Good week. I learned the last of the new set of seated Wu Xing exercises, this time on Metal / Spleen; nice to have that set learned. This one has a couple of positions with your arms held relatively high, so it’s a bit more strenuous than the others, but that’s probably not a bad thing for me to work on? And the video for that talked about doing all of them in sequence; that seemed like it would take a while (close to two hours), but I figured it was worth a try? It’s seated, so it’s not going to be strenuous in a way that a long standing exercise would be, and it has a bunch of different movements, so I wouldn’t be so likely to fall asleep.

So I did that on Friday, and I’m glad I did. In particular, my the time I got to the fourth part, my abdomen was feeling surprisingly puffy, so it feels like it was effective in terms of building up Qi. And sitting for a long time turns out to be pretty manageable; for the last ten minutes or so, the area near my sitz bones hurt enough to start to get distracting (and I can still feel an ache there a few days later!), but it fine, and presumably if I do that more I’ll get used to it.

Having said that, talking it over with one of the senior students, he said that he’d found it useful to do a single element but with 10 minutes per section (80 minutes in total). And that also seems like a good length, and I’m hoping that it’ll help me get more out of each individual element, since I kind of feel like, when I was doing all of them, the later elements were more effective. So I’ll give that a try.

I also watched a video on Thursday talking about how Wu Ji works and what we’re trying to accomplish in our body, and inspired by that (?), I had a quite good Wu Ji session on Friday as well. I set my timer for 30 minutes, but it was going well so I went a few minutes longer; if I hadn’t been planning to do a very long sit after that, I would have gone longer. As it was, I felt like I was doing a good job of relaxing and connecting my body, and also of dropping my weight into my feet and activating my Yong Quan. And I had decent Wu Ji on Sunday as well, not quite as good but not bad.

One interesting thing from Tai Chi on Saturday: in Kick with Two Feet Up, you’re apparently supposed to land stably on your left foot, being similarly stable to how you’d be if you did the version where you don’t jump. That was from a senior student who sometimes disagrees with my teacher, so I’ll have to watch my teacher to make sure he does it that way, but I know my teacher does it that way in Xin Jia, so it seems plausible that Lao Jia works the same way as well. And I tried it out and found it a lot easier to land stably than I expected; that was a pleasant surprise.

A little mellower week than the previous week. I was kind of tired Monday and Tuesday, so I didn’t do Dantian Gong those days; I did go through the Ji Ben over the course of those days, though, so it wasn’t a waste. I was worried that the week was going to continue that way, but the rest of the week was fine, and in particular I went through the Dantian Gong over Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday I didn’t do as much practice as I normally do on non-working weekdays, though, because a couple of different contractors came over to work on the house, so I didn’t have a good block to practice. (I got some done, just not as much.) And I had Sunday Tai Chi, so I didn’t do as much Nei Gong as usual that day, either. Still, practice was fine, just not as long as the prior week.

I’ve done the Water Wu Xing a couple more times, and I haven’t had any nausea like I did a couple of weeks back, so I guess that was a one-time thing? I should probably get back to the Thickening the Qi exercise.

On Monday this week, I did the Dantian Gong, and I was pleased how my legs felt; right at the beginning I was standing a bit lower than normal, and I felt super stable, with my spine a little floaty. Which I was actually a little worried about because I felt disconnected, but I think it settled in fine? And I could have gone longer than the 39 minutes that the normal routine went; I think if I’d been doing Wu Ji I could have gone for at least 45 minutes, assuming I didn’t get distracted by being too bored. So it feels like my legs are pretty well back in shape.

Nothing super special in Damo’s course; the new lesson was continuing the five elements seated sequences, this time doing Earth / Spleen. I’ll do the last of those tonight, I continue to be glad that I’ve been doing them and I’ll miss them when I’ve finished them, I should work them into my routine occasionally.

Not much to say about Tai Chi; been going well, though, I think?

Quite good practice week. I again had two approximately-two-hour practice sessions, and went through a pretty good selection of different exercises over the course of the week, which made me happy with how things were going. And my body felt good this week, noticeably more alive inside than normal. Which I assume is a consequence of the solid practice, though I also feel like I’m doing an unusual amount of back-related exercises (largely because the Qi Gong sequences I’ve been doing the last few weeks have included a spine twist bit at the beginning), and one of the parts of my body that’s felt more alive is my Live Gate, so maybe it’s also a sign that working on my back is useful? Once I’m past his section of Qi Gong exercises, I should seriously consider making sure that I’m doing something back-related every day: maybe back-specific exercises like a few minutes of spine rolls, maybe the Dragons, maybe returning to exercises from this Qi Gong set.

