I’m switching the title of these posts to “Nei Gong Notes”: for a while I’ve been doing Tai Chi and Nei Gong, and while my time had been more heavily weighted towards the former, with COVID it’s now more heavily weighted towards the latter. And I think that, with the launch of the Internal Arts Academy, I’ll be spending more time than I had been on Nei Gong stuff than I had been; maybe not more than on Tai Chi, but at the least it’ll be more balanced. Also, in some sense Tai Chi is a subset of Nei Gong: Nei Gong basically means “internal work”, and hence includes internal martial arts.

Anyways, as to the Tai Chi portion of this: I actually did go through the form three times this Sunday and I went through most of the Jian form as well. And I did okay on the latter, though I couldn’t remember the last few moves we’d learned; glad I got back to the practice. And today I went through the first form three times, the second form once, and the Jian form a few times, and I remembered one or two more moves in the latter. Still need to get back to the Xinjia first form.

Also, I’m thinking I’m not getting as much new from doing Dantian Rotations, so I’m dialing that down to once a day (with 25 repetitions) instead of twice.

I’ve finished the first week of the Internal Arts Academy syllabus. The first video had us doing seated meditation; the one he led off with is one he calls “starving the mind”, where you basically try not to think. Which is different from the Song Breathing that I’ve normally been doing during my meditation time. So I’ve been trying that; seems fine, I don’t yet feel that I’m getting anything extra from that. I have been using that as an excuse to try thinking less during Wu Ji, though.

And the second video was on stretches. The main thing about all of these stretches is to put your consciousness on the body part where you’re stretching; that makes the stretch more effective, and helps open up space around there. For my future reference, the list of stretches:

• Shoulder rotations; only rotate backward, not forward, we all slump too much as it is.
• Scapula rotations; from the outside, it looks a lot like shoulder rotations, but try to move your shoulder blades instead.
• Yao rotations: this is the area of your torso between the bottom of your rib cage and your hips. Try to feel an active stretch on the outside as you rotate around.
• Yao rotations from the Dantian. A similar-looking movement, but this time you’re supposed to be moving from your Dantian, and that’s where you focus your attention instead of the outside stretch.
• Bend at your hips, feeling a stretch on your lower back and butt. When you’re come up, make space inside your torso to help your rise. Keep your legs locked on this one.
• Neck rotations: turn your head right and left.
• Sit cross-legged, and turn your torso right and left, feeling the stretch (I think) in your Yao again.
• Sit cross-legged, and turn your torso right and left but move from your Dantian.
• Sit in a half-lotus position, lean forward, and rock your torso from one knee to the other. Switch which foot is on top and repeat. (I should probably rewatch the video on this one to understand where I’m supposed to be feeling the stretch, and whether I’m supposed to come up between legs; I think your butt and no, but I’m not sure.
• Sit with the soles of your feet together and bend down at the hips, and rise up by opening inside your torso.
• Sit with crossed legs and breathe in, stretching your lungs and your whole body.

Outside of the course, I did 20 minutes of Wu Ji a few times, and 25 minutes today, hopefully I’ll be up to 30 minutes in a week on so? And I’ll probably stay there for a while. Today was interesting, at one point I felt kind of like there was a sheathe surrounding my going from my hips to my lower back. Never felt that before, and given that so far the interesting stuff that I’ve felt has usually stopped at my tailbone, it’s nice to feel something going up further.

Pictures from the March Minecraft session:

There was one cave that I’d noticed last time that I was thinking I’d build in, so I traveled back to the mountain, in hopes that I could find it again.

Some random island (?) that I took a picture of; not sure whether the lighting inside is natural or from something that some player added…

That wall of trees really is kind of dominant when you’re traveling past it…

There’s the cave!

It was closer to the mountain than I realized; certainly made it easy to find…

The neat thing about the cave is these stairs in the back: that’s all procedurally generated, they’re amazingly regular given that.

Now the stairs are actually reaching down to the floor.

Here’s the view all the way to the top, I had to regularize things at the top too.

I puttered around a little in the middle, but not much; I have to spend more time on the inside, on the entrance, and put a path or something connecting this to the mountain.

Next, Dan: it combines his new focus on trees with his old focus on straight lines.

Heading at night to the area where Dan was working.

A lot more trees in that water area, and a tall pillar on the right.

You can see the orange pyramid he built a few months back peeking out from underneath the trees.

Here’s the view from the side, so you can see the spaces better.

The view towards the pillar; not sure which ones were generated and which ones were added.

Here’s a full view of the pillar.

A view of the trees on top.

And Ariel had been adding to their castle, building a greenhouse on top of one side.

Ariel standing on the castle roof.

The view inside the greenhouse.

The lower level of the castle.

I’m getting back into practice. Not so much Tai Chi: I was going to go through a few forms this weekend, then I noticed it was going to rain soon so I headed outside, then halfway through my first time through the form it started to rain pretty hard. But hey, once is better than none. And actually I’ve been managing to go through the smaller Silk Reeling set most workdays: if there’s a meeting that I don’t need to spend much time talking in, then I do that while listening.

