder and harder on the other person’s torso and that person tries to ground it; kind of interesting, though I think I’ll need to try it a lot to get significant benefit out of it? I don’t think he’s interested enough to want to work on it regularly, though, but maybe I’ll be surprised, I’ll see if he brings it up.

I haven’t been doing a ton of Tai Chi practice on my own, I should get back to that; this week was a little busy and while my energy levels weren’t horrible, they weren’t enough to get me actively excited. I did at least work on the Guan Dao a couple of times, though, so I’m pretty close to having the stuff that we’ve covered in class so far memorized. Which is good, because I’m going to have to miss the next Sunday class, so it’s important for me to keep up with things on my own…

Not a lot to say for Nei Gong this week: I’m just doing the Kidney (and sometimes Spleen) exercises, and for standing I’m doing a standing exercise from my Tai Chi teacher instead of any of the Nei Gong ones. I’ll probably stick with that one another week, but then I’ll stop; I don’t feel like I’m getting anything specific from it, and my Liver Heat problems are coming back, and I’m worried that that exercise might be sending too much energy to my head. And also I feel like I should get back to my Wu Ji, and it would be good for me to do some standing Dantian Gong too, I think.

Tai Chi was interesting, though. My teacher went over my form this week, even though he’d just commented on it the previous week at the teacher certification. Here are my notes:

• When going forward with my left elbow before the uppercut in Jing Gang, I should strike forward, not at an angle to the side. And the elbow should be a little isolated from the step forward.
• In Dantian Change, don’t focus on a smallish ball in front of me: instead, turn noticeably to the left at the start, and after that farther than I had been to the right, and let this help me to expand my chest more when drawing the silk.
• In Reverse with Spiraling Forearms, turn as I push, so that shoulder goes forward as well and more of the body gets involved.
• I have “sharp corners”: in punches and similar moves, I stop suddenly and the suddenly move into the next move, I should connect them more.

In general (this is my interpretation, not his), this is another sign that I’m too drawn in on myself why doing Tai Chi. I want to continue to lean into feeling Qi in my body, especially my arms and spine, during both Tai Chi and Nei Gong, hopefully this will help with that.

And my teacher did go over that standing posture I’d been working on; he confirmed that my feet should be parallel and my weight on my Bubbling Spring. (And he reminded me that I should repeat four sounds in my mind while doing that, which I forget most of the time!) And I asked him if I should stretch up my right middle finger, and he seemed to think that it was okay to do that! (Though now I’m wondering if my Liver Heat means I shouldn’t.)

Also, when doing the part of the Jian form where you turn forward (bringing the blade over, up, and down), I feel like I need to work on my choreography there: I want to spend some time thinking about what parts of my body are going up when and what parts are going down when. And I should point my left foot down when it’s raised.

In terms of Nei Gong this week, not a ton to report. I had not great sleep most days; part of that was the heat but I’m not sure what’s been going on the last few days? Nothing awful or anything, but enough to affect my practice. So no particularly long practice sessions, but I’ve been keeping up with stuff. And actually the Water Hui Chun is starting to feel subtly different, in a good way, e.g. stuff seems to be moving down the front of my body a little more clearly during the bit when you go down from the Bai Hui to the Dantian?

Also, in general, just while sitting around, I’m finding myself randomly paying attention to my body, and relaxing while letting bits of it expand. Which seems like a helpful thing to be doing? Pleasant, too.

And I just got the e-mail that the local Nei Gong course is starting back up. Looks like just Rick this time, I don’t know if that’s a permanent change or if Joyce was busy for this one. Three days in October; conveniently, a Friday through Sunday, so I won’t have to juggle my work schedule. This one is just labeled as a Foundations of Nei Gong course, I wonder if they’re starting the sequence from the beginning. (No complaints if that’s true!)

In terms of Tai Chi, I led Silk Reeling this week, so I’ll get my form reviewed next week. And there was a Sunday Tai Chi class, including the level 1 instructor’s test. I think I’m close to getting caught up on the Guan Dao, though there’s one bit I haven’t gotten right and some other bits I’m iffy on. Should be within reach to catch up on my own, at any rate; which is good, because the Nei Gong course conflicts with the October Sunday class.