After last week’s Silk Reeling experience, I also decided that I should slow down in that. Which I think is helping, too, I’m certainly sensing things in my body more. (Though probably a lot of that is because of the Nei Gong practice.) Which makes it honestly a little slow for doing during a work meeting, but most weeks I have two meetings that I can do Silk Reeling during, so it should work out okay?

This Saturday I was leaning into that, and honestly probably did Silk Reeling a little too slow during the class. And I almost certainly did the first form too slowly: my teacher went over my form, and one of the things that he noted was that I was pausing for too long between moves. So maybe it wasn’t so much the speed of the individual moves that was too slow, just that I should connect them more? When he showed me an example, it seemed like he was relaxing into the next move instead of relaxing between moves; I tried that on Sunday and it seemed to help?

Some other notes from that: during the reverse version of Oblique Posture, I’m still turning my right arm too far, and not tucking enough. And my right harm might have been a little high? My hand should be at shoulder height, and then I should relax the elbow. And in Teal Dragon my elbow was too high, I think? And in Flash through the Back, I wasn’t straightening my hand enough. In the Xin Jia form we got to the Swing the Leg before the Golden Rooster; I keep on forgetting how your hands are in that one, but both palms are down in Xin Jia.

I also saw a video that had me doing the very end of the first form; I’m leaning forward right after kicking my foot before stepping back, I should try to fix that. The Head-On Cannon looked surprisingly good, at least.

I’d bought a new, heavier Dao the previous week, but it felt unbalanced, so I went back and replaced it with a different one; that one isn’t as heavy as the unbalanced one, but it’s heavier and less floppy than my original Dao, so I think it’ll be a good choice. On that note, I’m missing some of the details of the Lao Jia Dao, I need to work on that more. And I also feel like my Jian is getting sloppy; I think rather than trying to go through a bunch of different forms once during a practice session, I should do fewer forms but do them more times, so I can work on improving them. (But I do want to work on every form at some point over the course of the week, so they all stick with me.)

My best practice week in ages; a combination of my sleep behaving acceptably and me feeling motivated had good results. Yay.

This week in Damo’s course was continuing the five elements seated sequences, this time with Wood. The first bit in the Water sequence (making big circles while twisting your torso) was here too, so I guess that’s common to all of them? Which is good, I like that one, my spine could use the action. Anyways, the surprise with the Wood one is how active it is, with a couple of moves that could be Dao Yins (and maybe actually are, I’ll ask people in the know if they are purging exercises or not). Coincidentally, one of the older lessons that I was rewatching also had a Wood exercise, which talked about how Wood is associated with the tendons, I guess this is part of that.

I still don’t have a feel for exactly when to do the exercises in this new sequence; I’ll wait until I’ve learned all five, but if an explanation of that doesn’t show up, I’ll ask about it.

Anyways, in terms of practice: on Wednesday, I actually practiced a little over two hours in the morning; admittedly, mostly seated, but still. And on Friday, I practiced close to two hours. So it was good to get back into the scene? And, inspired by rewatching old videos, I did go through Thickening the Qi; a little depressing that my Qi didn’t feel as thick as it had sometimes when I did that exercise.

But then I watched the Water Wu Xing video from year one, and decided to do that; normally I just do those five exercises in sequence, but I got the impression that the Water one could stand on its own pretty well, and I feel like I could use the help. So I went through that on Thursday, I think, doing it for 10 minutes? And, after 5 minutes or so, I was feeling an effect in my spine, especially near my neck, so I guess my Qi is a little thick after all. And then I actually started to feel nauseous while doing that, enough so that it felt like a wise idea to stop after 10 minutes instead of going further.

So it was good to get back into older stuff; and I also did manage to go through the whole standing Dan Tian Gong sequence this week, it’s been a while since I’ve done that. And, in general, my standing is now not in the pathetic state that it had been in a few weeks back; I’m not standing forever, but doing Wu Ji for 20 minutes is no problem (I’m sure I could go longer), and doing Dan Tian Gong for 39 minutes seems fine. And I even managed to fit in an extra bit of sitting practice one work afternoon when I hit a break a little early.

In terms of Tai Chi, I led Silk Reeling this week. Tony has been pushing us to do that more slowly, so I did (honestly, I went slightly too slow!), and that was a very interesting experience, getting me to feel more stuff inside my body than I have been. So I’m going to want to continue that. Also it made me realize that my balance just isn’t as good as I’d like on the Circling In To / Out Of Your Kua With A Kick exercises, I need to work on that, and on some bits of the form.

I’m continuing to be optimistic that I’ll learn the Xin Jia first form pretty well this time; I’m up through Jade Girl, and got some help in the transition from Dan Bian into Jade Girl, and now I think I’m solid there. (Bend left, then start facing to the right, with your left hand over your right hand. Circle clockwise down from the right, ending up with chest closed and facing right.) One other pointer from this week: after the flick down with your hands in Xin Jia Oblique Posture, you should let your hands bounce back up pretty high.