And I’m getting back into Wu Ji: still need to build up my stamina (more mental stamina than physical stamina), but I’m usually managing 15 minutes without too much trouble now, hopefully I’ll manage 20 minutes tomorrow. And hopefully I’ll push beyond that; I’m hoping that I can use this enforced time at home as a reason to get closer to 30 minutes a day. Still haven’t done any Ji Ben Qi Gong or Animal Frolics since my recent break, though.

I had an interesting time doing seated meditation on Sunday; my start-of-the day sitting got cut off at 10 minutes or so, so I did another 15 minutes later, and that 15 minutes was surprisingly intense (in a sinky way, if I remember correctly), much more so than 15 minutes of meditation normally is. Heck, it was probably more intense than 25 minutes of meditation normally is. Not sure if it was just random or if two short sessions is somehow more effective than one longer one?

Damo launched his Internal Arts Academy. I’ve signed up for that, and I’m going to put in regular time; probably not as good as having regular in-person lessons (or at least regular in-person lessons with a good teacher), but I’m sure I’ll get a lot out of it. Means I’ll be spending more time in my evenings on Nei Gong stuff (and probably blogging less), but I think that’s the right choice for me now.

Interesting lecture on perception from a Vipassana point of view. It talks about how, at some point, you start directly perceiving all sorts of things as vibrating; I wonder if that’s related to the Chinese point of view that Jing, Qi, and Shen are all vibrations (at different frequencies)?

Damo posted another video about The Internal Arts Academy; should be launching tomorrow, I’m curious what that’ll be like.

One pleasant thing that I’ve been noticing is that, when walking around, sometimes my spine is feeling particularly well stacked and stable these days. So yay, that’s good, hopefully it is getting in better shape. Or at least was before I’ve been working from home; I can feel things start to fall apart a bit, too.

But fortunately I’m not really feeling like I have a cold any more. So I started doing a tiny bit of Wu Ji yesterday, I’ll try to get that back into shape, and I’m shifting my sitting meditation from something more external to something more internal. And today during a meeting I went through a bunch of Silk Reeling movements. Hopefully if I can keep that up then my body will start being happy again. And it’s not awful now, it just could be better, and I want to make sure I maintain and build upon the spine improvements I feel like I was making before the stay at home order.

Not much to say this week: no class, and I’m still feeling like I have a low-grade cold so I’m restricting what I’m doing. Trying to stretch and walk around a little more, because my back was starting to give ever the slightest twinge; presumably I can do that in meetings, since they’re not in conference rooms these days, and since they usually don’t require me to be staring at my screen. In general, though, I’m still feeling like my spine is potentially a little freer in interesting ways; hopefully I’ll be able to hold onto that feeling until I get better and start practicing again.

Damo posted a video about Building Immunity in Qi Gong; unsurprisingly, he leads off by saying that Qi Gong just isn’t going to do magic for you in the short term (he says that yes, it helps, but it helps because you’ve been doing it!), and then goes into his usual theoretical analysis. There is one exercise he gives about two thirds of the way through that I might try working into things, though.

We actually had Tai Chi class on Saturday; not as many people, and I kept my distance more than normal, but it happened. But even then the Tuesday class had already been cancelled, and now we have a shelter in place order from the government, so no classes for the indefinite future. My teacher is putting up a series of videos of health-related exercises, I should give that a look.

What I was supposed to be doing on Saturday through Monday was going to a local Lotus Neigong course on the Ji Ben Qi Gong. But it got cancelled, as did Damo’s upcoming course in April. Joyce and Rick (the local teachers) ran a two-hour class over Zoom on Sunday morning, though, which was very nice of them. And pretty brutal; I feel like I did in part of it manage to relax in ways that helped increase the stretch of some of the exercises and reduce the pain? And something Rick said made me think that I have more work to do around relaxing in my Kua.

Also, right at the beginning Joyce said something that was related to my worries last week that Neigong practice might be not the best idea when I have a cold. She said that it’s potentially dangerous when you’re sick: internal work has the potential to move bad stuff further inside your body. So you want to stick with surface level stuff, or on exercises that are about expelling stuff (Dao Yins, I guess).

And I am feeling a bit off again; so, for now, no Wu Ji. And even when I do a little bit of Silk Reeling to stay active during the work day, I can feel stuff inside that I’m not completely comfortable with; on the balance, I think it’s still probably a good idea, but I’m not completely sure? (Hmm, maybe I should just do basic stretches instead.) I’m still doing a little bit of meditation, but I’m using this as an excuse to do the “focus on the tip of your nose” thing from The Mind Illuminated, hopefully that’s surface enough!

The frustrating thing is that I also feel like my back and neck are potentially starting to open up, they’re giving these faint tickles that feel good. So I’m really curious what progress I might be able to make if I were able to practice! But I just don’t think it’s the right time for that; hopefully I’ll be able to at least avoid regressing too much until I do feel better…

I didn’t take so many pictures in February: partly because I’m still not sure what to build next and partly because I got caught up in conversation.

A few pictures from wandering around:

A cliff with a small cave in it, and an island off in the haze.

A valley with some animals.