The instructor’s test went fine; people had a lot of corrections to give me, but that’s expected, and I didn’t get nervous and mess up or anything. They had me go over the Diagonal Circles and Lie Splitting silk reeling exercise; when doing the Lie Splitting, I should be moving the lower hand slightly up so the two hands put pressure on a hypothetical opponent’s arm between them. In the first form, I should expand more, and let energy go to the tips of my fingers. (E.g. in punches, when flipping my hands, when stretching up in Golden Rooster. This actually probably dovetails well with my feeling that I should relax and let energy fill my arms more, though this recommendation is more active than that feeling.) In Reverse with Spiraling Forearm, my arms should circle back more instead of just going up. I should relax more betwene postures. In Backwards Trick, I should strike with my elbow.

My Jian form wasn’t very good, it sounds like I have a lot of work to do there conceptually. I should extend out into the sword, I should move more like a dragon (whereas, in the Dao, you move more like a tiger; dragons flow more than tigers), and I should take more time (I started off at a good speed but then I rushed it). We’ll see whether I make progress on that sort of fine point while we go through the form this time in class; if not, I should ask Tony to review my Jian form every so often. And probably my Dao and Spear forms too…

My TCM doctor says that my Kidneys are improving noticeably. Which seems plausible just based on how my Dantian is feeling. Would be nice if I could get my sleep working well and have more energy during the day, though.

Pretty mellow week. I got my second shingles vaccine shot on Wednesday; as predicted, that had me basically knocked out on Thursday and didn’t have me feeling at full strength on Friday. I did do some Nei Gong on Wednesday morning, but nothing super special or anything.

My teacher was out for Tai Chi on Saturday, but one of the more senior students watched my form and gave me some advice. And I went through the form a couple of times in an analytical way on Sunday. Here’s my combined notes from that:

• In the push to the left just after the start, I should sink into my left Kua more.
• In Jing Gang, I should end with my hands in front of my Dantian; they’re too high most of the time now.
• In the push in Six Sealing Four Closing, I should experiment with sinking into a tuck in my tailbone.
• Before I step to the left in Dantian Change, I should make sure I’m sunk into my right Kua. (In general, if I’m stepping out and feel slightly unsteady, that’s a sign that I should sink into the Kua that I’m stepping from.)
• I am very good at forgetting the details of the transition from the first punch into Jing Gang, though I think I’ve got it okay right now.
• In Reverse with Spiraling Forearms, I should make sure my heel has gone down before pushing forward with the opposite hand.

I also experimented with some tweaks to show respect (saluting at the start, and doing an extra 180 degree turn at the end); not sure if I’ll put those in when doing the teacher certification exam on Sunday. If it weren’t so incredibly hot and I could get in multiple solid practices this week, that would be one thing, but I don’t know that I’ll be able to practice much tomorrow, and I’m not sure about Friday either.

We had the last class of the summer Tuesday session tonight. My teacher mostly talked and answered questions: he went over the answer to one question on the written certification exam that I’d asked him about, and he answered some questions about Silk Reeling. The main one that caught my attention there was in Spine Stretch: he was leading with his chin, whereas I like to lead with my Baihui, and we talked about that. He said both were possible approaches, as long as you know why you’re doing it; leading with your chin is good if you want your back moving in both directions, leading with your Baihui is good if you want to focus on extending your back.

And he also answered a question I had about two hands fixed step Push Hands. In what he calls part 3 of that, if I’m receiving the push at that point, I should indeed be blocking with my hand, but I should also be rotating my body to the right; and then, in part 4, when my partner traps my hand and continues pushing, I should use my Dantian and body to sink in and rotate to the left. (So the rotation to the right feels more like a swivel, whereas the rotation to the left gets more of my body involved while sinking.)

And, watching him there and working it out with my partner, I think I figured out the difference between the 1-2-3-4 that he teaches to learn it versus the ongoing continuous version that people normally do. The continuous version is more like the 3-4 repeated on both sides; so the 1 basically goes away (it’s an extra push), and honestly the 2 part feels a little short to me, when I learned the 2 part I didn’t really appreciate the rotation to the left there.

It’s been a little hard to tell with the vaccine side effects and the hot nights making it hard to sleep, but I continue to think that the TCM treatment is helping noticeably with tiredness; I’m looking forward to that continuing to get better.