I also bought a Guan Dao and a heavier regular Dao this week. Unfortunately, when I started using the new regular Dao, I realized that the weighting is pretty far off; I’ll go back to the store tomorrow and see if they have other ones that are weighted better.

My back has been doing quite a bit better this week, the tightness there is almost completely gone. And I’ve been doing more Wu Ji than I had been, and it’s gone back to feeling effective, so that’s a good sign.

I’ve done a decent amount of practice, though for various reasons I didn’t do much extra practice on Wednesdays and Fridays. I did rewatch two old lessons this week and take notes, though; I’m going to try to get into a habit of doing that most weeks, there are definitely a bunch of exercises that I don’t completely remember and that I would like to occasionally get in the habit of doing. One of the ones this week was Thickening the Qi; that one I did remember, and I used to be in the habit of doing it once every week or two, but I’ve fallen out of that habit; a little depressing that my Qi honestly doesn’t feel so thick these days. Another sign that I would benefit from bumping up my overall practice level.

This week’s lesson was on a seated exercise sequence for building up your Water energy. It looked familiar, I think I might have seen a random video of Damo’s where he showed it? I haven’t actually practiced it before, though, but I rather like it; it’s soothing, it feels like it might be doing something useful around my lower back, and it feels a lot shorter than the 27 minutes it actually takes. So I’ll probably want to work that into my practice routine occasionally in the future.

This also raises an issue with my practice routine: I have a regular 25-minute slot in the morning where I do seated work, rotating through a sequence of exercises over the week. But now (and for the next four weeks, since we’re going through all five elements) that’s taken up by new lessons. So I think I should probably find more time to do a second round of seated work at some point; I certainly don’t want to repurpose my existing standing work slot for doing seated work, but just 25 minutes of seated work shouldn’t always be my answer. To be sure, right now I really do want to build up my stamina for standing work; but if I’m feeling physically tired but not sleepy, and if I’ve got some room in the day, it would be better to keep going with seated work than to stop practice just because I’m tired. Though unfortunately right now I am sleepy more than I’d like, and of course I also do have to actually do my job on work days, so there are real constraints, but still.

Tai Chi is going fine; not a lot to say there, just keeping on with stuff. I’m still optimistic that I’ll be able to learn the whole Xin Jia first form this time.

Not a lot to say this week; sleep has been iffy (hopefully that will get better as we make progress on house stuff), and my back is still feeling tight. I was doing some Wu Ji on Sunday, and I was feeling surprisingly little there, especially at the start; ten minutes in and I was starting to feel a little more going on, but the back stuff is affecting me more than I thought, especially first thing in the morning. So I should work on my back a little more (heating pad? ibuprofen? lots of back stretches?), and I should probably spend more time just doing Wu Ji instead of mixing brief Wu Ji bits in between other exercises so that I can build that back up.

I did review old lessons on both Wednesday and Friday last week, though; hopefully I can set up a routine of doing that twice a week. It’s definitely happening to me that I’m thinking “oh, I should do that one exercise” and I can’t quite remember how it went.

One note I forgot from Sunday Tai Chi a couple of weeks ago: in Big Forearm Fist / Small Forearm Fist in the second form, your hand/foot synchronization switches in the two halves: in the first one, your right arm moves in as your right foot moves, whereas in the second one, your left arm moves in as your right foot moves. (So it ends with your right arm, which matches with how your right arm/hand comes down to be ready for the next move.

Bad week for sleep, so I didn’t manage any long Nei Gong sessions. Though I did at least manage a decent variety of practice: going through all of Dantian Gong and all of Ji Ben Qi Gong over the course of the week.

This week’s lesson in Damo’s course was actually a theoretical one, around how the mind perceives objects. Interesting; I’ll probably want to listen to it another time or two before I get it? And, honestly, I appreciate not having a new routine to go through this last week, I already have quite a few of those.

In general my body’s feeling good. Muscles and sinews are feeling particularly integrated when I do silk reeling; and I’m having occasional urges to do snippets of Tai Chi moves when I’m walking around, and I feel connection in my Dantian when I do. So connections are being built; I still don’t really feel Tai Chi power coming out of my Dantian, but at least the connections are there.

My back was actually a little off this week; not sure if that was related to the sleep issues or if I’d overstressed it or something? Not awful, though, just surprising; it felt like I hadn’t done enough Silk Reeling, except that I had.

Also, I’ve had a couple of times recently when food that I normally like is feeling a little bit much, a little too flashy? Not sure what’s going on there: maybe I’ve just been eating the same things too often and gotten tired of them, maybe my stomach is starting to have different opinions about what I should eat. Which Damo talks about some in the course; honestly, I hope it’s not that, I like what I’ve been eating? But as long as it doesn’t go too far in the “eat plain food” direction, I’ll be okay.