Another one-block water discontinuity, this time including ice.

A randomly generated staircase.

That last one has stuck with me; maybe I’ll try to find it again and see if I can do something with the cave around it to cause the staircase to fit into a larger context? Hopefully I know more or less where it is…

No pictures from Dan or Ariel, but Pat was working on a bowling alley:

The lanes of the bowling alley.

There’s a space on the other side of the lanes.

Here’s what it looks like from the outside.

Looking closer at the windows.

Here’s what it looks like behind the lanes.

Now there are some pins in place.

Not the best week for Tai Chi, unfortunately: I started feeling like I might be coming down with something on Thursday evening, so I skipped my Wu Ji practice for the rest of the week, and I skipped most of Tai Chi on Saturday, only going in for the Jian bit. And I skipped Tai Chi tonight, too.

Fortunately, the cold or whatever it is hasn’t been too bad; I think I’ll start venturing out in the world again tomorrow, and I probably would have actually gone into work instead of working at home yesterday and today if it wasn’t for the COVID scare. And hopefully I’ll be able to go to a Lotus Nei Gong course from Saturday through Monday; focusing on the Ji Ben Qi Gong, which I would like to learn better.

Anyways, during the Jian practice, in the hop near the end, you should keep your sword angled up, in the direction where you’ll be thrusting it next; also, the hop should be a little bit forward.

On Sunday I at least did Silk Reeling at home. And one thing I noticed there: in exercises where I’m moving forward and back some (e.g. during shoulder rotations), there’s more room to open my Kua than I’ve been doing. And I think that’s what I should do, that my teacher might say that I’d been collapsing my back knee slightly? Keeping my Kua open more requires me to maintain a bit of an active stretch, which I think is probably good?

The funny thing about Thursday is that I actually felt like I had a really good Nei Gong practice over lunch; but I also felt relaxed and open in a way which somehow fit with the ache that was the start of being sick. And, similarly, doing Silk Reeling on Sunday felt good but also left me feeling vulnerable. It’s nice to think that this internal work helps protect from disease, but I don’t have any real reason to believe that that’s the case, and it almost seemed like it opened me up to disease moving around this week a little more. Dunno…

I guess I am writing the notes this week after all, but they’re short. I was googling for Lotus Wu Ji images, and I ran across this one; what struck me there was that Damo spread his arms significantly wider than I’m used to doing. So I tried that, and wow, it felt super different. Less different a few days later, now that I’m used to it, but still, maintaining a bit of a stretch seems like a good idea. Probably means that I should stand a little farther apart, too, to get more of a stretch on my legs as well.

Anyways, I’ve been good about doing my practice on the trip. I was actually hoping to get up to 30 minutes of Wu Ji every day; didn’t manage that, though, I wasn’t consistently doing it at a time when I wasn’t tired. (I find it noticeably harder to keep up Wu Ji if I’m tired or have eaten recently.) But I did 30 minutes some days, at least. And I did about 30 minutes of seated meditation, so that’s good. I only did Tai Chi once, on Sunday; did some Silk Reeling, some Lao Jia first form (3 times), some second form (2 times, I think?), 30 minutes of Wu Ji, and the Ji Ben Qi Gong during that session, which added up to a good session.

Might be starting to get little tingles around my live gate? Would be nice if it opened up… And I’m hoping that the Nei Gong seminars I’m planning to go to in March and April aren’t canceled because of Coronavirus, but who knows.

I was sick on Thursday (probably food poisoning), so no practice that day. And I actually managed to wrench my back that evening; my guess is that I might have been slightly overdoing it with the hip rotations, and then lying down and doing a bit of the lying down in a slightly awkward position made some muscle suddenly quite unhappy? Fortunately, my back was getting noticeably better on Saturday, so I went to Tai Chi class; I did Silk Reeling (and noted that, indeed, hip rotations didn’t feel good), skipped the Lao Jia first form, and did the Jian and the Xin Jia first form very gently. Basically, I thought the Silk Reeling would help and that moving in general would help, and I wanted to make sure that I was keeping up with the Jian, but I didn’t want to strain anything.

Which worked fine, I didn’t sense any signs of problems (other than the hip rotations, which I skipped). In the Jian, I learned one move, and one thing I’d gotten wrong in the previous week’s move: in the move where you hop and then go up at an angle, the blade is horizontal, even during the hop. And in the Xin Jia Cover the Hand Punch, your left palm should be up, not forward.

And fortunately, my back continued to feel better on Sunday and Monday (almost back to normal on Monday, actually); yay for fast recovery. I skipped all of my routines while I was sick, but I started the meditation up again; seated meditation actually felt surprisingly good, I continue to think I might be making progress there.

Unfortunately, I also learned that I’m going to have to be out of town tomorrow through next Wednesday; so I skipped Tai Chi tonight, and I’ll probably skip this post entirely next week. And I’m extra glad went to class on Saturday, skipping two weeks of Jian wouldn’t have been good! I should at least be able to keep my meditation up while I’m out, though I doubt I’ll be able to practice the form; who knows about Silk Reeling or Ji Ben Qi Gong.