This week’s lesson in Damo’s course was the same as the previous week, just with the second and third Ji Ben exercises. Which was also pretty interesting; at first it seemed maybe a little disappointing, I didn’t feel like I was compressing as much, but then I realized that something interesting was happening in my armpits. At first, the only thing I noticed was, that in the Wu Ji after doing the second exercise, my arms were floating noticeably higher than normal for two or three minutes; but then the third exercise started feeling odd as I lifted my arms, and then, a day or two later, I started feeling like there was kind of a ball of air in my armpits. Which I’ve heard is an expected sort of thing if I do enough Qi Gong, I guess this is what pushed me over the edge? And in general the joints in my arms are feeling a little more spacious.

Also, over the weekend, I noticed that I was sweating a surprising amount while doing this exercise; Damo had said in the previous lesson that that would happen, but I hadn’t noticed it happening then, but it’s happening now. And the other surprising thing about this exercise is how fast it feels: at the intervals I’m doing, the second and third exercise together take 27 minutes, but the time goes by amazingly quickly once I get started.

As predicted last week, I didn’t get my normal extra practice done last Wednesday, but I was back to normal after that day, and I got in a good two-hour session on Friday. This Wednesday will be a little busy, but Monday was a holiday, so I was hoping to get in a large practice that day as well; unfortunately, it didn’t turn out that way, so while I got more done than on a work day, I didn’t do as much practice as I had on Friday.

I finally restarted the regular Nei Gong program last week. Pretty interesting session: it was on mobilizing the Qi using Compressing the Pearl. So you do the exercise some normally, then some compressing down with your Lao Gong stretched and then actively pulling Qi up on the way up, and then some with the active compression but just opening on the way up and letting the rebound of the compressed Qi help you up. And, after doing it for a couple of days, that got pretty surprising: on the third part, it literally felt that my arms were moving without any effort on my side when going up. I don’t know that I’m actively feeling Qi moving (though I do feel an active compression on the way down), but whatever the effect, it was pretty distinctive.

And I had quite good practices on Wednesday and Friday morning; as I mentioned last week, I decided to experiment with eating first, and then I was a little tired / unmotivated, so I goofed off for a while. At first, I was feeling annoyed with myself, but when I finally got going at 11am, I realized that I actually was feeling a lot less tired than I had been, and I got in two solid hours of practice after that on Wednesday. Friday wasn’t quite as good, more like an hour and a half, but still, a pretty solid practice. I didn’t get as strong an effect in my Dantian as I had sometimes a few months back, but still, good to be back in practice.

On Saturday morning, I had a quite good Ting exercise practice; and it felt like the effects of that carried on into Tai Chi class that afternoon, I was feeling stuff inside me more strongly than normal.

Also, this week, I felt like I was paying attention to things inside the body more at random times during the day, which seems like a good evolution. And I think I was maybe getting better at sinking my tailbone when I was practicing?

So, a good week. Though I think this week is going to be a lot worse: I’m feeling stressed because of some home maintenance problems. I’m getting things in motion to hopefully begin resolving it, but I think it’ll be a while…

Pretty good week? I practiced well over lunch on the three work days; I didn’t do a ton of practice on my days off, but some, and in general things feel pretty good. (And the days off were productive in non-Nei Gong ways, that’s important too!) And my skin is feeling pretty strongly connected, I’m getting a kind of visceral understanding of the “wetsuit” concept that Damo talks about.

I missed two weeks of Tai Chi, but I mentioned that to my teacher, and he just did review this past Saturday in the Xinjia portion. He actually went over stuff from right before I went away, so hopefully he’ll review the next bit this weekend, because it seemed like the class had done Part the Wild Horse’s Mane, which I mostly know but not completely.

As mentioned last time, I ended up not restarting the regular Nei Gong course last week, but one of the things I took care of was getting my internet fixed (my cable modem went bad, it turned out), so I can do that after I finish writing this.

Speaking of weekday practice, I’d been trying to practice Nei Gong after taking a shower on my days off, before eating breakfast, because I’m often a little sleepier after eating. But, honestly, that hasn’t been great, for a few reasons. One is that sometimes I’m hungry enough to feel a little weak / distracted, which is a downside. Another is that I’m not doing a great job of practicing immediately instead of goofing off and reading or something for a bit; I can work on that, but still, not the best idea? And the third is that I miss going to Maison Alyzée and getting a baguette for breakfast: I used to do that back when I was working from home, but now that I’m going into the office, I can’t do that. So I think I’m going to experiment with going for a walk, grabbing a baguette, and having a light breakfast before doing my morning Nei Gong; hopefully that will work out well enough, at least not reducing my amount of Nei Gong practice?